Refuge announces second Tech Safety Summit, leading the charge against the rising threat of tech-facilitated abuse
As tech-facilitated abuse continues to rise, Refuge is hosting its second Tech Safety Summit to tackle one of the most dangerously under-reported forms of violence against women and girls.
The virtual conference will bring together leading voices across tech, media, regulation, and frontline services – with panellists including Ofcom CEO Melanie Dawes, Adele Walton (author of Logging Off: The Human Cost of our Digital World), Baroness Jones, Minister of State for the Future Digital Economy and Online Safety, appearances from Adolescence writer Jack Thorne, BBC broadcaster Victoria Derbyshire, presenter Rachel Riley and major tech sponsors including Microsoft.
Building on the success of Refuge’s inaugural summit in 2024, this year’s event will provide an important space for survivors and experts from different fields to drive forward effective solutions to the growing threat of tech abuse. Panel sessions will address new and evolving dangers – from apps that create deepfake nude images and forums on the dark web dedicated to exploiting survivors to AI chatbots.
The Summit comes amid a shocking 205%* rise in referrals to Refuge’s dedicated sector-leading Tech-Facilitated Abuse and Economic Empowerment (TFAEE) team between 2018 and 2024. Despite this surge, digital abuse remains poorly understood and dangerously underreported.
A recent UK-wide poll commissioned by Refuge found that fewer than 1 in 3 people* would report certain kinds of digital coercion if they happened to them or someone they know, such as location tracking (30%) or someone demanding phone access. Just 58% would report the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, falling to 44% among 18–24-year-olds.
In response to this hidden crisis, the Tech Safety Summit will showcase innovative and survivor-informed solutions, including ‘safety by design’ approaches, using tagging technology to prevent the spread of intimate images, as well as the dual role of generative AI (GenAI) as both a tool for harm and a potential safeguard.
For complimentary press passes, please email: comms@refuge.org.uk
“As a documentary filmmaker, I have seen first-hand the disturbing ways in which technology is being weaponised to perpetrate violence against women and girls. Tech-facilitated abuse has the capacity to devastate a survivor’s life – and the fact that it so often goes unrecognised and unreported is heartbreaking. As the scale of tech-facilitated abuse reaches unprecedented levels, Refuge’s Tech Summit represents a desperately needed forum for experts to come together and create the meaningful change survivors have long been waiting for.”
“Refuge has been leading the charge against tech abuse since 2017, when it launched the only specialist service directly supporting domestic abuse survivors with cases of complex technology-facilitated and economic abuse. While Refuge played a key role in securing stronger protections through the Online Safety Act, which passed last year, significant gaps in legislation and enforcement mean that survivors continue to experience abuse on an unprecedented scale.
“We urgently need to see a shift towards proactive safety measures being embedded in digital platforms from the outset. This includes rigorous ‘abuseability’ testing for new GenAI tools, greater transparency in algorithms and stronger accountability for tech companies. The Tech Safety Summit is a vital step towards ensuring the prevention of violence against women and girls is built into the very architecture of digital spaces and devices."
“Survivors are increasingly being abused through the weaponisation of a growing range of emerging technologies – from surveillance via spycams, to so-called ‘nudification’ apps that generate deepfakes, and dark web forums that share and exploit images of survivors. To prevent this kind of abuse from devastating even more lives, we must stay ahead of its rapid evolution. Refuge’s pioneering Tech Summit is leading this charge, examining how safety can be built into the very fabric of technology and algorithmic design.”
“My perpetrator would check my phone, laptop and social media regularly, so it was impossible to look for help online or call Refuge. There were only a few people that I was allowed to speak to as he would always check my phone. Once, I did try to call the police but he grabbed my phone from my hands, smashed it against the wall and then threw whatever was left into the sink and poured water all over it so there was no way they could track it. If I didn't answer the phone when I was at work, the shop or the park – the only places he allowed me to go - he would go crazy. I had to report every single one of my moves.”
As well as experts from Refuge and survivors, other speakers and hosts will include: Diana Freed, Assistant Professor of Computer and Data Science at Brown University, Eva Blum-Dumontet from Chayn, Madelaine Thomas from Image Angel, Rebecca Taylor from Secureworks and founder of CashPerks Gareth Evans.
Context to data:
Refuge’s specialist Tech-Facilitated Abuse and Economic Empowerment (TFAEE) team handles only the most complex cases. This means the actual proportion of cases involving tech-facilitated abuse is even higher than the referral statistics to Refuge’s tech team suggest. While complex cases are typically referred to the specialist team, many other survivors of tech abuse are not and therefore are not reflected in the data. In other cases, tech-facilitated abuse may go unreported or even unrecognised by those experiencing it.
Data breakdowns:
- Refuge data (‘205% increase in referrals to the tech team between 2018 and 2024’): The total number of referrals in 2018 was 168 compared to 512 in 2024.
- All other data referenced comes from a recent YouGov poll commissioned by Refuge. Total sample size was 2256 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 20-21 February 2025. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all UK adults (aged 18+).