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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is far from your standard tech founder. After multiple occurrences of clients leaking her intimate photographs, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to technology for a solution.

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

Little over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to track abusers, has won several awards and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This represents a significant shift from her previous career in offering consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the realms of BDSM.

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 adult entertainment sector. A report suggests that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, said survivors lived with shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will say, '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 fail to understand why those are negotiable," she continued. "The fact that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, 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 practicing as a dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and consistently found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am 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 don't see it any differently to a nutritionist or an accountant providing a service," she added.

She embraces being a unique figure 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 required someone who has experienced it firsthand 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 managed to build her company after many sleepless nights, investigation and "consulting experts" who understand tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on 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 seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

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

It means that if you find out your image has been circulated without your consent, providing the service you used has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system already exists in the film industry, it is employed in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a company that has 30 years experience in tech development so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

She expressed hope she hoped the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

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

"If that self-blame is reinforced 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 crucial that the support a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing tech facilitated abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when photographs of her in her underwear 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 say to me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the offenders. "There is no offence to consensually send an image to someone," said Jess.

"But it is a crime to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the blame is," she affirmed.