How to Respond to a Serious Incident

When you meet new people, there is always a risk. And while negative CS experiences are rare — and dangerous situations are even rarer — if you’ve had one, it’s important to take the right steps to make sure that your well-being is taken care of. If you have been the victim of a crime, follow these steps.

Alert the proper authorities and seek professional support.If you feel comfortable doing so, the first and most important thing to do is to contact the police, your country’s embassy, a lawyer, and/or the hospital. They are empowered to protect you and help you take legal action against the person who has harmed you. The more quickly you do this, the more likely it is that they will be able to find the person and begin an investigation. We also encourage you to seek professional help from counselors or organized support groups if you feel stressed or depressed by the situation.

Brief the CouchSurfing team on the situation. Once you are safe and being properly supported, contact us to report what happened. Be sure to include a link to the profile of the person you are reporting so that we can identify them. We will immediately begin working with you to determine what actions should be taken to protect the community. If you are pursuing legal action, we will also search through our records to see if there is any information that may be helpful to the authorities.

Please note that you must contact us yourself, or the authorities may contact us for you; we can’t take a report from your friend or family member. Our team has been supporting CouchSurfing members for many years and observes a strict policy of confidentiality.

Connect the authorities with the CouchSurfing team. CouchSurfing is not a law enforcement agency and is not authorized or able to conduct a police investigation. However, we will do everything in our power to assist any investigation into your case, including speaking directly with the authorities and releasing relevant records from our system upon proper legal request.

Draft a reference and send it to the CouchSurfing team. Depending on your situation, you may decide to leave a reference for one of the other members involved. Our reference guidelines are designed to keep references clear, relevant to the experience being described, and concise. It can be very difficult to write this way when you’re upset. This is why we recommend that before posting your reference, you send it to the team member that you have been in contact with. They can tell you whether or not what you have written is within our guidelines and terms of use before you post it..