According to the US Department of Justice, every 73 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted. However, sexual assault is under-reported. Globally, 95% of sexual assault cases are unreported, and at most, 5 out of every 1,000 perpetrators end up in prison. Online anonymous third-party reporting systems are being developed to encourage reporting of sexual assaults and to apprehend serial offenders.
In collaboration with VESTA Social Innovation Technologies, PhD candidate in my research group Borke Obada-Obieh, has conducted focus groups and interviews with 35 participants who are sexual assault survivors, support workers, or both. We asked questions related to participants’ concerns with trusting an online anonymous third-party reporting systems (O-TPRSs). Our results suggest that participants had technological and emotional concerns that are related to survivors’ security and privacy. We provide insights into the challenges of designing O-TPRSs to increase the reporting of sexual assault.
To learn more, watch Borke’s presentation at a top venue for usable privacy and security, or read the paper.
Borke Obada-Obieh, Lucrezia Spagnolo, and Konstantin Beznosov, “Towards Understanding Privacy and Trust in Online Reporting of Sexual Assault,” In Proceedings of the Sixteenth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS), 2020.
