Coercive Control

[Kizzie]

The term "coercive control" is relatively new but such an important shift in our justice/police understanding of more nuanced forms of relational trauma and emotional abuse.  This is a huge step forward in identifying abusers and holding them accountable.  Coercive control is a form of emotional abuse that seeks to take away a person's freedom and to strip away their sense of self. The person employing this type of emotional abuse creates a world in which the person experiencing coercive control is constantly monitored and criticized; their every move is checked against an unpredictable, ever-changing, unknowable rule book. Typically it is associated with emotional abuse in adulthood.

The following types of behaviour are common examples of coercive control:

•  Isolating the individual from their friends or family
•  Depriving of them of their basic needs
•  Monitoring a person via online communication tools or using spyware
•  Controlling how much money they have and how they spend it
•  Monitoring their everyday activities and movements
•  Repeatedly putting them down, humiliating them, calling them names, or telling them that they are worthless
•  Threatening to harm or kill them or their children or their pets
•  Threatening to publish information about them or to report them to the police or the authorities
•  Damaging their property or household goods
•  Forcing them to take part in criminal activity or child abuse

This above list is not exhaustive. Physical violence may be used alongside these other tactics of isolation, mind-games and the micro-regulation of everyday life or it may never be present other than as a threat or perceived.

• Coercive Control UK
• So What Exactly is Coercive Control? by Laura Richards
• Coercive Control, Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, New York State, USA
• Coercive Control Checklist: 14 Signs Your Partner is Trying to Control You, by Rhalou Allerhand