As local authorities search for a "person of interest" in the case of an on-campus sexual assault Saturday morning, a new iPhone app intended to help victims report and document their attacks has been released to the public.
According to iTunes, the I've Been Violated app, through a four-step process, confidentially documents and encrypts the victim's account of the assault through video and audio recordings. The app's website says "the fact that [the account] was recorded contemporaneously with the violation helps a victim's credibility be maintained."
The app was created by the Affirmative Consent Division of the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence, and it is part of "a suite of apps" meant to "help change the context and conversations around sexual consent on college campuses."
The app comes with a four-step set of instructions wherein victims are told to "get to a safe place ... [and] activate and run the app," then allow for the recordings to be "encrypted and stored ... for future retrieval through the proper channels" and eventually let "authorities access evidence."
The app creators believe a system in which only authorities can reach the data "eliminates most of these credibility questions and allows victims the peace of mind to know that reporting to authorities is fully within their control."
"As a legal safeguard, the video record that the user creates is only available through appropriate authorities ... or by court order and is never directly available to the user," the creators said.
The University of South Carolina already utilizes the Rave Guardian app, which allows students to call USCPD or 911 via the app and set safety timers that alert preset "guardians" if a user doesn't shut off the timer within the set time.