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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your typical tech founder. After repeated instances of clients leaking her intimate photographs, she was "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to technology for answers.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the way that they were weaponized by someone who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Just over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to track perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This represents a significant shift from her previous career in providing BDSM services, dominating clients in the world of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with perpetrators facing up to two years in prison.

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

Madelaine, 37, said survivors endured shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I demand respect, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she continued. "The fact that those images could be then shared where I live or with people I love and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's someone being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is empowered and strong, offering my body as a gift to someone of my own volition," she said.

"Some believe it's unusual but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an financial advisor giving advice," she added.

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I know that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it took someone who has been through it to understand the loopholes and the changes that needed to happen," she stated.

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

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social networks and online sites.

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

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

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the platform you used has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

Currently, one service has implemented her tech and she's in discussions with many others.

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology already exists in the film industry, it already exists 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 company that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

She said she hoped the technology would also act as a deterrent to potential intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a support service said she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or service who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's crucial that the support somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing tech facilitated abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, not just support services, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when photographs of her in a state of undress were shared around her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her teens and 20s that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It required years, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the victims to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an photo to someone," said Jess.

"However, it is illegal to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the responsibility is," she concluded.