After fleeing her violent husband from another part of the UK to England and seeing the same car following her to work and back home, Emmaline* assumed she was imagining things.
“I convinced myself I was losing my mind almost every day. I wondered if it was a hangover from the abuse,” she says.
Domestic abusers often try to make their partner question their own sanity. But it wasn’t until Emmaline later went through a family court case with her ex that she realised she hadn’t been losing her grip on reality: her husband had hired a private investigator (PI) to trace her. And Emmaline isn’t alone.
PIs work for various companies, but many also offer services to the public. These services include tracking down former partners or finding out if a partner is being unfaithful. Researchers estimates that around 70 per cent of the UK’s 30,000 PIs assist with marital enquiries, while leading domestic violence charity Refuge warns that some PIs are helping abusive men track down ex-partners who’ve fled from them.
When someone flees domestic abuse, the risk of them being seriously harmed or murdered peaks. For this reason, survivors who flee are often offered a refuge or even witness protection, often from a charity such as Refuge.
Three years ago, Refuge was housing a survivor in a safe place when she was sent a letter via a solicitor claiming that she has been summoned to court by her ex-partner. A refuge worker identified that the letter wasn’t genuine and confirmed this with the court; they then found out that the phone number given was associated with a PI. “It was sent to the PO box of the refuge to entice her to a place where the perpetrator could harm her or follow her back to the refuge,” says Emma Pickering, who heads up this service.
This was not an isolated case. Since it established a specialist service to support people who’ve been on the receiving end of technology-facilitated abuse in 2017, Refuge has received reports from other survivors who are concerned they are being traced by PIs—with some PIs even going as far as to find out what refuge they are staying in.
There are some instances where using a PI to find an ex-partner is legal—such as when someone wants to issue a divorce application but they don’t know where the person is living, says Judit Kerese, a family solicitor at Stowe Family Law firm. Or they may use a PI to try to prove someone is cohabiting, which could impact the financial settlement.
Nowadays, it can be easier for someone to trace their ex-partner. Before separation, an abusive partner may take the first steps themselves through the use of technologies such as air tags, joint calendars and various apps they can install on their partner’s phone. But many still approach PIs when their technical needs go beyond their competence and the law, says the Institute of Professional Investigators (IPI), a self-regulatory body supporting vetted PIs.
Research estimates that around one-fifth of PIs have military or police experience. Pickering suspects that some of them are using their “position, power and contacts” to access databases that ordinary individuals can’t. “This seems really wrong,” she tells me. “They have a duty of care in the police force; it shouldn’t be the case that this is then not there when they leave.”
Another concern, Pickering adds, is that once a PI finds out a refuge’s address, they could track down anyone else living there in future cases.
“It’s already difficult for victim/survivors because they’ve already been monitored and stalked by their perpetrator for so long,” she says.
“To know an unknown person is monitoring you will make you feel like you can’t trust anyone.” Pickering says that Refuge and other charities are trying to “build bridges” so that survivors can feel more comfortable reporting abuse to the police, but the fact that many PIs are themselves former police officers can feed into a sense of distrust.
This distrust can be magnified when police say they’re unable to do anything to stop a PI, as Emmaline says happened to her.
“The police told me that they couldn’t take action because the PI is operating within the law and wasn’t directly harassing me,” she says.
In another case familiar to Refuge, the ex-partner of a survivor provided a document to family courts that included the address of the refuge she’d been staying in. He told the courts he’d traced her via a PI.
The survivor reported this to the police, but when Refuge followed up, it was told that the PI tracking and multiple location breaches hadn’t been recorded as a crime because she didn’t come to any harm. Refuge wanted to take the matter further, but the charity told me that by this point the survivor was completely disillusioned and didn’t want to take the matter any further.
Emmaline told me that her ex-husband also said in a statement in a family court hearing that he had used a PI twice to trace her. “The court didn’t take any notice of it, they just saw it as a desperate father trying to get in touch with his child, and I got called a hysterical mother,” she says.
People approach PIs and enquire about tracing someone for various reasons, including looking for estranged family members—and most PIs make sure it’s a legitimate request before taking it on. But one PI company tells me that a “handful” of companies will take on jobs from violent perpetrators for some extra money, without any duty of care towards the person being traced.
They’re able to do this because anyone can operate as a PI, regardless of their skills, experience or criminal history, as there’s no direct regulation of the industry.
There are some laws and guidelines that govern the PI industry’s activities, including the Data Protection Act 2018, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, as well as voluntary codes of practice. But many experts and survivors believe that, until there is mandatory regulation, PIs will continue to aid perpetrators of domestic abuse.
The IPI says it has been lobbying the government for mandatory regulation for decades. It argues that anyone carrying out surveillance, inquiries or investigations should have to demonstrate a level of competence.
The consequences should also fall on the perpetrator, Emmaline says. She argues that using a PI to trace someone may fall under the Crown Prosecution Service’s definition of coercive and controlling behaviour if the perpetrator was doing it themselves.
“This is a loophole where a person can abuse someone by proxy to maintain control over victims,” she says.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Domestic abuse and stalking destroy lives, and we are determined to transform how it is tackled across the criminal justice system.”
But more widely, Emmaline argues that society’s perception of PIs needs to change. “As a society, we need to catch up to the fact that it’s not normal to hire a PI to stalk somebody.”
*Emmaline’s name has been changed
