Evidence Documentation
Evidence documentation is the practice of recording incidents of abuse — dates, times, locations, injuries, messages, photographs — in a form that can later support a protective order, a criminal case, or a survivor’s own sense of what happened. Advocates note that contemporaneous records carry weight precisely because memory and isolation are eroded by abuse. Purpose-built tools such as VictimsVoice illustrate the genre: a password-protected progressive web app (deliberately not an installable icon, so an abuser sees no “receipt” on the phone) that prompts for the structured details courts expect, and that markets compliance with HIPAA, VAWA, VOCA and FVPSA. Where evidence is meant for legal use, questions of authentication and chain of custody — proving a record is what it claims to be and was not altered — become central.
This documentation directly supports Reporting and Disclosure and is the feature most associated with Reporting Apps. But it sits in sharp tension with Privacy and Safety: a database of abuse evidence on a survivor’s device is exactly what makes it dangerous if discovered, which is why Discreet Access and disguised storage are recurring design responses to Tech-Enabled Abuse. The Datafication of MeToo critique adds a further caution — that “building evidence” is also building data capital, and that the narratives such tools render legible are shaped by the institutions, not only the survivors, they serve.
In this vault
- Implemented byReporting Apps
- SupportsReporting and Disclosure
- Tension withPrivacy and Safety
- Examined inDatafication of MeToo