The Gilded Margin

Victim Services|The Gilded Margin

There was a time when helping a victim of abuse might have meant making a phone call, completing paperwork, providing a referral, and helping someone find a safe place to go.

Those things still matter.

But increasingly, they are only part of the job.

Today, a victim may walk into an advocacy office carrying a phone filled with screenshots, threatening messages, location information, fake social media accounts, altered photographs, login alerts, recordings, emails, and evidence of someone tracking or impersonating them online.

The technology is not simply where the abuse happened.

The technology may now be part of the abuse itself.

That shift is becoming difficult for victim-service systems to ignore.

The federal funding landscape is telling us something

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) made technology a very visible part of its Fiscal Year 2026 victim-services funding priorities.

One FY 2026 opportunity specifically focused on Services for Victims of Technology-Facilitated Abuse. OVC described technology-facilitated abuse as including crimes such as image-based sexual abuse, nonconsensual distribution of intimate images, sextortion, synthetic intimate images or “deepfakes,” online stalking, harassment, and other technology-enabled abuse. That solicitation closed June 29, 2026. (Office for Victims of Crime [OVC], 2026a). (Office for Victims of Crime)

A second FY 2026 opportunity focused on Technology to Support Services for Victims of Crime. Rather than concentrating on technology as the mechanism of abuse, this program focused on technology as a way for victim-service organizations to improve how they interact with victims, increase service quality, and make services more accessible and responsive. (OVC, 2026b). (Office for Victims of Crime)

That distinction is important.

We are talking about two sides of the same problem:

Technology can be used against victims.

And:

Technology can also be used to help victims.

That means victim-service organizations increasingly have to understand both.

The evidence victims bring with them has changed

Think about what a victim might be asked to preserve today.

A screenshot.

A disappearing message.

An IP-related record.

A social-media profile.

A fake account created in their name.

A threatening text.

A location-sharing notification.

A photograph that was altered or distributed without consent.

A recording.

An email.

An account-access notification.

A message showing someone knows exactly where they are.

A deepfake.

A series of seemingly insignificant digital interactions that, when viewed together, establish a pattern of stalking or harassment.

The traditional idea of “evidence” becomes much more complicated when evidence is digital.

And this is where victim advocacy and property/evidence work increasingly overlap.

A victim advocate may be the first person who sees the screenshot.

A law-enforcement officer may later need the original device or underlying account information.

A prosecutor may need to establish authenticity and context.

An evidence technician may eventually be responsible for preserving a device or digital media.

An agency may have to determine what needs to be retained, how long it must be retained, who can access it, and how it should eventually be disposed of.

The victim may simply be trying to make someone understand:

“This person is doing this to me, and I need someone to take it seriously.”

That is a very different environment from the old paper file.

Victim advocacy is becoming digital advocacy

The evolution is easy to see.

Yesterday’s advocacy model might have looked something like:

Phone call → paperwork → referral → safety plan

Today’s reality may look more like:

Screenshot → account security → evidence preservation → safety planning → platform reporting → digital privacy → law enforcement → advocacy → ongoing monitoring

And sometimes all of those pieces are happening at once.

The advocate doesn’t necessarily need to become a digital-forensics examiner.

But the system around the victim needs to understand what technology changes.

That includes knowing how to help a victim safely document abuse without accidentally deleting evidence, exposing their location, alerting an abusive partner, or compromising an account.

It also means understanding that telling someone to “just block them” may not be an adequate safety strategy.

Blocking may be useful.

It may also eliminate access to information that could help establish a pattern.

There isn’t one universal answer.

Context matters.

Safety matters.

Evidence matters.

And the victim’s wishes matter.

AI is making the problem even harder

Generative artificial intelligence adds another layer.

The same technology that can help an organization translate information, improve accessibility, or communicate with victims can also be misused to create convincing synthetic images, impersonate people, generate threatening or manipulative content, and scale harassment.

OVC’s decision to specifically address synthetic intimate images in its technology-facilitated-abuse funding opportunity is a recognition that victim services cannot treat emerging technology as someone else’s problem. (OVC, 2026a). (Office for Victims of Crime)

The challenge is that technology is moving faster than many policies, training programs, evidence procedures, and service models.

That creates a dangerous gap.

The victim is experiencing the technology now.

The system is often trying to figure out how to respond afterward.

And this is why the Tribal victim-services deadline matters

There is also a very timely development happening right now.

The OVC FY 2026 Tribal Victim Services Set-Aside Formula Program has a JustGrants deadline of August 13, 2026, at 8:59 p.m. Eastern. The Grants.gov deadline was August 6. The opportunity is currently listed as open, and eligible Tribal applicants can use funding for activities including direct victim services, traditional healing practices, needs assessment, strategic planning, and other allowable activities. (OVC, 2026c). (Office for Victims of Crime)

That deadline makes this more than an abstract conversation about where victim services are headed.

It is happening now.

And for organizations developing or strengthening victim-service programs, technology should be part of the conversation about what victims actually need.

The bigger question

The question isn’t whether victim services should become “technology focused.”

Victims are still people.

They still need someone to listen.

They still need safety planning.

They still need housing, financial assistance, counseling, legal information, transportation, medical care, and someone willing to believe them.

Technology doesn’t replace any of that.

But technology has changed the environment in which all of those services are delivered.

A victim may need help securing an account before she can safely communicate with an advocate.

A stalking victim may need to understand location-sharing settings before changing her routine.

A survivor may need help preserving digital evidence before reporting an incident.

A victim of image-based abuse may need assistance navigating removal processes and understanding what can realistically be removed.

A person being impersonated online may need help documenting accounts and messages that disappear quickly.

And someone experiencing technology-facilitated abuse may need an advocate who understands that deleting something can sometimes destroy the very evidence they were trying to preserve.

That is not a technology problem alone.

It is a victim-services problem.

The professional crossover is becoming impossible to ignore

This is the part I find especially interesting from the perspective of victim advocacy and property and evidence.

The worlds are moving closer together.

Victim advocacy asks:

What does this person need to be safe?

Digital evidence asks:

What information exists, where is it located, and how can it be preserved and managed appropriately?

Law enforcement asks:

What happened, and what can we establish?

Prosecutors ask:

Can we prove it?

Technology asks:

What new ways can this happen?

The victim is standing in the middle of all five questions.

That means agencies need people who can see the entire picture.

Not everyone needs to be an expert in every piece of it.

But the handoffs between those pieces need to work.

We need to stop thinking of digital evidence as “extra”

Screenshots are not automatically insignificant because they came from a phone.

A text message isn’t less important because it exists on a screen.

A fake social-media profile isn’t less harmful because it isn’t physical.

A location history isn’t merely “data” when it helps demonstrate stalking.

And a synthetic image can cause very real trauma even though the image itself was never physically photographed.

The physical and digital worlds are no longer separate environments for victims.

Our response systems cannot treat them that way either.

What should agencies be asking?

The conversation should move beyond simply purchasing new technology.

Agencies and victim-service organizations should be asking:

• Do advocates know how technology can be used to facilitate abuse?
• Do they know how to help victims safely document technology-facilitated abuse?
• Do policies address digital evidence?
• Do evidence units have procedures for phones, social-media evidence, cloud-based information, and other emerging forms of evidence?
• Do investigators understand the difference between documenting what a victim sees and obtaining the underlying digital evidence?
• Are victims being given safety advice that considers account access, location services, connected devices, and digital impersonation?
• Do prosecutors and advocates understand the challenges surrounding synthetic or AI-generated material?
• Are agencies training employees as quickly as the technology is changing?
• Are victim-service organizations using technology to make services more accessible without creating additional privacy or safety risks?

Those questions are going to become increasingly difficult to avoid.

The margin is getting smaller

Technology has created new opportunities for connection, communication, documentation, and access to services.

It has also created new opportunities for control, surveillance, intimidation, humiliation, impersonation, and abuse.

Victim services are having to catch up.

Not because advocacy failed.

Because the environment changed.

The phone that once represented a way to call for help can now be the place where the stalking happens.

The social-media account that connects a survivor to her community can become the platform used to impersonate her.

The photograph that once existed privately can be copied, manipulated, distributed, and recreated.

And the evidence that may ultimately matter to a case can disappear with a deleted account, an expired message, a changing platform, or a victim who is simply too overwhelmed to know what needs to be saved.

This is where victim advocacy, digital evidence, technology, and survivor safety collide.

And that intersection deserves a much bigger conversation.

Because the future of victim services isn’t just about helping victims navigate the system.

Increasingly, it is about helping them navigate the digital world in which the victimization occurred.

References

Office for Victims of Crime. (2026a). OVC FY 2026 services for victims of technology-facilitated abuse. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. Office for Victims of Technology-Facilitated Abuse

Office for Victims of Crime. (2026b). OVC FY 2026 technology to support services for victims of crime. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. OVC funding opportunities

Office for Victims of Crime. (2026c). OVC FY 2026 Tribal Victim Services Set-Aside Formula Program. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. Tribal Victim Services Set-Aside Formula Program

Office for Victims of Crime. (2026d, June 3). Apply for funding to provide services to victims of crime. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. OVC funding announcement