As technology becomes more advanced, playing a leading role in our lives as never before, so too does the ability of abusers to terrorise their victims through tech abuse. As ever, power, manipulation and control lie at the heart of abusers’ actions, but their tactics are evolving in increasingly complex ways. Products like smartphones, smart doorbells and even smart heating give perpetrators the potential to enact harm remotely, sometimes invisibly. For organisations like Refuge, which provides frontline services for those threatened by gender-based violence, protecting women from tech abuse has become a key concern.
In fact, research shows a 97% increase in tech abuse cases reported to Refuge between April 2020 and May 2021 during the pandemic. In the last five months, this number has jumped again to 118%. A separate report released by Refuge in October found that one in three women have experienced online abuse – the equivalent of 11 million women – while one in six of these women experienced this abuse from a partner or ex-partner, the equivalent of 2million women. Of these survivors, 95% said the abuse had an immeasurable impact on their mental health. 10% said it left them feeling suicidal.
Here, Amy Aldworth, a 26-year-old senior pharmacy assistant living in London, describes how her experience of tech abuse escalated after a seemingly normal first date – and how Refuge’s new tech abuse support service helped give her the confidence to secure a conviction.
My story started in the same way so many women’s bad experiences do nowadays: I matched with a guy on a dating app. We had been talking for a couple of weeks, and decided to meet up in person, so we went to a pub in London for a few drinks. So far, so normal. He was very polite, charming, and well-mannered. Afterwards, we went back to mine. We planned to go on another date in a few weeks, and that was that. There were no weird vibes – nothing to indicate that things would turn out to be quite as terrifying as they did.
Shortly after this, I received a text from him. He told me he was experiencing symptoms of HIV – a virus that damages the cells in your immune system and can be sexually transmitted – and asked me when I had last been tested. I didn’t have any symptoms, and had been given a clean bill of health the last time I was tested. Besides, for anyone who does know about HIV, initial symptoms, which can present like the flu, tend to take between two-to-six weeks to materialise anyway, so it didn’t work within the time frame we had seen each other in.
Instead of backing off, he grew more intense. He would message me several times a day over text and WhatsApp, telling me I was disgusting, that I should be ashamed with myself for spreading diseases to people. I was actually petrified that he was the one with HIV, and had been going around giving it to other women and blaming them. My mind starting racing with fears about my future, what my family would think, whether I would ever be able to have kids, and other nightmarish scenarios.
At the time, we were still in the middle of the pandemic, but I called the sexual health clinic, explained everything, and they got me an appointment within an hour. My tests were negative, and I even went back to have another test to make sure a few months later. I told him this and showed him my results, but he didn’t believe me. Instead, he harassed me even more, accusing me of sending a friend to the clinic in my place, calling me a liar, and demanding I send him a picture of my arm to prove I’d gone through with the blood test. I knew this would just be playing into his hands, so I tried to ignore him, but he didn’t stop. At one point, he called me 17 times in three hours. I changed my phone number, but he continued to message me – sometimes all night – using various different social media accounts after I’d blocked him.