Coercive control: Why governments must move to criminalise this insidious abuse
Inside the horrific world of coercive control, and why governments are finally acting to legislate against this insidious abuse. Listen to this story as a podcast.
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It might start with a snide comment about a new haircut. Then a harsh critique of that night’s meal, or a belittling joke about needing to cut back on the calories.
Before long he will have moved in, borrowed her bank card, started answering her phone when it rings and is picking fights with her parents so they don’t visit as often.
She’s always on edge and one day she might be shocked to discover a tracking app on her phone. For one woman it ended when she discovered her bank accounts had been drained.
Another found herself pinned against a wall by her throat before she realised how the danger had escalated. For too many it has ended with murder.
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All of the women who have experienced this kind of takeover of their lives by a partner are victims of the insidious form of abuse known as coercive control.
It is a sneaky thing that starts small and is hard to recognise. And, like the frog in the proverbial boiling pot, by the time most victims realise they’re in hot water the abuse has turned physical and their lives can be at risk.
As one mother who survived a controlling, and later violent, relationship told SAWeekend: “It’s this constant manipulation that’s just under the surface. It’s so subtle that you don’t even know it’s happening. And that’s why I was confused, because I was thinking ‘I’m not being abused’. You can never quite figure out why you are so scared of this person. If I went to someone and said ‘I need to report this’ I’d sound dumb … because it looks like nothing at all.”
Australians are now all too familiar with the epidemic of physical and sexual violence against women playing out every day in this country. But we are less aware of the non-physical red flags that often precede that first punch, hand around the throat or forced sex act. These controlling tactics are almost always present in relationships which eventually end in murder.
They were there in the behaviour of Rowan Baxter before he callously set his estranged wife Hannah Clarke and their three children alight in their car on a suburban Brisbane street in February 2020. They were hallmarks of the relationship between Allison and Gerard Baden-Clay before her body was discovered on a creek bank and he was charged with her murder in April 2012.
But often, little action is taken by victims or authorities until there is some violent incident that leaves a mark – and evidence. Now there is a push in all states and territories across Australia to introduce coercive control laws to recognise these behaviours before they entrap victims and cause lifelong damage.
Politicians on all sides of the federal parliament have supported a motion calling for further action. Queensland has set up a taskforce to examine coercive control laws while the NSW parliament is expected to deliver the findings of an inquiry in June.
In South Australia legislation was put to parliament at the end of last year that would introduce penalties of up to 15 years in jail for committing offences acknowledged as coercive control.
Labor MP Katrine Hildyard’s Bill covers people in intimate relationships, such as married or de facto couples, ex-partners, relatives such as siblings, or people who are reliant on a carer.
It would criminalise acts meant to humiliate, degrade or frighten a victim, isolate them from support networks or services, restrict their freedom, control or monitor their activities – such as what they wear or where they go – or make them dependent on, or subordinate to, their abuser.
Abusers would face up to a maximum seven-year jail term, but that would increase to 15 years in cases involving a child or a weapon or where the person was a repeat offender.
Attorney-General Vickie Chapman has acknowledged the dangers posed by control and coercion in relationships too, but is waiting on the outcome of the NSW inquiry before “determining how best to proceed in South Australia”.
Some argue current laws enable police and the courts to deal with emotional, psychological or financial abuse and attention should instead be focused on better educating people to recognise the red flags and bolstering support services.
Others say it is too difficult to police behaviours which could occur in unhealthy but not abusive relationships, and say the task of gathering evidence to prove non-physical abuse will be too time-consuming and onerous.
Even some victims question whether it is possible to outlaw behaviours that fall into a grey area for many.
“Where do you draw the line?” asks another Adelaide woman who spoke to SAWeekend on the condition of anonymity. “There are a lot of dysfunctional relationships out there. There’s too many blurry lines. It’s really difficult to define. How do you prove it? You’d have to have a very, very, clear law.”
But there are examples around the world where authorities have defined and criminalised these behaviours – and the key factors are fear and repetition.
Advice to police officers in England and Wales, the first jurisdictions to enact coercive control laws in 2015, acknowledges that “in many cases the conduct might seem innocent, especially if considered in isolation of other incidents”.
“There might be confusion about where the appropriate dynamic of a relationship ends and where unlawful behaviour begins,” the guidelines state. “The difference in an abusive relationship is that decisions by a dominant partner can become rules that, when broken, lead to consequences for the victim.”
The NSW Women’s Safety Service, in its submission to the inquiry in that state, argues that “distinguishing between genuine coercive control within relationships … and behaviours that may be irritating but not abusive” comes down to whether fear and intimidation are at play.
National organisation No To Violence notes that most couples have “disagreements and sometimes exhibit unhealthy behaviour” but “when these activities occur on a repeated and continuous basis and become harmful to the victim/survivor, that is coercive control”.
“Often (they) feel like they are walking on eggshells, living in a constant state of fear … and are terrified of making a wrong step out of fear for the consequences. This should not be how anybody lives.”
To qualify as coercive control under the UK laws, an offender must be in an intimate relationship and living with their victim. Their behaviour must have caused distress or alarm that affects their victim’s daily life, or have caused their victim to fear on at least two occasions that they would be subjected to physical violence.
Offenders are judged on whether they “ought to know” that their behaviour would have that effect and, if convicted, face a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
In Scotland, authorities went further with legislation enacted in 2019 which covers current and former partners, who are not required to be living together, and their children.
The maximum penalty there is 14 years in jail and enforcement is based on whether a “reasonable person” would believe the behaviour was controlling. More than 1000 cases have been taken to court in the past two years.
Ireland also has coercive control laws, and in 2004 the Tasmanian Government created two new offences to prohibit economic and emotional abuse. However, they have rarely been prosecuted.
Several inquiries, including a Victorian royal commission and a special taskforce in Queensland, have examined and recommended against introducing coercive control laws, in part because they found they would often only have a “symbolic effect”.
But most proponents argue the awareness-raising benefits of such legislation are as important as the legal ramifications.
“We need to have the conversations … and for people to become aware that if you are coupled with somebody who makes you feel really bad about yourself and sabotages and criticises you, this is a red flag,” urges survivor and mother Tanya*, who says she spent two decades in a controlling marriage that turned physically violent.
“I was in an environment where I never did anything right. He never told me I looked nice or I was doing a good job of anything. He really isolated me. I was dependent on him for money. I didn’t have a vehicle. My world became smaller and smaller.
“Then he needed to up his level of abuse to keep me controlled. That’s when the raising of a fist started … the throwing things … the forcing sex acts. I wasn’t educated that these behaviours are coercive control.”
South Australian laws already include emotional and psychological harm in our legal definition of abuse, but it is extremely rare that perpetrators are convicted. It is often difficult for police to gather proof and victims may not even recognise the tactics as abuse.
The Law Society of SA says the current legal definition of abuse includes emotional harm, denial of financial, social or personal autonomy, keeping a person under surveillance, depriving them of their liberty, isolating them from family, friends or cultural groups, coercing them to relinquish control of assets or income and “exercising an unreasonable level of control and domination over the daily life of the person”.
But, in a submission to the Attorney-General, Society president Rebecca Sandford says police “rarely apply” these laws to that full extent.
Police and courts can impose intervention orders to protect victims from perpetrators, and Sandford says greater use of these would “be far more effective than introducing a new offence of coercive control” because they can be imposed quickly and “disrupt abusive or coercive behaviours before they escalate”.
She adds that further education is needed about the signs of abuse and what services are already available.
Among those arguing Australia does not need coercive control laws is former federal Labor leader Mark Latham. In a submission to the NSW inquiry he writes that it would be “an impossible challenge” for police, prosecutors and judges to “separate fact from fiction in these he-said, she-said situations”.
In Scotland, authorities spent about $1.4m training 14,000 police officers on how to enforce the new laws. Guidance to officers in the UK included advice on evidence collection, which could canvass email, phone and internet records or screenshots, bank records, testimony of family, friends, neighbours or regular visitors such as postal workers, withdrawal by the victim from previously common activities such as sport or religious groups and diaries kept by a victim.
Latham is also among a group who argue there should be more focus on male victims of domestic violence. There is undeniable evidence that huge numbers of women are victimised by men, while data on male victims is harder to come by.
For example, SA Police say 96 per cent of offenders involved in the most high-risk domestic violence cases in this state are men. Of the 700 South Australians charged with strangling their partner or family member in the past two years, 95 per cent were men.
And of the 600-plus people who were concerned enough about their partner’s behaviour to apply for a criminal background check through SA’s Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme, 98 per cent were women.
But the Australian Brotherhood of Fathers says that of a sample of 1000 callers to its helpline, 53 per cent had been assaulted by a female partner and another 30 per cent had experienced other forms of abuse. The Brotherhood argues that “the criminalisation of coercive control must be equally applied to perpetrators, irrespective of gender”.
Like most legislation, the coercive control Bill before SA’s parliament uses the gender-neutral terms person, defendant and victim to describe those it covers.
Women who have spoken to SAWeekend about their experiences in controlling and abusive relationships have also noted male friends or relatives are more likely to experience emotional or psychological abuse than they are physical abuse.
One of them, Lyn*, says she believes this can be more common for men “because of the physical strength dynamics” in a heterosexual relationship.
“So I think coercive control laws are a very powerful and important thing for both male and female victims,” she says. “I understand there are people who have concerns about coercive control laws, because some people will see it as a slippery slope and something that can easily be abused. I acknowledge that.
“But coercive control laws send a message that this is not OK. It validates the experience that this is abuse. It clearly articulates for the general public, and also the perpetrators, whether they be male or female, that this behaviour is not OK.”
The more the issue is publicly discussed, the less stigma there is, she says. “Shame and silence perpetuate the behaviours and they keep people trapped. The more we’re talking about this, the more people who are experiencing it will potentially be able to see there is a way out. Because this isn’t OK and they deserve better.”
* Not their real names
LYN’S STORY
For years he told her she was crazy. And high maintenance. And controlling. And manipulative. And fake. And abusive.
He told her she was a bad mother. That she was lucky he had been willing to marry her – because she had been a single mother who, he had said, didn’t know how to parent her young son.
Lyn* had believed him when he told her if they ever separated, she would lose her son, because he would tell the world what she was really like, and authorities would take him away.
She knew that Jamie* was lazy and couldn’t hold down a job. They moved around between various regional SA centres, and she recognised that he was isolating her from family and friends. She knew he rarely ventured outside the home, was addicted to online gaming, and would never lift a finger to help out around the house.
But the systematic verbal and psychological abuse rendered her powerless to either change his behaviour or leave the relationship.
Plus, she was pleased with the bond he had struck with her son Darcy*, whom she realised needed a father figure. The pair was close. They did everything together.
So she put up with the abuse. For many years. She was too afraid, too emotionally crippled to do otherwise. After a while though, she began to see past the barricades that Jamie created. To understand that she needed to get out of the poisonous relationship. To know that she was living in a home which was unsafe both for her and her son. And to worry that her son would soon start learning and mimicking some of Jamie’s socially inept personality traits.
So, about 10 years ago, Lyn finally summoned the courage to leave. She knew it would be tough on Darcy, who was just entering his teens. And she knew it would be a traumatic process.
But she did it. And was glad she did it. But still, for eight of the past 10 years, she remained racked with the guilt of having separated Darcy from the man who had been the primary male role model in his life. For all those years, she had been operating on the assumption that everything had been her fault. She didn’t even consider herself an abuse victim, because Jamie had never physically hit her.
Then she found out a piece of information that changed everything. Darcy confessed that for several years during his youth, Jamie had been sexually abusing him.
“He didn’t hit me, ever, but I was so afraid of him that I didn’t do anything (to fight back), and then … this is what happened to my son,” she says, barely able to conceal the rage in her voice.
“I spent years thinking ‘I’m a terrible person, I can’t believe I did that to him (Jamie), and I’ve done this to Darcy and Darcy’s so broken and he’s broken because of me, because I ended this marriage and he was so close to Jamie’.
“And then Darcy tells me that and I was like, ‘actually, none of this was my fault. This man is a monster’. He targeted a vulnerable single mother with a male child, and then started sexually abusing him. That doesn’t just happen by accident.”
In the first few years after their relationship, Lyn lived with the constant worry that Jamie would arrive back in her life, and feared his physical retaliation.
But the knowledge of Darcy’s abuse somehow caused that fear to abate, ever so slightly, to make way for a fury she knows will never truly dissipate.
She still suffers from panic attacks, bouts of depression and has symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. She still wakes up in the middle of the night in tears, shaking from a nightmare in which Jamie is either suffocating or taunting her.
But she’s not as terrified as she was. Not as afraid as she had been before she found out about what he had done to Darcy.
“I think there’s this kind of maternal, righteous rage,” she says. “And I’m not as afraid anymore. Because he broke my son. And that’s not OK. So whereas my fear before was probably a bit more about me, now I’m so angry about what he did to Darcy, that I’m not as afraid.”
The realisation of what Jamie had done to Darcy also made Lyn realise how important it is that governments act to stamp out coercive control, because of the damage abusers such as her former husband are able to inflict.
“It can cause so much damage in so many other ways,” she says. “Look at what’s happened to Darcy, and what he’s having to unravel and deal with and what was taken away from him. And that was all because Jamie controlled me.”
She and Darcy live in separate parts of South Australia but are both seeking professional help to guide them through the trauma they have endured.
“There’s this concept called post traumatic growth,” she says. “I don’t believe everything happens for a reason – I think that’s trite bullshit – but what I do believe is that bad stuff can happen, bad stuff does happen, and how we move through that determines the rest of our lives – as opposed to letting it keep us down.”
She compares her next challenge with the Japanese art form kintsugi – which involves gluing broken vases back together and making a feature of the joins, embracing imperfections to create a stronger, more beautiful piece of art.
“On my bad days, I still cry for no reason,” she says. “I still have a really deep grief – more about what happened to my son, than what happened to me, because I was an adult.
“But he was just a baby, you know. That shit shouldn’t happen.
“And so, my mental health at the moment is probably better than it was. It’s not 100 per cent, but talking about it helps. Because then I can take charge of my story.
“And these sorts of conversations around coercive control are incredibly powerful, because it gives people the opportunity to share their story and then rewrite their narrative into the future.”
*Not their real names
JASMINE’S STORY
Jasmine* still can’t believe the thought even crossed her mind. But one night, when her partner Tim was eating at the kitchen table with his back to her, an abhorrent idea forced itself into her consciousness.
“I actually had this vision,” she says. “I thought that if I had a weapon, like a gun,
right now … and I actually took aim. I feel embarrassed because I’ve never spoken it out loud before, but I pointed my fingers at his head and then I went …(she points her fingers as if they were a gun and mimics the noise of a quiet firearm explosion) ‘poof’.”
“I thought this is really f..ked. I even thought, you know, his head would explode and I’d be free.”
It’s a remarkable confession from a genuinely thoughtful and gentle woman who had been driven to such hatred by a partner who had subjected her to years of verbal, psychological, financial and sexual abuse.
For too long, Tim had yelled at her, called her a string of abusive names too vile to print in these pages, demeaned her in front of her children, weaseled away her money and forced her into sex.
On more than one occasion she feared for her own safety. He threw objects at her. After one particularly nasty argument, he drove her into the foothills on the pretence of a make-up dinner, but all she could think of was how isolated and vulnerable she was. He never hit her, but as their relationship went on, the verbal abuse, intimidation and insults were intense, leaving her genuinely frightened.
And this from a man who had romanced her off her feet when they first met as she had been bouncing back from the end of her marriage.
As a single mother with young children, Jasmine had been flattered by the attention of an attractive, younger man and ignored warnings from her own family and admissions (which she now recognises as half-truths) from Tim that he was temporarily out of work but was getting back on his financial feet after overcoming an illicit drug habit.
Within a year, Tim had moved in with Jasmine and her children. Soon, he was using her money to buy himself expensive clothes and other accessories and hardly lifting a finger around the house. She suspects now the money was also used for drugs, parties and prostitutes.
A road rage incident within the first year of their relationship provided Jasmine with the first warning sign of her new partner’s hot temper and before long the verbal abuse and intimidation became commonplace.
“He’d push all the buttons and I would flare up, which isn’t in my nature,” she says. “I’ll only do it when I’m backed into a corner – and anything to do with my children.
“And then (when she argued back) he’d go ‘Oh look how you’re behaving, you’re being hysterical’.” Somehow, Tim would turn the arguments around. Told her they were all her fault. Because she was “hysterical, crazy or paranoid”. It was textbook gaslighting, making Jasmine doubt herself and question her perception of reality.
“You’re just a hysterical woman,” he would tell her, and then turn to her children and explain that women go through something every month that makes them “a bit crazy”. He would also play on their age difference, calling her a “stupid old woman”.
“I was just in denial because I knew it was going to take a lot of hard work to unravel,” she says. “I didn’t know it then but I was actually scared of him because he had such a hot temper. He would just go from zero to 100 and start screaming and shouting and carrying on, which made me then just back right off.” Tim floated in and out of jobs which meant Jasmine was usually the sole monetary provider and his chronic laziness meant she was the only one doing any work around the house.
So she ceded some fiscal control to Tim, a man with champagne tastes but a beer budget, until her bank card was one day rejected at the supermarket checkout and she was unable to access online banking.
Blood drained from her face when she visited the bank and realised Tim had emptied all her accounts and stolen money she and her former husband had set aside for their children. He had created a Tabcorp account in her name (she doesn’t gamble) and even taken out two payday loans – without her knowledge but in her name.
She learned later that Tim had been secretly hitting up her elderly father for money, and had convinced one of her young children to hand over cash under the pretence of buying shares and watching the capital grow.
But the discovery about her bank accounts was the final straw.
“My bank manager said to me afterwards she had never seen the colour drain from someone’s face like that before,” Jasmine says. “I rang him from the car and said I wanted to block access immediately.
“As far as I was concerned it was an absolute horror discovery – but it confirmed that I wasn’t going crazy. I was trapped and I didn’t want to be there – I wanted to get out of it.
“So I finally had the reason (to end the relationship). It was black and white. He was stealing from me and he had stolen from my children. There was fraud. He had used my name to get loans.
“That was it. I said f..k off. Get out. This is it. You’re done.”
Years after ending the relationship, the scars are still healing, though she knows she will never be the same.
“I certainly have trust issues,” she says. “My sister has said to me a couple of times (about finding a new partner). Nup. Not interested. Never again. I just think I’ll never trust anybody again.
“But what really gets to me is that trauma that will go on forever. And if it was just me, that’s one thing, but my children are innocent. They didn’t ask to be brought into anything and I think that’s an enduring guilt that I will always feel bad about. Always, always, always.”
But she wants to tell her story in the hope that her experience can be a lesson to anyone else caught in a relationship marred by coercive control.
“The damage is never just contained to the time you’re together,” she says. “The damage just ripples on forever. I just hate him. And I don’t hate anyone. I hate him with a passion.
“For other women, or even men, you have to have a sense of self-worth in your relationship, and never lose sight of that. And if something doesn’t feel right, it’s not right,
so listen to your instincts. If something tells you to run, then run.”
*Not their real names
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