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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your average startup entrepreneur. After repeated instances of individuals leaking her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and looked to technology for a solution.

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

Little over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to identify abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review recently.

This marks quite a departure from her previous career in providing consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the realms of BDSM.

A Widespread Issue

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

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A study suggests that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by this form of abuse each year.

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

"I demand dignity, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," 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 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, 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 confident and powerful, giving my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she described.

"People think it's strange but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an accountant providing a service," she added.

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I know that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it took someone who has been through it to know the loopholes and the modifications that were necessary," she stated.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after many sleepless nights, investigation 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 social connection apps, social networks and online sites.

When an image is accessed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is specific to that viewer.

This covert marker is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being edited and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the platform you posted it on has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology already exists in Hollywood, it is employed in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a new system," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a firm that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

She said she believed the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a support service said she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame intimate image abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's really important that the support somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She noted it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, adding: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards tackling technology-enabled 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 photographs of her in a state of undress were shared around her town. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her youth that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the victims to the offenders. "There is no offence to willingly share an photo to someone," stated Jess.

"However, it is illegal to distribute that without consent and I think that should invariably be where the responsibility is," she concluded.