Survivors of domestic and sexual violence in Michigan have added privacy protections under a new law signed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
The Victim Confidentiality Law had bipartisan support and was signed in just before the new year. It allows survivors impacted by domestic and or sexual violence and their children to apply for identification numbers and substitute addresses. Applicants will receive a new state identification card and an assigned state post office box.
Individual’s program ID numbers will be listed in place of an address in the state’s Qualified Voter File, and addresses will be protected from Freedom of Information Act requests. In addition, schools will be prohibited from sharing participants’ and their children’s addresses.
Individuals interested in applying must submit their application to the state attorney general’s office. A written statement of risk if a person’s address is revealed is required, but no criminal conviction is needed to prove the risk.
“Somebody’s safety is often times based on how they feel in their own home, and so when that information is disclosed and given to people with bad intentions it can be quite paralyzing for victims,” Tara Aday, Director of Prevention and Education at Safe Haven Ministries said.
Aday, who also serves a co-chair for the Kent County Domestic Violence Community Coordinated Response Team, said the new legislation is something violence survivors and advocates have been working towards for around six years.
“Safe Haven runs an emergency safe shelter…Every single day we work with survivors that are trying to find a safe place to live that they won’t be harassed, intimidated and abused by their perpetrator,” she said, “It can be easy to assume that when a victim leaves an abusive relationship that violence ends. That intimidation, that fear, that harassments ends at the end of a relationship, and that’s absolutely not true. Abusers often continue to stalk, harass and coerce their victims well beyond the end of a relationship, and often times they do that by showing up at somebody’s residence, by stalking harassing or blackmailing them at their residence.”
Aday said Michigan is “a little late” in enforcing these privacy measures but adds that she is thankful the state is moving in the “right direction,” saying she hopes it provides more education about what privacy means to survivors.
“The issue often times is educating our community partners about maintaining confidentiality. If Child Protective Services is investigating a case of child abuse and there’s also components of Domestic Violence taking place in that relationship as well, and the non-offending parent has left that relationship, if CPS in a report includes that victim’s new address and that paperwork enters into a trial, the abuse may now have information of where that victim is living,” she explained.