From online stalking to spy cameras, abuse of women via technology is soaring – with devastating consequences. Anna Moore is an investigator
Surviving Economic Abuse released the Cost of Covid-19 report. It found that victims of online abuse are particularly vulnerable.
As far as Amy Aldworth was concerned, the date had been a success. She’d matched with a man on an app who was charming and chatty. He worked in a bank and seemed, says Amy, ‘nice and really normal’. They got on well, there was chemistry and one thing led to another…
It was the summer 2020 season, and we were all out of lockdown looking for connections and fun. Amy and her match started to exchange messages, and she asked him about Amy’s sexual health. What was the last time she had been tested for STDs. ‘I tried to reassure him that it was in the past six months and everything had been negative,’ says Amy who is 26 and works in a London pharmacy. However, his concerns quickly escalated and he was unable to pinpoint a trigger.
‘It went from a normal conversation you might have with someone you’ve slept with to him having HIV symptoms – he said he was in bed with fever and joint pain – and telling me it was my fault.’
Within days, the abusive messages were pouring in by text and WhatsApp, saying things such as, ‘What disease do you have? Tell me the f***ing truth,’ and Amy received 17 calls to her phone in three hours. He also called her work multiple times.
Abusers even plant devices in kids’ toys to listen in on ex-partners
There was no trigger for this escalation – no tension or exchange about seeing each other, no rejection. ‘It was petrifying,’ says Amy. ‘I thought maybe he had HIV and was trying to blame me.’
Amy decided to have a complete sexual health screening. He was satisfied and she sent the results. ‘I thought it might make him back off but it didn’t – it made it ten times worse,’ she says. The man accused her now of lying and said she sent someone to her to get tested for HIV.
Amy switched her phone number but he instead found her social media accounts. Every time she unblocked him on Instagram and Facebook, he would receive more messages. He began to message her friends and even contacted her mother to tell her she should be disgusted with her daughter, asking how could she ‘bring someone up to act like this’. ‘He knew where
I knew where I worked, but he lived near me. I was scared to go anywhere on my own in case he appeared,’ says Amy. ‘Everywhere I went, I wondered if he’d be round the corner. My anxiety was so bad, I was having panic attacks where I couldn’t catch my breath. It was causing me to miss a lot at work. To be with my mom, I went to London. It was always in my mind – it’s all-consuming.’
Amy consulted her GP to be prescribed an anxiety medication. She was then referred to Refuge domestic abuse charity, which has the UK’s sole specialist team for tech abuse. Refuge realized that abusers were increasingly using technology to their advantage and started this service in 2017. De facto, 98% of Refuge women had experienced tech abuse during their case.
Ruth Davison, Refuge CEO, said that the scope of this issue is staggering. ‘Technology is part of every aspect of life so abuse can take many different forms,’ she says. ‘At one end there’s stalking online, bombarding victims with unwanted messages and harassing them on social media. At its most dangerous end, there’s installing malicious spyware to track someone’s movements, to intercept them, harm them – even kill them. On top of that are the more insidious, unexpected aspects,’ she continues. ‘Mimicking someone’s account and sending out messages pretending to be that person to sabotage their work, their friends, to isolate them.
According to research by Refuge, complex tech abuse cases – those that involve high-level stalking, spyware, tracking devices and images being circulated on numerous platforms – rose by 97 per cent in the first year of lockdown (from April 2020 to May 2021), and they’re still growing.
‘It sounds dystopian but we’ve known perpetrators to use technology to control someone’s heating from outside the house so they can’t be warm. Their homes wired to receive listening devices or placed in the toys of their children. The scale is huge.’
This has been made worse by the epidemic and the increased reliance on technology. ‘Within days of lockdown, we saw a huge increase in tech abuse,’ says Sarah Davidge, research and evaluation manager at Women’s Aid. ‘With the shift to working from home, people were contacting us because abusive partners were changing the wifi passwords or destroying laptops so they couldn’t work.’
Surviving Economic Abuse released the Cost of Covid-19 report. It found that online living makes victims especially vulnerable. The shift from cash to card payments made it possible for abusers to monitor and track someone’s spending – or work out where they were. When banks were shut in lockdown and went entirely online, it became easier to take out loans or create debt in a partner’s name. According to research by Refuge, complex tech abuse cases – those that involve high-level stalking, spyware, tracking devices and images being circulated on numerous platforms – rose by 97 per cent in the first year of lockdown (from April 2020 to May 2021), and they’re still growing.
‘Technology doesn’t create abusers,’ says Davison, ‘but it has given them more tools.’ Gemma*, 45, is all too aware of the scope of harassment that tech makes possible. Her husband, of eight years, was not violent but he shouted and smashed objects, and would throw his weight around when his temper got out of control. Gemma was controlled mostly by his other means. His constant criticizing and mockery destroyed Gemma’s confidence. By accusing her of making passes at them, he froze her friends.
Gemma was a gifted artist but her husband made it difficult for her to do any work. When she sketched during the day, he said she was neglecting her children. He told her that she had been neglecting their marriage by drawing in the evening. He gaslit her – hiding her bank cards and her jewellery so she began to question her sanity. He also installed spyware on a laptop that was left unattended in the bedroom.
It was in the bedroom that Gemma confided on the phone to her one trusted friend about her plans to leave – she had been secretly moving belongings to the garage over a period of three months so she could pack a van at a moment’s notice. Her husband, however, was there watching and she was crying. He promised to make things right.
Gemma eventually moved out to start rebuilding her life. However, her ex kept using technology to harass and destroy her. ‘He gave our son an iPhone, which seemed ridiculous as he was only six, and put all these wonderful apps on it that my son wanted to play,’ she says.
My ex was able to feel a lot of control and power through technology
Her ex appeared everywhere she went from that moment on. Lunch at a restaurant. Ice skating in a neighbouring city. Christmas shopping at the centre of town. ‘I didn’t know how or why it was happening. He’d say something like, “Fancy seeing you here.” I was jittery all the time, constantly on edge,’ says Gemma. ‘Sometimes we’d get back to our car in a multistorey car park and my ex’s black Mercedes would be parked right next to it.’
After several months, Gemma realised her son’s phone was linked to her ex’s account and set to notify him when it left the home location, complete with a tracking device. ‘I had to persuade my son to leave the phone at home whenever we went anywhere.’
When it came to launching her career as an artist – which Gemma has now done, very successfully – she found that her ex had bought all combinations of her name so she couldn’t use it as a domain. ‘Apparently, it’s called cybersquatting,’ says Gemma. ‘For him, technology gave him a massive sense of power and control.’
How can we even start to address this problem? ‘There’s a lot we can do ourselves,’ says Davison. ‘Empowering women and giving them the tools – simple stuff on how to recognise when someone could be tracking them, for example, and how to secure their network. But, ultimately, we need legislative change,’ she continues. ‘It shouldn’t be up to organisations such as Refuge or women themselves to manage this issue. We need products and platforms to be safe by design from the very outset – and we need regulation that compels the tech giants to support complaints from women about tech abuse, to liaise with the police and to take preventative action themselves.’
Davison offers one example of the flawed system. ‘Women often call our tech abuse team because we have “trusted flagger status” which means we can go to a social media platform and say, “You must take this content down, it’s abusive”. First of all, why on earth can’t women do this themselves? Second, sometimes we’re unable to have it removed because the abuse is insidious. A picture of your front door when you’ve escaped your abuser and started a new life is a threat, a message; it’s utterly terrifying – but to tech platforms, it doesn’t breach any community standards. The best thing we can do is have the post removed, even if it is clearly offensive. This abuser should not be silenced. The account isn’t suspended. The next day, the post can be put back up and the cycle continues.’
The Online Safety Bill, currently at draft stage, is expected to be debated in parliament early this year – the next stage towards becoming law. This may be an opportunity to make tech companies accountable for their use of platforms and products. At present, the bill mentions child exploitation and terrorism, but there aren’t any specific recommendations for the issues of violence against women and girls.
The Online Safety Bill, currently at draft stage, is expected to be debated in parliament early this year – the next stage towards becoming law. This is a great opportunity for tech companies to take responsibility for the use of their platforms and products.
‘That’s our big, top-line ask,’ says Davison. ‘It’s great that we have all these new tools, these brilliant innovations, but we need to think about how they can be used if someone wants to harm you. Tech giants have not kept up with that.’ Refuge is also calling for more training for the police, and sufficient funding to enable it to tackle this growing issue.
In Amy’s case, the police were initially unhelpful. ‘When I first called them, I was really upset, I couldn’t stop crying and an officer came to my house, took a statement and asked me to forward all the messages,’ she says. ‘But after a couple of weeks, I was told there was not enough evidence to take further action.’ In the end, the Refuge Tech Team helped her manage the harassment. ‘They were amazing,’ she says. ‘An advocate helped me secure my phone, I went through all the settings on my social media. My Facebook profile was already on “Friend Request” but there are other settings with higher security. My advocate called every week to check if I’d received more messages and what accounts they were coming from.’
Amy and her mother made complaints to the Independent Office for Police Conduct. It wasn’t until Amy reported her concerns that Amy’s case would be reopened. Amy kept reporting every message she received from her mother or friends. Finally, the perpetrator was arrested four months after the abuse started.
He was presented with 90 pieces photographic evidence and had to plead guilty. He hasn’t contacted Amy since his arrest. ‘I still don’t understand why he did it or what his reason was,’ she says. ‘We met on a dating app – I wonder how many people he has done this to? Is he still on the app meeting new people?’
The whole experience was a success. I have taken strong anxiety medication, and six weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy. ‘It has completely changed how I look at things,’ Amy says. ‘I’m not confident about using dating apps any more – I just don’t feel they protect women enough, and that scares me. For a while I couldn’t go on my phone and even now, when I get a text from someone I don’t have saved, or a notification from Facebook that I have a message, I get this jolt of, “Oh God, who’s that?” It never goes away.’
She knows she’s lucky. She was able to sue her abuser. He has been removed from her life. ‘In that sense I feel quite lucky,’ says Amy. ‘I got my conviction. Most people don’t.
For free 24-hour help and support contact the Refuge National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247 or access digital support via live chat Monday to Friday from 3pm to 10pm at nationaldahelpline.org.uk. Tech abuse support is available at refugetechsafety.org