DOMESTIC violence perpetrators are using technology to fake permission from ex-partners to manipulate court orders in moves that prove difficult to evidence according to frontline service providers.
Perpetrators have taken the mobile phones off their victims and sent text messages or hacked into emails to send directions that purport to be permission from a woman to provide access to children or themselves under conditions on a domestic violence order.
It’s another step in the technology war confronting domestic violence service providers as they seek to help distressed partners lead safer lives.
Centacare Maroochydore Family and Relationship Services have noted the use of technology as a domestic violence tool is continuing in ways including:
- Perpetrators trying to track partners’ movements through mobile phones or apps
- Downloading of sensitive video footage that perpetrators threaten to distribute unless they achieve certain outcomes
- Hacking into emails and social media accounts for monitoring purposes
- Manipulating text messages/emails to feign consent
Centacare Maroochydore Family and Relationship Services Coordinator Stacy Oehlman said technology could be used as a form of coercive control.
A State Government-appointed taskforce is currently looking at legislation to make coercive control a crime following a pre-election promise by Labor last October.
“We regularly see technology used in a way that involves perpetrators trying to gain control over women, and at times using children as a form of manipulation” Ms Oehlman said.
“It can happen in many different ways, including monitoring on social media, locating her through geo-tagging on Facebook, or threats of sharing explicit photos and videos.
“These types of threats and acts can force women to make a decision that they otherwise wouldn’t make if that pressure wasn’t there.
“In some cases where Orders for protection limit contact without an agreement in writing, perpetrators use their ex-partner’s mobile phone to send a message giving permission for her ex-partner to be with their children, to have contact with her, or to come to her home. It can be so difficult for the woman to prove that it wasn’t her sending the message”.
Frontline services are seeing the use of technology continuing to be a factor in domestic violence, particularly when there is coercive control present.
Family and friends of Hannah Clarke, who was murdered along with her three children in a devastating act of domestic violence in Brisbane last year, have been among those supporting measures to criminalise coercive control.
Various reviews by national and state bodies over the last decade have not recommended the introduction of coercive control legislation, citing concerns including a difficulty to prosecute.
However, other parts of the world are adopting legislation including in parts of Britain in which approaches have differed.
