Half of all Australians have been victims of tech abuse, landmark study reveals – ABC News
Lin* doesn’t answer phone calls from unknown numbers. Ever.
It’s been this way ever since a man she briefly dated 10 years ago began inundating her with threats and abuse online and over the phone.
“He was very nice, but he wasn’t my usual type,” said Lin, who had met her abuser via an online dating site.
However, in the three months and seven dates they went on together, she started to notice some red flags.
“He would say that all of his exes were psychopaths,” she said.
“I told him I had no desire to have children. And I couldn’t have biological children. But he was hell-bent on the idea of having kids.”
What happened to Lin next highlights the findings of a key national report — released on Thursday — on a wideranging and complex method of abuse that is much more common than many people think.
Far-reaching effects of tech abuse in Australia
The first-known representative study of its kind — commissioned by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) — has revealed half of all Australian adults have experienced technology-facilitated abuse at some point in their lives.
That extraordinary figure includes a variety of issues and victims: from a man abusing a male colleague online to a stranger stalking someone on social media to an ex monitoring a former partner’s movements via an app.
The research — comprising an initial sample of more than 4,500 Australian adults — also highlights the deep impact that tech abuse can have on minority groups, and women in particular, who are far more likely to experience this at the hands of an intimate partner.
Almost three-quarters of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) Australians, two in every three Indigenous people and three in five people with a disability have been victims.
And women are more likely to not only experience tech-facilitated abuse at the same time as other forms of abuse, but the emotional and psychological scars left by perpetrators were felt deeply and lasted longer.
Asher Flynn — who co-authored the research — said the victims and survivors interviewed were very clear about the ongoing, constant harm and fear they felt as a result.
“Because it’s tech-based, because you’re getting abused on your phone or you’re being stalked, it’s that omnipresence, that feeling like the abuse never ends,” Dr Flynn explained.
“It’s difficult to trust in new relationships, all the patterns we see in physical forms of harm. But it escalates, in a sense, because it’s your entire world.
“It can also be difficult for people to trust devices again. It’s forced isolation. They can’t trust going on social media, or going online.”
ANROWS chief executive Padma Raman said that, while tech abuse is just another mechanism for perpetrators, it throws a spotlight on just how impactful and prevalent it is today.
“It’s a really significant mechanism of control. It can be repeated and we can see that pattern of abuse,” she said.
For Lin, the relentless harassment took her down a long and painful path, during which she felt her control of the physical and online world slipping away.
It started as messages on Facebook, text messages on her phone and then too many phone calls to count.
Lin would wake up, then see the messages. It would be that way for her every day. After about a month, it would be every second day.
Not once did she respond to any of the messages or phone calls.
From a very bad feeling to a waking nightmare
One day her abuser sent a naked photo of her sleeping — which he took without her permission — and he told her he was going to share it online.
The messages then became much darker.
“He told me he wanted to rape me because that was what I deserved. Then he said he was sorry and he loved me, that he didn’t mean any of it,” she said.
The police were empathetic, Lin says, but legally their hands were tied. It was 2012, and there were no laws that adequately covered image-based sexual abuse at the time.
She asked her friends to block him on Facebook and then deleted all of her social media profiles — even on LinkedIn.
“That was probably the hardest thing. I missed out on those [employment and professional] opportunities,” she said.
Still, there was always that gnawing fear. What if he created another profile?
He worked in the IT industry. What was his skill set? Could he find a way back to her?
Tech safety should not be the victim’s responsibility
The report calls for more resources, training and education to shine a light on the serious nature of tech abuse and the responsibility of government and services to protect victims.
The nation’s online safety regulator, E-Safety, wants tech companies to create safer products. Its Safety by Design initiative gives guidance around the risks of misuse.
Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said simply shutting ourselves off from the online world was not the answer to keeping Australians safe.
“As a society, we must adjust our collective mindset and flip our focus — from what victim-survivors can do to stay safe, to what we must do to end abuse and hold perpetrators to account,” Ms Inman Grant said.
“If used safely, technology can provide a vital lifeline that keeps victim/survivors connected to loved ones, support services and employment.
“There’s no doubt that experiences of tech abuse are silencing the voices and opinions of minority groups and women in online spaces.”
Ms Raman agreed.
“That means frontline workers, police and support workers. And we need to make reporting easier. People don’t actually know how to report this abuse,” she added.
For Lin, the far-reaching impact of her perpetrator haunts her to this day.
“There’s always that fear that he’ll find me. It’s the unknown — what would seeing me [in real life] do to him? I don’t know what his reaction would be.”
She hopes her own trauma can help others understand that what is happening to them can be as painful and traumatic as any other abuse or form of violence — and that they, too, deserve to feel safe.