Councils, police forces and hospitals are endangering women by accidentally disclosing domestic abuse victims' addresses to perpetrators, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has warned. John Edwards, the information commissioner, has reprimanded seven organisations in just over a year for such breaches, calling the pattern "a pattern that must stop."
In one case involving Wakefield Council, a woman and her two children had to be urgently rehoused after the council sent her partner documents containing her new address during child protection proceedings. The woman had a history of domestic violence with the man. Similarly, a data breach by South Wales Police led to a woman's name being disclosed to her partner when she tried to check if he was a child abuser under Sarah's Law.
The ICO identified complex databases and lack of training as causes of the lapses. Nicole Jacobs, the domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales, described the breaches as "extremely dangerous." She said: "For victims of domestic abuse, a data breach can be a matter of life or death."
In another incident, a subsidiary of Bolton at Home left a voicemail on an alleged abuser's phone with a woman's new address, leading him to go there. The organisations involved have since introduced remedial measures. Farah Nazeer, chief executive of Women's Aid, said the breaches "undermined women's safety" and showed how urgently public services need to improve their understanding of domestic abuse.
