Coronavirus prompts women stuck in abusive homes to seek ‘safe phones’

As coronavirus pushes families indoors, experts are noting a rise in domestic violence from China to Italy. Not only are tensions high—often related to a loss of work or free movement—but women are also cut off from their usual support systems, such as access to friends who can provide refuge. Now, in Australia, a government-supported initiative that provides “safe phones” to women stuck in violent homes is seeing a serious uptick in requests that can be attributed to the virus, the Thomson Reuters Foundation reported Wednesday.

The phones offer a lifeline to women whose abusive partners surveille their communications or forbid them to use phones or the Internet. One in six women is a victim of domestic violence in Australia, according to government figures. Requests for the safe phones have recently doubled in some areas, Reuters said.

“They are asking us to send more phones than usual,” said Karen Bentley, the national director at Australia’s Women Services Network, which organizes the effort. The network works with nearly 300 support groups and has given out more than 21,000 phones since 2015. Reuters reported that it is now handing out about 600 units a month.

“It’s common for abusers to control, smash or monitor their [partner's] phone.” Bentley told Reuters, “Getting women their own phone can be really helpful.”

In the U.S., where one in three women has experienced violence at the hands of an intimate partner, many are now stuck at home with their abuser, deprived of the break that work, school, or other activities would normally provide.

“Women who live with an abusive partner may be even more vulnerable to experiencing violence since there will be more opportunity for violence to occur,” Jhumka Gupta, a professor at the College of Health and Human Services at George Mason University, wrote for WMC on March 19. “Isolating a woman from friends and family is a key tactic used by violent partners.”

Katie Ray-Jones, chief executive of the U.S. National Domestic Violence Hotline, told The New York Times that she expects to see “the intensity and frequency of abuse escalate, even if the number of individual cases doesn’t.” The Times story, co-authored by WMC contributor Aviva Stahl, reported that this a pattern “experts witnessed during the economic downturn of 2008 and immediately after 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, and Hurricane Katrina.”