TRANSCRIPT
Lauren is a volunteer for an Australian charity that’s very close to her heart. The service gives free phones to victims of domestic and family violence.
And the 45-year-old divorcee knows exactly how important a ‘secret’ phone can be.
“I just felt quite trapped in that relationship. So, having an extra phone that he didn't know about would've made a big difference. Feeling like I could contact people without his knowledge.”
For 15 years the Sunshine Coast mother-of-two experienced escalating abuse at the hands of her ex-husband - including surveillance and threats.
“I was on such high alert. I was living in this state of constant panic and fear. I was very concerned of what lengths, what may happen to me if I was to end it.”
Lauren did not report the abuse because there was no physical violence.
“At the time I didn't know there was even services out there for people like me. I thought that domestic violence was all physical.”
Lauren was experiencing coercive control which is defined as a pattern of physical or non-physical abuse that’s used to hurt, scare, intimidate, threaten or control someone.
Mobile phones are often weaponised as part of the abuse.
“I thought he was being a nice guy when he bought me a new phone and set it all up for me, thought he was being a nice partner. But then later found, he was reading my messages. He did the same with emails.”
That’s called Technology Facilitated Abuse or TFA and it’s a growing area of concern for domestic and family violence services, as well as police.
Acting Inspector Jonathan McBride works with the Sunshine Coast District Domestic, Family Violence and Vulnerable Persons Unit.
“There are many apps out there that are able to be tracked and can be used by perpetrators to track people. They can also be used to abuse their victims. It's easy to send a message out to 20 family members and friends and say about how horrible someone is, even though there's not necessarily any truth to it, but it's a real means of control.”
It’s one reason Lauren volunteers with the Queensland-based charity, DV Safe Phone.
It provides digital freedom for victim-survivors – with the gift of a repurposed phone.
“Often the phone is the first thing broken or taken from a victim of domestic violence. And to have that second phone there to be able to contact services to be able to, worst case scenario, ring emergency services if that's needed.”
Since it started several years ago, DV Safe Phone has provided nearly 9,000 free phones to domestic violence agencies across the country. Founder and CEO Ashton Wood explains.
“We've received over 25,000 phones from generous individuals and companies all through Australia. All those phones come in here, we test them, make sure they work, do the repairs where possible and give the working ones to victims of domestic violence. And the ones that don't work, we recycle. We buy brand new charger cables for every phone and we provide sim cards where required that have a inbuilt credit in them.”
Acting Inspector McBride says a second phone can be a lifeline for isolated victims.
“It can save lives. Just having access to a phone, it sounds so simple and it's like, why wasn't this around before? Phones are very, very expensive and especially in a coercive control situation where all the finances may be controlled by the perpetrator, it's not so easy just to go out to a shop and buy a new phone.”
Even so, a ‘safe’ phone needs to be well hidden, to ensure it isn’t also weaponised!
“It's not necessarily that safe to have a phone hiding away in a drawer. It can sometimes easily be discovered. And you can obviously put apps on that the user isn't even aware of. So once that's compromised, it's no longer a safe phone. So it’s important to keep that away from a perpetrator.”
For now, the NSW coercive control laws apply to intimate partnerships. Research shows controlling a partner can be a prelude to other, more sinister behaviours.
Karen Bevan is CEO of FullStop Australia, a leading sexual, domestic and family violence response and recovery service.
“In most domestic violence homicides over the last five years, coercion and control has been an element of the behaviour and the relationship dynamics leading up to the homicide. So this is a really important piece of legislation that aligns what we know about how the escalation of domestic violence might occur and what we do in our legal response.”
The Crime Commission says surveillance devices like GPS trackers that can attach to a car, mobile phone spyware and bluetooth tracking devices are increasingly part of the domestic abuse pattern.
Ms Bevan explains:
“We are seeing definitely the scale of technology facilitated abuse is really growing all the time and the opportunities to use different types of technology as technology advances. What really concerns us too is the way that abusers often recruit their children into this. So we've all heard stories of tracking devices being placed in teddy bears which enables abusers to even track mum and the kids, for example, in a women's refuge. So, it is really serious and it is growing.”
The new laws are too late for Lauren.
But with one woman killed every four days this year, she welcomes steps to criminalise coercive control, starting this month in NSW and in Queensland from next year.
“I absolutely support these laws. It definitely would've helped me. But we also need to have widespread education about it so that we can stop seeing the rates that we are seeing of women dying.”
