136 Times
And what we can understand about digital evidence in domestic violence cases
Recently, we were asked to participate in a documentary, and I’ve been thinking about the conversation we had with the filmmaker.
The case at the centre of the documentary is a woman who shot and killed her abuser. We did a post-conviction analysis of the minimal digital evidence that was collected during the initial investigation. In that, there were records of phone calls and messages sent through virtual phone number services like TextNow, which allow a person to get around a block if the receiver has blocked their primary phone number.
The filmmaker asked me something along the lines of, “Do you believe that the general public, even judges, have a sense of the technology being used in cases of domestic violence?”
I don’t have a copy of what was said, so I’ll paraphrase myself here. In essence:
Yes, I do believe they have a sense.
Most people understand that someone can create a new email address after being blocked. They understand fake social media accounts, burner phone numbers and messaging apps.
What I don’t think people understand is scale.
We can all imagine that clicking block has different implications depending on the circumstance. If you’re on Bluesky or Instagram and you get into a back-and-forth with an argumentative stranger you then block, that’s pretty simple, over and done with. This person doesn’t know you; they don’t have multiple channels to go through, and it wouldn’t be worth the average person’s time to try.
Now, moving to block someone you know, someone you have a relationship with in any sense, is a lot less simple.
If you pulled out your phone right now and blocked your partner or your best friend, or your parent or sibling, someone you have consistent contact with, you’ve put an orange pylon in the passing lane of a three-lane highway.
You’ve restricted the quickest route.
You haven’t removed access.
They know where you live. They know where you work. They still have your email address. They know your social media accounts. They may know your friends, your family, your routines, your favourite coffee shop, and the places you’re most likely to be on a Friday night. They may have your Venmo, your LinkedIn, your old phone number, and a dozen mutual connections.
While blocking can be an important boundary, we have to be realistic about what it actually accomplishes, and it can’t erase a lived relationship. It doesn’t erase knowledge or proximity.
The archetypal “healthy” person understands the point of a block and, if on the receiving end, accepts it and the interaction ends. The problem arises when the person on the other side has no interest in respecting it, and very likely knew this would come at some point and is prepared to work around it.
So, the question isn’t, “Did you remove this person’s ability to contact you?”
It’s “How many alternatives did this person find when they decided they wanted to?”
And for people who share a history, particularly one marked by violence and the consistent violation of personal boundaries, the answer is often far more than most of us realize.
As a fairly normal function of communication, we tend to compress details, especially when we’re trying to summarize someone’s behaviour.
“She blocked him, but he kept contacting her.”
That’s a true statement, but it could describe one message or ten messages. Five hundred messages. It can describe a single desperate lapse in judgment or a sustained campaign of harassment.
What does it actually mean when someone “continued contacting” another person?
A single text sent six months later? Or 136 contact attempts from 43 phone numbers, 11 email addresses, 7 social media accounts, and 5 messaging platforms over the course of six months? Does it mean waking up every morning to discover that another account has appeared overnight?
The technology itself isn’t particularly sophisticated, so there’s a tendency to believe it also isn’t particularly affecting. There is no one sitting in a dark room trying to hack into your laptop, or a GPS tracker installed in a car, or some spyware on your phone.
But it is relentless persistence all the same.
A blocked number becomes a TextNow number. That number gets blocked and becomes an email. The email becomes a Facebook account. The Facebook account becomes a message request through Instagram. The Instagram account disappears and is replaced by a new one. Then a mutual friend receives a message. Then another. Then a coworker. Then flowers arrive at work. Then a cash transfer with a note attached. Then a comment on a years-old social media post.
Collectively, this is the exhausting minutiae of coercive control.
Singular events can hardly capture the reality of the experience. The impact lies in the accumulation and in the knowledge that every time one avenue closes, another may open. That no matter what boundaries you put in place, there is very little you can do to stop a motivated abuser.
Outside the courtroom, outside spaces where sharing information with fellow practitioners becomes a benefit to all, there are moments where a broader conversation about digital evidence in these cases starts to lose a real sense of meaning.
Do I think the general public understands what Cellebrite extraction is, how a warrant is drafted for cloud-stored data, or why we send preservation requests? No. I also don’t think they have to.
I don’t know how to operate a forklift or engineer chemicals for biofuels, but I hope that if one day I’m sitting in a courtroom, on a jury, and that information becomes relevant, they’ll explain it to me. Until then, not really my business.
I don’t think it’s nearly as important to understand how the technology works as it is to understand how and why victims and offenders use it the way they do.
“Did you block them?” is a question often laced with assumption, an assumption that clearly communicates the person asking believes that the situation could’ve been easily controlled or mitigated.
Again, reality is rarely that simple.
Victims don’t always maintain blocks.
Sometimes they’re frightened of what will happen if they don’t respond; sometimes they’re trying to gather evidence; sometimes they’re exhausted. Sometimes they’re trying to co-parent. Sometimes they’re trying to negotiate the return of property, access to children, housing arrangements, finances, pets, or any number of practical realities that don’t disappear because a relationship has become abusive.
And sometimes they unblock because this was, and perhaps still is, a meaningful relationship to them.
That can be difficult to understand. Particularly when viewed through the clean, clinical language of a police report or court filing. But abuse does not erase attachment. People do not stop loving someone simply because that person has harmed them.
People do not stop hoping. They do not stop remembering the good parts. They do not stop believing that perhaps this time the apology is sincere, or that perhaps this conversation will finally provide closure, or that perhaps the person they believed they once knew is still in there somewhere.
Victim behaviour or survival strategies can look irrational when you remove them from the greater context. From the perspective of trauma, attachment, and very ordinary human behaviour, it is entirely unsurprising. In fact, it would be strange if years of emotional connection could be severed as cleanly as a phone call.
The existence of contact does not tell us much on its own. A victim answering the phone does not mean they welcomed the call. Responding to a message does not mean the contact was desired. Unblocking someone does not mean the fear has disappeared, and continued communication does not magically transform an abuser into a healthy partner.
These relationships are often messy, contradictory, and difficult to explain because people are messy, contradictory, and difficult to explain.
What strikes me most when reviewing these cases is how often victims are expected to have made perfect decisions under the exact conditions that would prevent them from doing so.
And that is what I wish people could bring themselves to understand.