High-Tech Protection for Victims of Abuse

He’s out there. Somewhere.

And she’s scared.

He has promised to chop her into bits. Or shoot her. She believes him too.

He has hurt her already, so many times over so many years: slapped her, ruptured her eardrum, shoved her head through a wall, choked her until blood vessels burst in her eyes. Now he’s out of jail. Out there. Out here. He knows where she lives, where she works, where she shops.

And she’s scared.

But though she trembles, she will not run. Delisa Miles is through with cowering.

And for the first time in her long struggle against domestic violence, the 34-year-old mother of three feels as though someone is backing her up.

For in her hometown in the Silicon Valley, and in communities across the nation, authorities have begun offering women like Miles technology to help them feel safe.

There are panic buttons to summon aid quickly, alarms to warn of approaching danger, computer-generated phone calls to announce that an abuser has posted bail.

No device can protect absolutely, of course, and critics worry that the new technology will give victims a false sense of security. But women like Miles welcome the programs as proof that, at long last, society is willing to try. The technology helps them defy the fear that squats heavy on every minute he’s out there.

“It helps with healing and growing stronger,” Miles said. “It helps with taking control of your life.”

The potential market for such high-tech security is huge: The FBI estimates that a woman is beaten by a spouse or lover every nine to 12 seconds. “The offenders are like runaway trains--nothing can stop them,” said David Beatty, director of public policy for the National Victim Center. “But technology is giving victims the means to step off the tracks.”

Miles, for instance, takes some comfort from a panic-button pendant that she can press if her ex-boyfriend tries to break into her house. Donated by an alarm company, the pendant will summon police at a touch.

Other victims carry free cellular phones distributed by law enforcement and programmed to dial only 911. One Bay Area woman, still too fearful to give her name, said the phone made her and her children feel less vulnerable during the months her boyfriend stalked her.

“Thank God I had it. I felt 100% safer,” the woman, a college teacher, said. “No matter where we go, he will track us down. But now there are tools to protect us.”

Those tools include an automated notification system known as VINE that alerts women when their batterers walk free from jail. Soon to go online in Orange County, Sacramento and Fresno--and already installed in 340 communities in 20 states--the system calls the victim every two hours until she answers and punches in a code to prove she has heard the message.

Also on the market is an electronic surveillance device, being tested in Florida and Pennsylvania, that warns a victim if her abuser invades “hot zones” around her home or office. It builds on technology often used with probationers: The offender wears a bracelet that transmits his location to law enforcement. If he enters a forbidden zone--or cuts off the bracelet--he triggers a computer that dials the victim’s phone or pager and alerts police.

Tulare County, southeast of Fresno, is testing a similar system with one added feature: A monitor in the victim’s home will automatically start recording all noise if the “hot zone” is invaded, for use as evidence in court.

Even in shelters, technology is being applied to assist battered women. Bell Atlantic Nynex has set up a free voice mail service across the East Coast so women can stay in touch with employers, landlords, friends and, if they choose, abusers--without giving away their location.

“I don’t know what I would do without it,” said Barbara, 34, who uses voice mail at a Connecticut shelter for messages from potential employers. “The last thing I would want to do is have them call a pay phone that anyone could answer.”

For all this enthusiasm, victim advocates are quick to note that the technology has limitations.

The alarm pendants, for instance, work only in a victim’s home or yard. “When I step outside, I’m wide open,” Miles said. Also, the pendants require a functioning phone line, so an abuser could disable the system by ripping the phone from the wall.

As for VINE, Miles complained that it notified her of her ex-boyfriend’s release from jail nearly 10 hours after he walked free--and then, with a phone call that jolted her from slumber at 2:30 a.m.

Symbols of Change in Society

Despite such glitches, victims and their advocates welcome the devices--as much for the message they send as for the results they get. At last, they say, they are being taken seriously, by officers who respond to 911 calls, by politicians who fund the high-tech programs and by corporate bigwigs who donate supplies.

“With the commitment of these additional resources, society is saying [to abused women], ‘We acknowledge your right to protect yourself. We acknowledge that what is happening to you is unacceptable. We want you to call for help,’ ” said Studio City-based security expert Gavin de Becker.

“That is the opposite of the message that has been given in this country for years, when women got the distinct feeling their calls were unwelcome.”

Indeed, the typical law enforcement response to spousal abuse used to be “take him for a walk, take her to a bus station,” said Los Altos (Calif.) Police Chief Lucy Carlton, chairwoman of the Santa Clara County Domestic Violence Council. Officers often treated domestic violence calls as nuisances.

No longer.

Now, in addition to outreach programs like the pendants--used in at least 120 communities from Portland, Ore., to Boise, Idaho, from Boston to Little Rock, Ark.--law enforcement agencies are sinking money into in-house technology to help them better combat domestic violence.

In Miami, rookie cops use virtual reality programs as training for responding to spousal abuse calls. In Los Angeles County, sheriff’s deputies use software to evaluate whether an abuse case is likely to escalate to murder. And in Tulare County, deputies soon will snap photos of victims with digital cameras to record every black eye and broken rib, recording the injuries on computer files that can be shipped to prosecutors and judges with a keystroke.

“It’s slow,” said Pam Butler, an abuse survivor and counselor in San Jose. “But I’ve noticed attitudes changing.”

Advocates’ Worries, Programs’ Problems

Victims are starting to sense the shift.

Consider Angie, a soft-voiced 32-year-old receptionist who did not want her last name printed for fear of provoking her ex-husband.

Throughout most of her 7 1/2-year marriage, she considered the police worse than worthless. Her husband would smack her, threaten her, pull out his gun--and when she called 911 in terror, officers who responded would not even bother to interview her in private. Instead, she said, they would ask a few perfunctory questions with her husband in the room, “intimidating me with his look.”

Eventually, Angie moved out and obtained a restraining order barring her husband from contacting her. It didn’t help.

He broke into her house and waited for her in the dark. He made crank calls to her at work. Worst of all, she said, he told her that he had ordered his buddies to thrash her. Reading menace in every stranger’s face, Angie couldn’t step outside without clenching in fear. And she didn’t trust the police to help her.

That is, until she learned about the cellular phone program in the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department.

Sgt. Mark Faler, who runs the program, offered Angie one of five phones donated by GTE.

“I didn’t go anywhere without it, not even down the street to get a cup of coffee. Everywhere I went, I took it, even to the bathroom,” Angie said.

She never needed to use it. As it turns out, most recipients don’t. Law enforcement officials who have distributed cell phones in various cities say they receive few emergency calls, and even fewer false alarms. But just having the phone comforted Angie.

Her 7-year-old daughter relied on it too: “Anywhere I went, she’d say, ‘The cell phone, Mommy, remember the cell phone.’ ”

Angie returned the phone recently when her husband was sent to San Quentin state prison for violating the restraining order. But when he gets out in February, she wants it back.

“It made me feel connected to someone who really knows what’s going on,” she said. For once, she added, law enforcement “made me feel that something could be done.”

Ironically, that feeling of relief troubles some victim advocates, who fear that high-tech programs might endanger women by lulling them into relaxing their guard.

“I honestly believe they give you a false sense of security,” said Donna Diggins, who survived an abusive relationship years ago and counsels other victims.

She believes that battered women must leave town and change their names, as she has, to stay safe. Her clients, however, view the new technology as a less disruptive solution. “How wonderful!” they say. “Now I don’t have to look over my shoulder.”

But as Diggins reminds them, a cellular phone won’t stop a fist. An alarm pendant can’t block a bullet. And all systems are only as good as the police response.

“The bottom line is,” she said grimly, “if he wants you dead, you’re going to be dead.”

Diggins and others also fear that the high-tech programs might inflame abusers because they require women to take decisive steps to break away from a relationship. Before they can get a pendant or phone, women in most communities must move out of the batterer’s home, obtain a restraining order and agree to cooperate with prosecutors. Abuse tends to escalate when the batterer feels most spurned.

Officials who run the programs acknowledge that eligibility rules put some women in a dangerous fix--required to provoke their abuser to gain protection against him.

Yet they defend the standards, arguing that they can best help women who help themselves. “There has to be some accountability,” Sgt. Faler said. “We can’t just give them out like Mother Teresa.” That’s especially true when the supply of high-tech devices is limited--as it usually is.

Even if corporate donors can be found, they generally hand out no more than 10 phones and 15 pendants per community. The rest is up to local government.

And the tab can add up quickly.

The “hot zone” program costs $10 to $20 per day for each offender who is hooked up, according to Tampa, Fla.-based manufacturer Pro Tech Monitoring Inc. The VINE system runs from $40,000 a year for a small community up to $375,000 for New York City. ADT estimates its pendant program costs $50,000 per community over five years, and that’s with no more than 15 devices in circulation.

For a mid-size city such as San Jose, the corporate donations may be enough to meet demand; officials there say they have not had to turn down any needy victim. But New York City had to buy 250 additional pendants. And in Los Angeles, the prosecutor in charge of the district attorney’s family violence unit cited concern about supply as one reason the county does not offer high-tech devices, though she said officials are considering a pendant program.

Although the technology may help women feel safer, it’s not yet clear whether they actually are.

ADT says its panic-button pendants have saved 25 lives over the past five years. VINE’s manufacturer boasts of warning a woman in Kentucky that her spouse had been released on bail--leading her to search her house and find him in the closet, clutching a knife. Because she was prepared, she was able to evade harm and call police, Kentucky authorities said.

In San Jose, Police Lt. Ken Stewart said one stalker is behind bars because his victim used her cellular phone to call 911 when she spotted him tailing her.

But these rave reviews rely on anecdotes. Solid national statistics are harder to come by, because the programs are so new and because they have been implemented patchwork-style.

Not a Cure-All for Violence

At a local level, jurisdictions do not necessarily see domestic abuse cases fall when they offer high-tech programs. Indeed, cases have jumped 25% in San Jose and 50% in surrounding Santa Clara County in recent years, despite an intense effort to help abused women through technology.

Officials there insist that the increase is not a sign of failure; perhaps, they say, more women are pressing charges against their abusers now because they feel less alone, or more confident about securing help. As San Jose Councilwoman Patricia Dando put it: “The technology gives women the little bit of courage they may need to walk away from an abusive situation.”

Certainly, Los Angeles County authorities say they’ve seen first-hand how technology can coax women to leave bad relationships.

Selected stations of both the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the Los Angeles Police Department have for the past year been testing a software program that compares the facts of a given abuse incident with 18,000 other domestic violence cases. Then the program predicts, on a scale of 1 to 10, whether the abuse is likely to escalate. A rating of 9, for instance, might mean a woman is in serious danger of being killed if she returns to her abuser.

“It’s a real wake-up call for the victims,” said Sheriff’s Det. Ronald R. Marquez, who uses the software, designed by De Becker, in the Carson station. “It’s like the lightbulb goes on in their heads. They see the gravity of the situation and they’re more likely to assist with prosecution [of their abuser] and to extricate themselves from the cycle of violence.”

Abuse survivor Joyce Parson welcomes such programs as a sign that society is ready to go all out against domestic violence, instead of treating it as a private shame best handled in the family.

“For a woman like me, programs like this may mean she can close her eyes at night. They may mean a little more peace of mind,” Parson said. “It’s just a whole new world.”