Margaret E Ward: Tech-enabled stalking and AI abuse are fuelling violence against women
In March, Willow Esteve (pictured), a young woman working in retail in Cork city centre, was approached by spectacle-wearing Vladyslav Morhulets, a software development student at MTU and content creator. His intention was to “prank” her at the checkout and film it.
She thought this only happened in movies. No matter how she changed her routine, she kept seeing him. She thought she was crazy until she found his bank card outside her home.
It was not instinct or familiarity that led him to her locations in Cork. It was a magnetic tracker, no bigger than a coin, hidden inside the tailpipe of her car. Gardaí found two tracking devices in his house plus a tracker app on his phone containing the location of the victim’s home and journeys she’d taken.
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