Domestic Abuse Act criticized for failing to recognize tech-facilitated abuse

The Domestic Abuse Act fails to fully recognise the danger of technology-facilitated abuse, such as location tracking or hidden stalkerware, a Lords select committee has heard.

Tech abuse has become “increasingly prevalent” and “very commonplace now within a domestic abuse context”, said Jen Reed, the head of policy at University College London’s Gender and Tech Research Lab, during an evidence session.

Technology-facilitated abuse, or tech abuse, is the use of digital devices and platforms to harass, stalk, monitor, control and abuse an individual.

Reed called for the inclusion of tech abuse in the statutory definition of domestic abuse. She said: “Tech abuse is just as devastating as physical abuse. The effects that we see on individuals, I cannot overstate enough how horrendous some of the cases are that we see.

“We see stalkerware and spyware installed on people’s phones. We see a lot of [Apple] AirTags and tracking devices being sewn into children’s belongings or clothes during visitation orders, so that the child can be tracked back to their refuge.

“We’ve seen smart fridges used to stop people from being able to eat or to access food while they’re at home. We’ve seen smart speakers – when a perpetrator has gone to work – accessed remotely to blast a wedding song or something else triggering through every speaker in the home.”

The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 created a statutory definition of domestic abuse that encompassed physical or sexual abuse, violent or threatening behaviour, coercive and controlling behaviour, economic abuse, and psychological or emotional abuse. While tech abuse is not mentioned, cases would typically fall under the category of coercive and controlling behaviour – although there is room for cases to fall between the cracks.

The cybersecurity company Kaspersky released a report into tech abuse on Tuesday, which found 45% of its respondents globally had experienced tech abuse in the past 12 months.

Tech abuse was explicitly included in the statutory guidance for the act in July 2022. However, Reed told the committee the lack of reference to tech abuse now meant it was “often treated as a peripheral or siloed issue”.

While tech was “massively used for coercive control”, Reed said, this form of abuse was still “being treated at the moment as an online safety issue, because it’s not within that main definition. And that’s what’s influencing how frontline services interpret this and whether they see it as core and central to domestic abuse”.

Reed told the committee tech abuse has become increasingly normalised, particularly for young people. “We’ve got parents who increasingly [monitor] the location of their children for safety. And then you go into your first intimate partner relationship and you think it’s completely normal to be tracked.”

A UK-wide poll by Refuge in March found that young people were less likely to spot the signs of abuse than other age groups. However, a study by the Youth Endowment Fund found 19% of the teenagers surveyed said their partners had tracked their phone, and 14% for their location.

Reed said: “I think one of the downfalls [of the act] is that we didn’t necessarily recognise how much tech would actually change intimate relationships and particularly young people have suffered from that. There is an increase in the normalisation of these kinds of behaviours. People are thinking it’s normal to track your partner’s location, to have the passwords to their phone, to have this complete lack of digital divide.

“But when that becomes quite extreme, and you have got an abusive relationship, that’s obviously quite dangerous.”