‘There has been less of a buffer’: discussing intimate partner violence during the pandemic
Berkman Klein Center event explores how technology factors into pandemic response
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended myriad aspects of everyday life, from education to the economy to interpersonal relationships. For victims and survivors of intimate partner violence, the many struggles of escaping or finding support are particularly exacerbated by the pandemic. An event hosted by the Berkman Klein Center explored how technology factors into this problem — how it can help, and how it can harm.
Moderated by Roslyn Satchel, a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center and the Blanche Seaver Professor of Communication at Pepperdine, the event convened an interdisciplinary group of scholars to discuss various issues surrounding intimate partner violence, particularly for marginalized women, during the pandemic. The discussion covered fostering safe spaces online, access to resources, and navigating the legal system during the pandemic.
Thema Bryant-Davis, an associate professor of psychology at Pepperdine University, and director of the Culture and Trauma Research Lab, spoke about coping with trauma and supporting victims and survivors.
“The reality is that COVID-19 has also increased the risk of intimate partner violence when we see the large number of people who are practicing physical distancing and social distancing. There has been less of a buffer, less of an opportunity to come outside of the home and to seek services. And so we are mindful of the urgency of this work, as well as the additional barriers that make help-seeking difficult,” Bryant-Davis said.
“Part of what we are mindful of in the midst of COVID is the need for technology to be utilized in order to reach survivors and in order to protect survivors and help us to heal and restore,” Bryant-Davis said. “Many clinicians like me are currently practicing telehealth solely, so working with people in their healing journey by phone and by Internet which has benefits and challenges.” She pointed to easier access to resources not requiring travel, but also the dangers of sharing spaces with abusers.
Tanya Asim Cooper, associate clinical professor of law and director of the Restoration and Justice Clinic, shared her experience working with victims of intimate partner victims from a legal perspective and illustrated her work through a case study.
“Studies show racial disparities in domestic violence for victims of color, predominantly women and they are in the greatest danger,” she said. “From my experience and based on my research, victims of color generally are perceived as less credible victims, suffer more serious violence, and require more concrete evidence of abuse, especially physical violence. They need photographs, they need not just medical records, they need medical professional live testimony.”
These demands are hard for people to meet — especially during the pandemic, with courts closing and forcing victims to wait. Cooper described how her clinic transferred their work online, but how she worries about people lacking technological skills or access to the internet.
“If law enforcement and courts can’t or won’t assist, especially during the pandemic, let’s equip faith communities and other online communities where marginalized women go, and let’s equip them to help,” she said.
Several event participants mentioned the idea of fostering online communities and safe digital spaces during the event. Kendra Albert, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, prompted the panel to question some of the values embedded in technologies and online tools and how those can be challenged in the intimate partner violence context.
As examples, Albert cited how phone companies may provide data about recently contacted phone numbers because “insiders are assumed to be safe.” Albert also pointed to Facebook’s “People You May Know” feature as a tool that has been shown to suggest mutual friends but that may expose degrees of connection that should remain private, such as therapist relationships “It’s just one example of these technologies that are often built on the assumption that more connection is better, that Facebook wants to connect to all of us or thinking about sharing as a net good, while not considering the very real reasons that people’s sharing or engagement with these platforms might be deeply contextual and they may have concerns about this information getting shared more broadly,” Albert said.
Although these contexts and situations are often not considered when developing such technology or their values, marginalized people are able to adapt the technologies to their circumstances, circumventing the intended uses and norms, Albert added.
“The reality is marginalized folks have been using, thriving, and changing technologies that were built without them in mind forever, for as long as we’ve had technologies,” they said. “And that we can think of examples of marginalized folks innovating and actually driving these technologies forward as the things that create change and in some cases, create money for these platforms. So I think while still keeping in mind that domestic violence victims and survivors, especially domestic violence victims and survivors that are women of color, Black and brown women could be much better served by these platforms and that their needs for contextual controls and control over one’s information.”
Towards the end of the conversation, Satchel drew connections between the speakers; she highlighted the theme of safety and security and acknowledged that the event is continuing an important conversation about centering the experiences of marginalized people and the value of cross-disciplinary discourse.
“This question of safety and security is really animating the very core of this discussion. And as a communication ethicist, as a person who actually studies communication in a variety of contexts, I really value interdisciplinarity. Why? Because it allows for conversations like this to happen,” she said. “The beauty is that we’re coming back to a common core, marginalized women. Women who are marginalized by race, socioeconomic status, ability, gender, sexual orientation, language, ethnicity, immigration status, and many more caste markers have very unique experiences, unique experiences that may very well cause them to call for different solutions and different options for justice.”
A podcast version of the event is available here. For more BKC events, visit our website and sign up for our events newsletter.
