PARENTS are using iPad video calls with their children to snoop on the lives of their estranged or former spouses.
Applications such as Apple’s FaceTime and Skype, which offer free video calls on tablets and smartphones, have been cited in custody cases where family lawyers have claimed they have been misused for “intrusive purposes”.
In one case a father asked his child to “give him a tour” of his ex-wife’s new home. In another a mother walked into her living room wearing only a nightie to find her former husband staring at her from the screen of her child’s iPad.
Louise Halford, a partner at Pannone solicitors, said her firm had seen a steady stream of cases in recent months. “I’d never heard of this issue before this year but it seems a lot of children got smartphones and iPads for Christmas and in all the cases I’ve handled they were presents from the dad,” she said.
Halford said while most video calls were innocent, in some cases “the estranged partner has a history of obsessive or controlling behaviour”.
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One mother, who was awarded custody of their teenage son when she got divorced seven years ago, said the constant video calls between father and son on the boy’s smartphone had become akin to “inviting her ex-husband back into her home”.
The woman, who asked not to be named, said: “I want to be able to walk round my own house without seeing my ex-husband’s face or [hear his] voice. It’s not like the telephone where you can hold it to your ear. Video gives them a window into your day-to-day life.”
Advances in technology have led to an increase in video call applications on smartphones and computers. Apple’s latest iPad tablets and iPhones come with inbuilt cameras so the device can be used for video calls. Personal computers and laptop programs such as Skype and MSN allow people to communicate through webcams.
Christina Blacklaws, a director at Co-operative Legal Services and who specialises in family law, said: “We’ve had a lot of these cases recently. This is all part of the increasingly complicated issue of how we handle custody arrangements when it comes to social networking, which we have to accept is now a fundamental part of our children’s lives.”
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The issue is not unique to Britain. Annemarie McAvoy, a New York academic who had lost custody of her son, was ordered by a US court in January to take away the boy’s iPhone because it was claimed she was using it to pry into the father’s life.
Halford thinks the need for such drastic measures is rare and cited a case in March where an order was made to restrict video calls between a child and parent to one room of the house. “In some of the cases we have dealt with the best resolution has been to set restrictions on the times, locations and duration of these video calls,” she said.