Trauma-Informed Digital Evidence Collection: A Design Inquiry into Evidence Practices for Technology-Facilitated Abuse in Intimate Partner Violence

Paper Title

Trauma-Informed Digital Evidence Collection: A Design Inquiry into Evidence Practices for Technology-Facilitated Abuse in Intimate Partner Violence

Publication Info

• Topic area: Trauma-informed design for digital evidence collection in intimate partner violence cases.
• Keywords: Technology-facilitated abuse, intimate partner violence, trauma-informed design, digital evidence collection, HCI, tech clinics, forensic tools, survivor safety, legal robustness, Sherloc.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Existing tools for documenting technology-facilitated abuse (TFA) are insufficient for survivors. They fail to support all stages of evidence collection, are inaccessible, and can be re-traumatizing or legally inadmissible.
• Significance: Effective documentation of TFA can help survivors seek legal recourse, enhance safety, and validate their experiences, which are often invisible or ignored.
• Motivation and related work: Prior tools like ISDi and academic prototypes address aspects of TFA documentation but lack trauma-informed approaches. Survivor-facing apps mainly serve as repositories for evidence, leaving survivors to identify and record abuse independently, which is burdensome. No prior work has applied trauma-informed methods specifically to digital evidence collection frameworks.

Solution

• Proposed approach: Sherloc, a trauma-informed evidentiary framework designed for use in tech clinic consultations, supports all five stages of evidence collection (Identification, Collection, Examination, Analysis, Reporting).
• Novelty:
  1. Development of Sherloc, a tool integrating trauma-informed principles into digital evidence collection.
  2. Guidelines for trauma-informed digital evidence collection, emphasizing survivor safety, flexibility, and legal robustness.
  3. Iterative design and evaluation process involving legal experts and survivors.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Sherloc is a Python-based tool with a Flask interface, used during tech clinic consultations.
  • It includes components for device scanning (via ISDi), account investigations, and a technology assessment questionnaire (TAQ).
  • Generates investigation reports summarizing findings, risks, and technical details in a legally-admissible format.
  • Iterative updates based on feedback from legal experts and pilot consultations.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Sherloc was positively received by legal experts and survivors, with high ratings on privacy, clarity, safety, and legal robustness.
  • Pilot consultations revealed Sherloc’s ability to organize investigations and enhance survivor safety without disrupting consultations.
  • Feedback highlighted areas for improvement, such as reducing technical noise and enhancing interpretability.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Unlike existing tools, Sherloc supports all stages of evidence collection and integrates trauma-informed principles to minimize harm and maximize usability.
  • Provides legally robust documentation tailored to survivors’ needs.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Feedback from 41 legal experts (judges, attorneys, advocates) and pilot consultations with survivors and advocates.
  • Surveys assessed Sherloc’s adherence to design requirements (e.g., privacy-preserving, legally relevant).
  • Pilot program evaluated Sherloc in real-world consultations at Madison Tech Clinic.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited data on survivors’ use of reports in legal proceedings due to early-stage piloting.
  • Accessibility challenges for non-English speakers.
  • Future plans include expanding Sherloc’s flexibility (e.g., client-led options) and incorporating additional data sources like account exports.

Summary

This paper introduces Sherloc, a trauma-informed framework for documenting technology-facilitated abuse in intimate partner violence cases. Sherloc supports all stages of evidence collection within tech clinic consultations and generates legally-admissible reports. Feedback from legal experts and pilot consultations demonstrated its potential to enhance survivor safety and legal robustness. The authors propose guidelines for trauma-informed digital evidence collection and outline future directions to improve Sherloc’s accessibility, flexibility, and comprehensiveness. This work provides a foundation for designing safer and more effective documentation tools for survivors of TFA.