eSafety Women - Empowering Women to Take Control Online

This month we attended an event hosted by the Parramatta Region Family Law Interagency which spoke about responding to technology facilitated violence and abuse.

There was a great panel of speakers including Lesley Harrison (Trainer, Office of the Children’s eSafety Commissioner), Wayne Thurlow (NSW Police), Karen Misfud (Senior Solicitor at Women’s Legal Services) and June Brooks (Family Relationships Australia).

While there was a great deal of content presented to us, we have summarized below some of the key points that stood out to us.

Did you know?

One in four Australian women experience emotional abuse from a current or former partner, and one in six Australian women experience violence from a current or former partner[1]. In most cases this abuse and violence includes the use of technology to abuse, control and stalk.[2]

About eSafety Women

Everybody deserves to be safe online.

eSafety Women is an initiative of the Office of the Children’s eSafety Commissioner which forms part of the Australian Government’s Women’s Safety Package to Stop the Violence. It aims to help women manage technology risks and abuse by giving women the tools they need to be confident when online.

The eSafety website is packed full of helpful resources to assist women stay connected safely.

What is online abuse?

Online abuse covers a broad range of behaviours and technologies that people use to control, frighten or humiliate another person.

Abuse can occur through social media, games or other online forums to make:

• abusive, degrading or hateful comments about a person;
• threats of physical or sexual violence to a person; or
• repeated or unwanted sexual requests to a person.

Abusive behaviours may also include, but are not limited to:

• regularly checking on a person through their social media activity such as Facebook.
• hacking into a person’s email or social media account to discover information about them or to impersonate them.
• creating fake social media accounts. For example, creating a Facebook account in another person’s name.
• sharing, or threatening to share, intimate pictures of a person.
• spreading lies or malicious rumours about a person.
• making unwanted contact with a person by calling, emailing, texting, messaging, or sending offensive material.
• monitoring another person’s movements using GPS, tracking apps or spyware.

Proving online abuse

While there are laws that can help with this, without evidence it will be difficult to prove to Police and the Courts that this is happening.

There are many ways you can collect evidence of online abuse and we urge that you only do so if it is safe to.

Here are some tips when collecting evidence:

1. If you can, seek legal advice first. Your lawyer is best person to tell you what evidence is required in your case.

2. Take screen shots of abusive posts, texts or emails. If you don’t know how to do this ask somebody you trust to show you. The eSafety website provides useful videos on how to take screen shots on various devices.

3. Save or copy voice mail messages. You can do this by recording the message on a separate device or a dictaphone. Make sure that your abuser can’t find the device containing the recording.

4. Keep a copy of all emails, letters and faxes sent to you.

5. Save your evidence somewhere the abuser can’t find it. A good idea is to save your evidence on two USBs. You keep one and secretly give the other to a friend. If your abuser finds your USB, you have not lost your evidence.

Need Help?

If you feel as though you are being subject to, or you are at risk of, online abuse please contact us on 9281 5088 for an obligation free chat.

We have the experience and resources to help you get out of this abusive situation.

This information is general in nature and is not intended to be relied upon as legal advice. We suggest that you obtain proper legal advice before acting upon anything you read in this article.

[1]Australian Bureau of Statistics 2012, Personal Safety, cat. no. 4906.0

[2] Women’s Legal Service NSW, Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria and WESNET (2015) ReCharge: women’s technology safety, legal resources, research and training. National study findings 2015.