JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

On Saturday I heard This American Life’s program Spies Like Us including one story of a mom who used her baby monitor to hear cell phone conversations of her neighbors. Secrets for the taking from the everyday world of surveillance, to quote phrases from the show’s description.

At BloggerCon, I immediately noticed how easy it is to make digital and video recordings. Many of the attendees sitting near me were making bootlegs of the sessions, web camera clipped to the laptop, iPod with recorder lying on the desk. I’ve seen some video clips posted and I’m surprised I haven’t seen more. Cameras and microphones are becoming commonplace.

I’m not a supporter of surveillance. I don’t like being recorded. And I don’t think it’s right to spy on neighbors. When I walk around the block with my baby monitor, I turn it off if I happen to hear someone else’s conversations.

But when reading a recent news story, I began to wonder whether this everyday world of surveillance and the new availability of recording technology could be a precious tool for others to find freedom, a way to escape dangerous relationships.

Last week I read an article in the Seattle Times referring to the case of Laura Rogers who shot her husband. I can’t get the Times link in the archives, but here is a Washington Post piece: Arundel Judge Frees Woman In Death of ‘Horrible’ Man:

Laura Rogers killed her husband in April, shooting him as he slept and claiming it was a suicide. But when she pleaded guilty to manslaughter yesterday, 198 days after her arrest, an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge set her free.

Her husband, Walter Rogers, 43, had raped and impregnated her teenage daughter, a child from a previous marriage, both sides said in court. And the day before Laura Rogers leveled a shotgun at her husband’s head, she watched a videotape he had made of the sex acts.

In this case, it was a video that helped bring an end to the abuse. The stepfather had recorded his acts and created his own evidence. But what if the child or her mother had been able to make a video to prove the abuse they were each receiving?

Laura Rogers had thought that a boy at school was the father of her daughter’s baby. The girl had told her mother that she was being abused, but it seems that she was convicted of making false claims and wasn’t believed. After the baby was born, DNA tests proved paternity.

Abusers often have Jekyll- and-Hyde personalities, vacillating between sweet and viscious. But only the victims see the cruel side. Others have a hard time believing the abuser could do wrong.

Children especially can be caught in a credibility bind. They are easily enticed. Easily intimidated. Their claims can be dismissed while the situation escalates in danger.

I speak from what I know. What I’ve read. What I’ve heard from others lives. And what little I’ve experienced in my own.

What if children and others in abusive relationships could utilize technology to find freedom? What if victims could make their own videotapes or recordings to prove their oppression? What if Laura Rogers’ daughter had been able to back up her words with pictures and provide her own evidence months ago?

So often it seem technology is marketed as a way to spy on others. I have seen too many pop-up ads for tiny web cameras with pictures of shapely women, the implication obvious. It is as if technology is a tool for the powerful to exploit others.

But why couldn’t the same camera be used to give power to the victims? What if those who have been hurt and battered could use these devices, their own secret surveillance, to speak through their silence and prove the existence of a Hyde hiding in their home.

There are obstacles to this idea that I can see. One is the psychological damage done to victims, so that they believe they deserve the abuse. Many times those who are battered are not able or willing to fight. Emotion and relationship make strong bonds.

And there are the logistics of victims acquiring technology. How would a young girl get a small video camera, or know how to use it? How could people find or afford what they need for their secret surveillance?

I don’t have answers. But I have many questions. Especially after reading the story of Laura Rogers. I wonder what could have been done sooner to help the situation in the family, where both mother and daughter were being abused. If a videotape made by a perpetrator can have power, imagine what a victim’s secret surveillance could do.