The entanglements of the law, digital technologies and domestic violence in Seattle

Abstract

This paper draws on a community-based participatory action research project located in Seattle - before and during the COVID-19 pandemic - to examine the unanticipated impact that the pandemic has had on reducing barriers for survivors of domestic violence seeking protection through the legal system. We draw on interviews with survivors and victim advocates, along with autoethnographic participant observation during Domestic Violence Protection Order (DVPO) hearings, to trace survivors’ experiences navigating the DVPO process before and after its transition from an analogue to digital system. We situate this research at the intersection of legal and digital geographic scholarship to analyze how the law and digital technologies reinforce the spatial operation of power and exclusion, while they simultaneously provide emancipatory potential for women’s experiences of security, legal subjectivity and emotional personhood. By focusing on how the courts’ transition to a digital system affects the emotional personhood and legal subjectivity of domestic violence survivors, this paper advances feminist calls within legal and digital geographies scholarship that encourage more sustained engagement with feminist thought to understand the varied effects of the law and digital technologies – respectively – on gendered bodies.

Keywords:

• Digital technologies
• domestic violence
• (in)security
• legal geographies
• technology-enabled coercive control

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the survivors and our advocate colleagues who participated in interviews, including Sandra Shanahan for reading and providing comments on an earlier draft of this article. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers whose comments helped to strengthen the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dana Cuomo

Dana Cuomo, PhD, is an assistant professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Lafayette College where she uses her training as a feminist geographer to study the legal and policing response to domestic violence and technology-enabled coercive control. Dana’s work is informed by five years of professional experience providing advocacy services to survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking.

Natalie Dolci

Natalie Dolci, LICSW, is the Senior Violence Prevention and Response Specialist for the University of Washington’s Safe Campus program. She began her anti-violence work while earning her degrees at Tulane University and has been working in gender-based violence prevention and response for over 13 years. She has provided direct services to survivors in community-based agencies, campus-based settings, and within the criminal justice system.