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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your average tech founder. After multiple instances of clients leaking her private explicit images, she was "angry enough to do something about it" and looked to tech solutions for answers.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the way that they were used against me by someone who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Just over a year after launching her company, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to identify abusers, has won several awards and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This marks quite a departure from her previous career in providing BDSM services, dominating clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as revenge porn, is a criminal offence with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A study suggests that around 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, said survivors lived with shame and stigma. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she said.

"I demand dignity, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she added. "The reality that those images could be then shared in my community or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and consistently found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is empowered and strong, offering my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she said.

"People think it's unusual but I don't see it any differently to a personal trainer or an accountant providing a service," she remarked.

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I know that it's bizarre, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it required someone who has been through it to know the loopholes and the modifications that needed to happen," she explained.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was able to build her company after many late nights, research and "bugging people" who understand tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any digital service where people share images, for instance dating apps, social networks and websites.

When an image is accessed by a user, it is automatically embedded with an invisible forensic watermark which is specific to that viewer.

This covert marker is encoded within the digital file of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being edited and being photographed with a different camera.

It means that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the platform you used has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

To date, one service has adopted her tech and she's in talks with several more.

Proven Technology, New Application

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

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a firm that has decades of expertise in tech development so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she continued.

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

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a leading helpline said she had seen directly the trauma and guilt this abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's really important that the response somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, adding: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to tackle this alone, not just support services, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when photographs of her in a state of undress were circulated within her town. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her youth that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It took so long, too long for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of this crime 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 non-consensually and I think that should always be where the blame is," she affirmed.