Nowhere to turn: Abused persons’ experiences with law enforcement and victim services organizations

Abstract

This qualitative study of interviews describes the experiences of 73 people who were abused by their partners via cyberspace and/or technology as they sought help from law enforcement officers (LEOs) and victim services organizations (VSOs). The use of the prior phrasing to describe this study's participants is intentional given these data call into question whether people experiencing cyber intimate partner abuse (cyberIPA) ever leave a state of victimization to survival with the help of community resources. As data in this study shows, people who experienced cyberIPA often reported that they felt they had nowhere and no one to turn to during their help-seeking. To be clear, although there were resources available from LEOs and VSOs, the participants in this study noted that specialized services to address cybervictimizations were absent. Moreover, participants indicated that they often encountered a lack of understanding about how intimate partner abuse manifested in cybercrimes, a lack of understanding about what laws could be utilized to address those harms, and/or how cyberspace and technology could be used to exert power and control within an abusive relationship broadly.