Victim of violence and harassment from the father of her children, Eva Ngalle, 34, launched an application in December 2023 to allow separated parents to stay in touch securely, when necessary.
Domestic and intra-family violence, harassment and control do not stop when parents separate. Children sometimes become a means for the violent spouse to maintain control over the other. Forced to stay in touch to organize their care, parents often reach points of no return. Since December 2023, the TI3RS application appears, as its name suggests, as a “trusted third party” to allow secure and confidential communication.
Moderation of insults, conservation of history, creation of a new telephone number, choice of notification times, access to legal aid… TI3RS, imagined by Eva Ngalle, allows controlled communication and exchanges between ex- spouses. The application was designed jointly by victims, associations, lawyers and police stations. Its users assure that it has changed their daily lives, like Isabelle, 47 years old.
Mother of two daughters now aged 10 and 14, she separated from their father in 2016. A violent ex-partner whom she had the strength to leave, but with whom she had to stay in contact to manage joint custody. Very quickly, the messages she receives do not concern their children at all. The woman then confides that she was “overwhelmed by an incredible number of messages that are in principle useless and always violent.”
After having benefited from a protection measure for six months, she was harassed again: “I was immediately inundated with emails, text messages, calls. It took me weeks to get back on track.” Isabelle recounts how this episode destroyed her: “It ended very badly for me.” she said. Before entrusting: “It could have ended even worse. These are incitements to suicide.”
An infernal spiral “whose consequences on a life no one measures”, believes Isabelle, who denounces public authorities who are not sufficiently aware. “There is indeed domestic violence, but it there is after. For those who survive, for those who are not murdered, there is the rest to deal with.”she specifies.
“The child is the collateral victim of the toxic communication established by the toxic parent.”
Isabelle, TI3RS userat franceinfo
So when she learned that TI3RS was in the design phase, she joined the parents – often mothers – who accompanied Eva Ngalle, the founder of the application, to achieve it. The tool allows you to regain some control: “You become the master of communication again. It is you who decide and it is a healthy control. It is not a control that harms the children, nor your ex-spouse. He does not need to download anything whatever. And it’s very important, in this kind of context, to not have to ask anything of the other.” The ex-spouse does not actually need to be warned about using the application.
The possibility of choosing the time of exchanges and reception of notifications is a monumental advance in the daily life of a victim, explains Isabelle: “If, for example, the messages are too frequent, you decide when to receive them. Some people need to be accompanied when they read the text messages from their ex-partner. This puts you in the best possible situation. don’t come across it unexpectedly You know it’s going to take hours or even days to come down so if that day you’re not in the right mood or context, you can choose not to. receive notifications.”
Isabelle explains that she has not changed her way of communicating: “It is factual, rare, often based on facts. Typically, to say that children have such and such an outing, on such and such a day… But the fact that the application generates a new number, it blurs the lines. There is a phenomenon of destabilization of the other spouse and it allows things to be kept at a distance.”
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The founder of TI3RS, Eva Ngalle herself found herself in a situation of breakdown in a context of domestic violence. After eight years of violence, she leaves the father of her son: “I thought that by leaving, everything was going to stop, that there would be no more violence, that we were going to find a solution to get along well, to take care of our son, even while being separated … But in fact, the violence continued. As we no longer lived together, it came through the telephone.
In shared custody at that time, Eva Ngalle had no other choice but to maintain contact: “I was afraid of every ring of my phone. All the time I thought it could be him.” His father takes on the role of trusted third party: “It was he who was the victim of harassment, insults, threats because he was a person he could reach. And I said to myself: ‘There has to be another solution, it’s not It’s possible that it’s so complicated.'”
She then contacted associations, inquired with lawyers and spoke with other parents in her situation. “We were all tinkering, trying to find solutions so that it wouldn’t affect us too much”she notes.
“There are applications dedicated to direct violence to protect yourself, alert buttons, etc. But for everyday communication, there was no dedicated tool.”
Eva Ngalle, founder of TI3RSat franceinfo
The application is not intended to be used only in extreme situations: “Everyone can use it as long as there is a conflict situation where we are obliged to stay in touch. There are complicated separations, people who can no longer speak to each other, where there are violent words…” Women and men can register. There is no gender criterion although, of the nearly 1,400 users, 95% are women, admits Eva Ngalle: “This corresponds to the proportions among victims of domestic violence.”
The application also moderates insults using a filter with the words “flowery language” to prevent the victim from being confronted with this violence. But the history records all exchanges in an uncensored version: this is one of the fundamental aspects of the application in terms of evidence, particularly in court or when filing a complaint. All you have to do is download this history: there is no need to go back into the conversation, keep screenshots and build up a whole bunch of evidence…
Efforts which often cost the victim a lot psychologically, assures Eva Ngalle: “When you receive 200 text messages during the day, when you have to take 200 screenshots to file a complaint… When the police ask you to go back over a year of exchanges and you have to reread a year of conversations to take screenshots, it’s really very complicated.”
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When designing the application, she consulted two courts, via their domestic violence unit, as well as a gendarmerie: “We made changes so that the export of the history could be suitable for the complaint. When I presented TI3RS to the gendarme of the Family Protection House, she told me: ‘But it’s awesome !’ Because, for them too, it’s complicated to have complete exchanges. Sometimes we have the beginning but not the end, the messages are taken out of context.”
“Having a clear document helps both the people who are going to file a complaint and the people who receive the complaints.”
Eva Ngalle, founder of TI3RSat franceinfo
First designed for victims, the application can be downloaded by perpetrators of violence, assures its founder: “It can be a way to avoid repeat offenses, to tell ourselves that the exchanges are recorded and that we are careful not to do it again, so as not to go to prison or face other sanctions. If we only take care of the victims, I don’t think things will change.” Eva Ngalle thus works in direct contact with associations which support perpetrators of domestic violence.
Requiring funding to be developed, the application is currently available via a subscription of 9.90 euros per month. Partnerships with around thirty associations, departments and family allowance funds allow beneficiaries to obtain free registration. Companies can also purchase subscriptions for their employees. The short-term objective, assures Eva Ngalle, is to “make the application free for everyone so that it is accessible to as many people as possible.” Internationally, the entrepreneur has already been contacted by several countries, such as Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Colombia.