VANCOUVER — A phone, a smart home, a digitally connected car — these are the tools of digital domestic abuse that anti-violence experts say is on the rise.
VANCOUVER — A phone, a smart home, a digitally connected car — these are the tools of digital domestic abuse that anti-violence experts say is on the rise.
“Methods that are sort of presented as advances in technology, whether it’s a smart home or a smart car, are just another method of surveillance that can be used to harass survivors in a variety of different ways,”said Amy FitzGerald, executive director at the BC Society of Transition Houses.
“Oftentimes, whatever gets reported might sound a little far fetched, but it turns out to be true.”
Intimate partner violence in Canada has been referred to as a “shadow pandemic,” intensifying during COVID-19 as lockdowns limited victims’ ability to leave abusive partners.
A Statistics Canada report, released on Oct. 19, shows police-reported family violence increased for the fifth consecutive year in 2021, with a total of 127,082 victims. This amounts to a rate of 336 victims per 100,000 people. On average, every six days a woman is killed by an intimate partner, the agency said.
Rhiannon Wong, technology safety project manager at Women’s Shelters Canada, warns that digital forms of intimate partner violence also began increasing in 2020, as technology became more integrated into everyday life amid the physical isolation of the pandemic.
“Perpetrators are using technology as another tool for their old behaviours of power and control, abuse and violence,” she said.
Abusers can track their partners in real-time, post harmful content online with little chance of removal, or impersonate, harass or threaten partners through a variety of technologies, she said.
While “it can be very powerful evidence in court,” Wong said technology is most often used as a “continuation of violence,” ensuring the abuser’s omnipresence and making it difficult for victims to escape, even when they aren’t physically present.
Retired Victoria police sergeant Darren Laur is the chief training officer at White Hatter, an internet safety and digital literacy education company.
He says the company helped a woman whose former partner would remotely take control of her smart home.
“During the summer, he would turn the heat up, during the winter, (he) would turn the air conditioning on. He was able to turn power on open doors, open windows, all remotely because the home was a smart home.”
Laur also warned about abusers tracking the location of a victim’s vehicle using a cellphone app.
“Now your abuser knows exactly where you’re going or where you’re at, so if you’ve gone to a transition house, they now know exactly where you’re located.”
In August 2021, the BC Society of Transition Houses surveyed anti-violence programs across the province. Out of 137 respondents, 89 per cent said women they worked with had disclosed some form of technology-facilitated abuse.
“Harassment has been ranked the most popular form of tech-related violence that increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the newly released report said.
Angela Marie MacDougall, executive director of Battered Women Support Services, said “technology is baked into each and every” case the organization sees, but policy and laws have not kept up with digital advancements.
“If we understand that reporting to the police is very challenging, and already there’s huge limitations in terms of how effective the police can be, when we add the issue around technology, it’s even harder,” she said. </…….