A BORDER solicitor says about 50?per cent of the domestic violence cases she sees involve new technologies such as Facebook and mobile phones.
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Beth Simpson, of the Hume Riverina Community Legal Service, says technology is advancing faster than the laws protecting people from harassment and intimidation.
She sees up to 16 cases every month in the Wodonga Magistrates Court that have an element of Facebook "violence".
“It’s mainly just messages on Facebook that are offensive or insulting or are used to harass or intimidate, like calling people names or calling people homosexuals,” she says.
"And people set up sites pretending to be other people or hack into other people’s accounts."
Another growing issue is the misuse of photographs and videos.
Ms Simpson pointed to the case where an army cadet accused a fellow student of secretly filming her having sex and showing it to his friends.
“More commonly a girl sends a photo to her boyfriend of a sexually explicit nature and then they break up and he sends it to a few mates,” Ms Simpson says.
“Then it gets sent off to another 1000 people.”
She says the trend is known as “sexting”.
While intervention orders can prevent people from publishing information and pictures, including on the internet, she said “the law is taking a while to catch up with the technology”.
“There are both state laws and federal laws that you can apply to those issues, but there is often the problem of getting enough evidence.”
Ms Simpson says it is difficult to prove messages or pictures had been sent by a particular person from a mobile phone.
“Facebook is like that too, as other people can access their account,” she says.
The Wodonga lawyer says people’s Facebook accounts are often hacked by friends and family, who change their profile information and post fake updates on a their Facebook page.
The phenomenon is known as “Frape” , short for “Facebook rape”.
Most cases of Facebook hacking are harmless, but it can also be used for more sinister purposes.
While today most people put up emotional abuse via new technology, Ms Simpson has a warning for those perpetrators who think they will get away with it.
“It’s amazing how many people put (their abuse) in black and white,” she says.
“They say the rule is don’t put anything on Facebook that you wouldn’t want your nanna to read.”
Changes that would widen the definition of family violence are currently being considered by Federal Parliament.
