Long-distance abuse.
When Jolene Coxhead’s former partner was booted out of New Zealand she thought the abuse would end. It hasn’t.
Instead, her ex, who was deported last year after being sentenced for breaching a protection order, has used the internet to torment, harass and threaten the Taranaki woman and her family from thousands of kilometres away. And the police can’t do anything about it.
Coxhead said her former partner began abusing her from Scotland, where he now lives, in December when he emailed an intimate video of her to numerous people and posted another on Facebook.
The video was taken down after a few minutes, but not before several of her friends had seen it, Coxhead said.
‘‘He sent a sex video to friends, not even my close friends but friends of friends. One of them was my Mum’s friend’s daughter.’’
She’s complained to New Zealand police about the cyber-abuse and hopes the evidence will be used by police in the United Kingdom to prosecute the man. But she said no action appears to have been taken.
Coxhead blocked her former partner on Facebook but claimed she was still constantly receiving emailed threats.
She said the man had threatened to have her family harmed, their house burnt down, called her a whore and worse, and demanded she send their child to him.
He has also sent images of himself with other women, threatened suicide and made calls to her parents’ home at all hours of the night, Coxhead claimed.
‘‘He’s been gone for a year now and he’s still tormenting them [family], and me.’’
Coxhead said over the summer, she took her children out for the day just once or twice.
‘‘I’ve had to go to the doctor and get antidepressants, I don’t go anywhere I don’t have to. I mainly do that because I get emails saying I’ve been seen with such and such a person – I don’t go anywhere because I don’t want anyone to tell him.
‘‘The police keep saying they can’t do much about that because he’s not in the country and unless someone does something they can’t do anything.’’
Coxhead is frustrated the police had not been able to take action.
‘‘I know he’s still got all these videos and there’s nothing to stop him doing it again because he hasn’t suffered any consequences for what he done.’’
Some of the videos were from when they were still together and others were sent after he had gone, Coxhead said.
‘‘You don’t think that he’s going to post them or show anyone else. In hindsight I’d never do that again.’’
Police prosecutor Sergeant Steve Hickey said the police were aware of Coxhead’s situation and had advised her on how to keep safe.
Because the man was no longer in New Zealand, the police in this country could not deal with it, Hickey said.
‘‘If someone in New Zealand does that to a partner in the USA, because it’s happening here, that person could be held liable under the Digital Crimes Act or our Crimes Act, but the offences have to be committed in New Zealand.
‘‘If someone receives this from overseas, the best we can do is send the evidence to the police in the country of origin and they decide if their police will follow it up and do something about it.’’
Whether this happened depended on the level of the offending, he said, because taking a prosecution to trial overseas could become prohibitively expensive.
‘‘The best thing a person can do is keep themselves safe by not allowing this sort of thing [intimate recordings] to happen in the first place.’’
Hickey suggested cutting off all contact and asking the company where the offending material was posted to shut it down.