Consulting work on digital (ex-)partner violence It must be permanently funded and significantly expanded – for example, through dedicated staff positions on this topic in every women's shelter. This is the demand of the Women's Shelter Coordination Association (FHK) in light of the final report "Digital (Ex-)Partnership Violence: Closing Dangerous Protection Gaps in the Support System," which will be published on Thursday, March 19, 2026.
Digital violence doesn't end at the women's shelter door: Perpetrators use location trackers, social media, or access to shared cloud accounts to locate and monitor victims even after they have fled to a women's shelter. FHK IT consulting pilot project For two years, external IT specialists supported women's shelters in cases of suspected digital surveillance. Based on over 60 consultations, the results show that technical advice is effective – but only if those affected also receive emotional and social support, and if the women's shelter has the necessary resources for this comprehensive support. However, these resources are currently lacking across the board in the chronically underfunded system of protecting women from violence.
“Digital violence is not an exception for staff in women’s shelters; rather, it occurs alongside physical, financial, or sexual violence in most cases of (former) partner violence,” explains Sibylle Schreiber, Managing Director of FHK. “Women’s shelters and specialist counseling centers are already doing an enormous amount of work on this issue. But without reliable funding and firmly established expertise, they can hardly protect victims in the digital dimensions of violence.”
In its final report, FHK therefore recommends a comprehensive expansion of services at the federal, state, and local levels: In addition to dedicated staffing levels for digital violence counseling in women's shelters, specialized counseling centers for digital violence should be established, along with collaborations between women's shelters, IT specialists, the judiciary, and the police. These recommendations are based on expert interviews and experiences from the pilot project involving 22 women's shelters across Germany.
The final report and a summary thereof (German, English) are available for free download:
Quality recommendations
Current women's shelter statistics
