It started with text messages, then he used technology to control my every move

When Ariah first met Tom* at work in London, she was quickly swept off her feet. 

‘He sought out lots of opportunities for us to work together or go to lunch,’ the 32-year-old, who is going by a pseudonym, tells Metro. ‘He said he’d never met anyone like me before – that he had such strong feelings for me.’

Things moved quickly and within a couple of months, the couple had moved in together. Even at this early stage in their relationship, Tom, who was ‘much older’ than Ariah, would send her dozens of text messages every day. 

‘They were always very positive “I love you” and “I want to spend so much time with you” messages,’ she recalls.

But things got ‘quite unhealthy quickly’. When Ariah wanted to see friends, Tom incessantly messaged her asking why she didn’t want to spend time with him. He started telling her he didn’t like when she wore skirts, makeup, tights, and didn’t want her to try to look attractive when she was with other people. 

When he needed money, Ariah took out ‘a large loan for him’ which went on to make it a lot harder to leave the relationship down the line. 

‘There was always this promise that he’d give me the money in a month,’ she says. ‘It was a financial tie.’

Soon, Tom’s lovey dovey messages turned controlling and even more incessant. 

‘It wasn’t uncommon to get 25 phone calls in five minutes,’ Ariah remembers. ‘He would just ring until I picked up. The text messages could be up to hundreds a day.’

Sometimes, his words would be outpourings of love. Other times, they told her off for unmet expectations. When she was out, away from Tom’s watchful eye, the messages were more frequent and the constant barrage of contact wore her down. 

‘I dreaded going for coffee with a friend because I knew how many I would get,’ she says. ‘There were times I was so miserable, depressed and overwhelmed.’ 

Ariah’s story of technology-linked domestic abuse is one that is becoming increasingly common in the UK. 

The domestic abuse charity Refuge defines tech-enabled domestic abuse as including, but not limited to, deepfakes, phone hacking, cyberstalking, controlling online access, breaking communications equipment, online harassment, and misuse of tracking devices.

Between August 2022 and July 2023, there were 48,170 violent domestic abuse cases against women and girls that included an online element, according to the National Police Chiefs’ Council. 

Since Refuge set up a specialist technology-facilitated abuse and economic empowerment service in 2017, cases of tech abuse have grown both in quantity and complexity, with the charity reporting a 207% increase in referrals to the tech team compared to its first year of service. New analysis shows the specialist team saw a 92% increase in referrals in the first six months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2019.

Emma Pickering, Head of Tech and Economic Abuse at Refuge, tells Metro that Covid and advancement of technology in recent years has ‘amplified everything.’

She says people like Ariah, whose abusers use technology to control, feel suffocated. 

‘It completely crushes and isolates them,’ adds Emma. 

Ariah became pregnant while still with Tom and had her baby right before the pandemic hit. During lockdown, she was under his thumb, and although the tech abuse wore off, she was controlled under his watchful eye.  

Near the end of 2020, Ariah had suffered enough. She decided to gather her daughter and basic belongings and leave to live with her dad.

That didn’t matter to Tom. Soon, the huge volumes of missed calls, voice messages, and texts started up again. 

This time, he used his daughter as an excuse to keep constant tabs on Ariah, Facetiming her to see their surroundings, always asking where they were. The messages became increasingly aggressive. 

‘I didn’t realise what impact it was having on me and how stressed and anxious I felt about every interaction with him,’ Ariah remembers. 

When she reported her ex’s behaviour to the police at the end of 2021, Tom started getting in touch from withheld numbers and even used his own parents to contact Ariah. 

‘The cruellest part of this tech abuse is that it doesn’t stop,’ Aria explains. ‘It just moves. It changes from surveillance through your relationship to then using your children, friends, and social media. You’re never free. There is never a day I don’t think about my abuser. I’m just traumatised in every way.’

And it’s still impacting her now. Tom gets supervised care with his daughter via a contact centre, and often gives her a toy take home. 

‘I’m constantly monitoring the gifts for tags,’ adds Airah. ‘He still tries to survey what I’m doing. I’m just looking over my shoulder everywhere I go and it’s been an absolute hell.’

Although she is now receiving safety support from Refuge, Ariah says it could be a long time before she feels truly her safe and admits that if it wasn’t for her daughter, she’s not sure she’d have been able to carry on these last eight years. 

Briony* knows how Ariah feels. She was in a relationship with her ex, Dylan* for seven years, and despite a ‘love bomb’ start, when she got pregnant a year after they began dating, Dylan became very controlling.

‘He said a lot of people looked up to him, and now that I was going to be the mother of his child, I needed to behave in a certain way,’Briony, who is her early 40s, tells Metro.

To start, she wasn’t allowed to have male friends or talk to men. Then Dylan began gaslighting her, making her think she had said or done something she hadn’t. He cut Briony off from her family and friends, wanting all of the attention for himself. He didn’t allow her to use social media, and kept a tight control on what she was doing on her phone. Once, she found a recording device in her child’s room.

‘We were kept under a curfew,’ Briony remembers. ‘And we were only allowed out for three hours at a time. If I wanted to go somewhere, I’d have to check with him first.’

Dylan also threatened to throw acid in Briony’s face, to kill her, to bury her. She would beg him to stop, but he carried on. He told her that if she ever told anyone, their child would be removed from her care.

Midway through their six-year relationship, Briony was having a shower, when she heard a noise. She turned, and Dylan was recording her body on his phone.

‘He was laughing his head off,’ she remembers. ‘I begged him to delete but he point blank refused and was just laughing. You hear about girls making sex tapes that are unfortunately exploited. But I hadn’t even agreed or consented to the video being made. I felt absolutely awful.’

Briony knows he still has the video and is terrified of what he might do with it.

‘There could be a video of me naked out there for the whole world to see,’ she says. ‘It makes me vulnerable that he has something so private, with no intention of deleting it. It’s completely unfair. My body is my own.’

Just before the pandemic, Briony left Dylan, and was physically assaulted by him later that year.

She went to the police a couple months later and she showed them the footage of him assaulting her, along with all the messages and recordings she had made in previous years.

However, at the time, there was a six-month charging timeline and when Briony’s case finally got to court, the deadline had passed and has case was dropped.

‘I was deflated,’ she says. ‘I handed everything I had to the police but they said it wasn’t enough.’

Sadly, Refuge’s Emma Pickering says she hears a lot of dismissal from the police with tech abuse. 

‘They [victims of tech abuse] are graded as low risk because they’re not at immediate risk of harm – but they are,’ she explains. ‘We know that more women are now taking their lives because of domestic abuse linked to stalking and harassment. They need to escape and feel it’s the only way they can. We can’t assume that just because it’s online, that the risk isn’t serious.’

Emma references the case of Georgia Harrison, a reality star whose ex secretly filmed them having sex and then posted it online. He later went to prison. 

‘But that video is still circulated online,’ she says. ‘She doesn’t own it and has no rights to have the content pulled down. It’s bizarre. And it’s the same for every survivor in that situation, sitting with the threat, knowing that at some point images of you – whether genuine or created – could be circulated online. It’s a horrible feeling.’

While Refuge welcomes the government’s ambition to halve VAWG, Emma says it’s essential this includes a commitment to tackling technology-facilitated domestic abuse. She also emphasises that frontline responders like the police receive informed support and training on investing this type of abuse.

Meanwhile, Briony still feels the impact of the abuse, which she is working through thanks to the support from domestic abuse charities like Refuge and Women’s Aid.

‘I just want other women to know it doesn’t have to happen behind closed doors,’ she says. ‘Perpetrators make you feel scared – it’s their tactic. But reach out to a professional – they can help you.’