UNDER HIS EYE

Lisa’s world was shattered when she made a horrifying discovery on the family computer one night in her study. The online abuse she suffered has left her traumatised to this day.

Like many modern women, Lisa* met Bob* on an online dating site.

It was 2007 and Lisa was 32. After sharing messages online, she agreed to go out with him. Bob came across as genial and respectful and assured her he was a feminist.

As a long-term bachelor, Bob told Lisa he knew his way around the house. Lisa was also reassured by the fact that her new partner was a police officer – someone whose job it was to uphold the law.

Bob and Lisa became an item and decided to move in together the following year. They had two children in quick succession.

One night while breastfeeding her daughter in May 2011, Lisa chanced upon a minimised tab on the computer in the study of her home.

It was late and her eyes were heavy and tired, her arms aching from the weight of her sleeping daughter. But her eyes came to rest upon the words “adultmatch…” What she found on the website jolted her awake.

Using her free right hand she clicked on the tab to expand it. She found a fake profile on adultmatchmaker.com.au using her identity. Bob had shared explicit pictures and messages with both men and women, including a picture of Lisa and Bob having sex, their faces obscured.

Lisa’s heart froze as she recalled the moment a few months prior when Bob had grabbed a phone and taken a picture of them midway through sex. While horrified, at the time Lisa did not question him. Instead, she silently prayed the photo would remain private and there weren’t others he had taken of her without her knowing.

“I rationalised it to myself, that surely he is a respected and senior member of the police force, he won’t do anything stupid with the photo,” Lisa says.

It was to get worse. The messages Lisa found on Adult Match Maker were graphic, detailing sexual encounters and explicit acts.

She cradled her daughter to her chest and her head swum with dizziness. She leaned against the chair for support.

“I felt like I was a human body, but I was erased,” Lisa says.

“I didn’t even know who I was anymore. I had so much self-doubt. There was so much confusion he caused that I just didn’t trust my own judgement. But at the same time, a lot of clarity came with this discovery.”

A PATTERN OF CONTROL

For Lisa, the shocking image and digital abuse didn’t come out of nowhere. It was part of a pattern of coercive control, manipulation and surveillance wielded over her that had gradually escalated in the early years of the relationship.

It started with Bob railing at suggestions he do housework, and his insistence the couple share a bank account. It graduated to Bob exhibiting classic controlling behaviour, quizzing Lisa at the end of the day on who she had called. Later she found apps on her iPad that picked up the IP addresses of guests in the house.

In her mind, Lisa had attributed the everyday control and coercion as ‘regular’ relationship problems, but slowly she found her self-esteem crumbling into self-doubt and constant worry.

“It was slow and covert. It was very much the frog in the boiling pot scenario,” Lisa says.

She had developed a constant fear she was being watched and surveilled. Lisa later found out that Bob was secretly exacting his revenge against her online.

“Anytime I stood up to his abuse, he would go online to punish me. That’s why the accounts were created. He would get a really sick pleasure in punishing people, even if they don’t know.”

The day after the midnight discovery, Lisa continued to monitor the Adult Match Maker site and noticed a live chat between Bob and another user. She inserted herself in the conversation using her own name, immediately alerting him.

When he arrived home, Bob tried to kiss her hello but Lisa immediately recoiled. “Don’t touch me,” she whispered.

Still too scared to confront him, Lisa turned on her phone to record the conversation. Bob admitted to creating the profile but calmly tried to minimise the situation, telling Lisa the profile was part of a sexual ‘fantasy’ he had constructed. He also promised to delete the account.

“I don’t think he had the ability to comprehend how bad what he had done was. His reaction to being discovered was not that of a normal person,” Lisa says.

Lisa held on to the vain hope that being found out would give Bob the impetus he needed to become a better husband and partner. And indeed, for months after the revelation, he was on his best behaviour.

But then the abuse escalated again. Lisa found herself constantly on edge, awaiting unpredictable explosions of anger.

A broken or non-functional appliance in the house would be enough to trigger his rage. Lisa found herself dreading the moments of his return home, desperately checking the washing machine or treadmill to make sure they weren’t faulty.

“They were the worst months of emotional and psychological abuse. It’s the minor covert things they do to consistently damage your self-esteem. The simple things, like a really angry look or constant undermining and criticism of unimportant things,” she said.

Bob would often use his police interrogation skills to make Lisa doubt her reality and shatter her confidence.

Lisa would find her heart racing, trying to pre-empt what would trigger the next outburst. But the goal posts were constantly moving.

“Things that would have nothing to do with me, would be blamed on me,’’ she says.

“If I rang the police and told them he did this one thing, they would have probably said ‘you’re pathetic’, because they view events in isolation and don’t understand the pattern of abuse that was occurring.

“He was so disrespectful of me, undermining my parenting, damaging my self-esteem and confidence. You just don’t have any left. You don’t have any strength to live.”

By the end of 2011, Lisa was on the verge of a breakdown.

“I was such a broken person.

“I knew there would be a day I would report him, but only when I felt safe. I couldn’t do it when I was living under the same roof as him,” she says.

It was at this time that Lisa tentatively started reaching out to domestic violence services and putting a name to the life she experienced with Bob. She also opened up to family and friends about the abuse.

“It was like a cloud lifted. This was nothing to do with me. This was a seriously dangerous and unwell person who was projecting onto me.”

Lisa made a promise to herself to leave in March 2012. But a confrontation earlier in the year forced the separation. Bob’s mother, one of the people she had reached out to, had contacted Bob to warn him Lisa was planning to leave the marriage, sparking a confrontation that led to their separation.

But it didn’t end there. Bob’s surveillance of Lisa escalated after their split. One day Lisa was attending court to pick up the necessary paperwork to get a violence order against him, which would bar him from approaching her.

Her phone started ringing continuously. It was Bob and he kept calling her during the time she was at court. She turned off her phone and took a moment to breathe, committed to accomplishing what she needed to.

“If I didn’t answer [the phone] he would ring relentlessly till I answered.”

She believes Bob knew where she was and wanted to check up on her.

“He wanted to know if I would stumble and reveal (to him) where I was,” she says.

PURSUIT OF JUSTICE

“It was then I felt like I had swapped one abuser for many,” Lisa says of her journey to get justice. After months of delays from police, Lisa went directly to Adult Match Maker to request the removal of the profile and pictures made under her name. What she found made her nauseous.

She discovered not one, but four accounts had been created over a two year period, under her name. The account names were sexually odious. All four accounts featured graphic photos – cropped images of Lisa taken without her consent, pictures of Bob and other anonymous figures including close-up shots of female genitalia and women masturbating. The first account had been created six weeks after the birth of their first child.

The last two accounts were created six months after Bob had promised to delete the initial account she had chanced upon in the study.

The latest profile read: ‘I’m very submissive and like to be used like a slut, I’m here to tease and please’.

That profile contained six photographs - five images of Lisa in lingerie, including one photo with her breasts exposed with semen on them.

Lisa gave the evidence to police investigators, with the help of a trusted female police officer.

The investigators issued a warrant for access to Bob’s computer and electronic devices. They also contacted Giga Proprietary Limited which owns Adult Match Maker to gain access to login information and IP addresses.

In 2017, Bob pleaded guilty to using a ‘carriage service to offend’. Later that year, the local Magistrates Court gave him a good behaviour bond with no recorded conviction after he successfully argued his offending was caused by PTSD he suffered as a police officer.

A LIFE SENTENCE

In her victim impact statement read out to the court, Lisa described the crime as a “life sentence”.

Despite Adult Match Maker taking down the profiles, Lisa fears the photos remain available somewhere online.

She told the court she lives with a deep fear she will be recognised and distrusts strangers: “I want to have a normal life. I want to thrive yet I struggle to survive.

“Knowing that people who came across the profiles will wrongly assume that I created them causes me crippling pain and anxiety. I want to be able to scream out that I did not know what Bob was doing and that I had no part in it. But who do I direct my screams to when I have no idea who has accessed the profiles? I find no comfort in knowing that every individual he ‘cat-fished’ was also deceived by him.

“Knowing that at any point in time, anyone from around the world could be looking at my pictures and getting some sick enjoyment from them makes me feel exposed and violated over and over again.”

Bob still maintains visitation with their two kids and is in continuous contact with Lisa to arrange visits. For Lisa, the memory of the abuse remains and is compounded by their continuing interaction and a feeling of being failed by the justice system.

Lisa says she asked the police prosecutor to get orders preventing Bob from obtaining, saving, searching for or using her photos. She also requested random bi-annual checks to be done on Bob’s IP addresses to check he wasn’t continuing to commit his crime. She was told by police, she ‘could not ask for those orders’.

To this day, Lisa continues to furiously change online profile names.

The distress of being constantly hypervigilant from navigating shared custody with her ex-partner makes it difficult to work and sustain friendships and relationships.

She still lives with the fear that Bob continues to track and share images of her online in ways she is not aware of. Every time she turns on her computer or phone to begin her day, her heart lurches.

“It’s really impossible to live today without technology because everything directs you to use it. I live with the fear he may still be doing it. Is he hacking? Is he stalking?”

_{*Names have been changed.}