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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents not at all your average startup entrepreneur. Following repeated occurrences of clients leaking her intimate photographs, she was "sufficiently outraged to take action" and turned to tech solutions for answers.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were weaponized by someone who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year since launching her venture, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to track abusers, has won several awards and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This represents a significant shift from her background in offering BDSM services, working with clients in the realms of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a criminal offence with offenders facing up to two years in prison.

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, said survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I expect dignity, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she continued. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's unacceptable, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's someone being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and consistently found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, giving my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

"Some believe it's strange but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an accountant giving advice," she added.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the loopholes and the changes that needed to happen," she explained.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after a lot of late nights, research and "bugging people" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be implemented on any digital service where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social networks and online sites.

When an image is viewed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

This covert marker is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being edited and being re-captured with a different camera.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the platform you posted it on has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

Currently, one platform has adopted her tech and she's in discussions with several more.

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it is employed in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a different framework," explained Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a firm that has decades of expertise in tech development so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

She expressed hope she believed the technology would also act as a preventive measure to potential perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a support service commented she had seen directly the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is compounded by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the support a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images of her in a state of undress were shared around her town. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her advocacy work.

"It required years, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an image to someone," said Jess.

"But it is a crime to distribute that without consent and I think that should invariably be where the blame is," she concluded.