Abusers who employ coercive control use a calculated pattern of behavior designed to strip away their victim’s autonomy and sense of self. While many people understand physical abuse, the insidious nature of coercive control – which includes manipulation, intimidation, and isolation – can be harder to recognize and prove. One particularly devastating tactic involves abusers who weaponize self-harm or fabricate evidence to manipulate law enforcement and the legal system against their victims. This strategy not only traumatizes victims but also exploits institutional biases and systemic vulnerabilities, often leaving survivors to navigate a complex maze of legal, emotional, and psychological challenges.
Why Do Abusers Resort to Self-Harm?
Abusers who resort to self-harm often do so as part of a calculated strategy to maintain power and control. By inflicting injuries on themselves, they can present themselves as victims to law enforcement, courts, and social networks, exploiting assumptions about who is telling the truth in domestic disputes.
This manipulation of credibility allows them to threaten their actual victims with serious consequences like arrest or loss of child custody, forcing compliance with their demands.
The “evidence” created through self-harm can be particularly effective in smear campaigns, where abusers work to isolate their victims by convincing others that the victim is actually the perpetrator – a strategy known as DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender). This tactic is especially powerful because it turns systems meant to protect victims into weapons against them.
Tactics Used When Abusers Self-Harm for Control
When abusers self-harm for control over another person they often employ highly calculated strategies to manipulate perceptions and legal outcomes. Common tactics include:
Fabricating Physical Evidence. Abusers harm themselves by scratching, bruising, or even cutting in ways that appear consistent with physical altercations. They may use tools or methods that mimic nail marks, bites, or slaps. These injuries are then presented to authorities as proof of their partner’s alleged violence.
Recording Altered Interactions. Abusers may provoke victims into arguments or defensive actions while secretly recording the incident. Later, they edit the recordings to omit their own aggression, framing the other person as abusive.
Filing False Police Reports. After self-inflicting injuries, abusers call law enforcement to file false allegations, knowing that police often default to removing or arresting the alleged perpetrator. This tactic is particularly effective in jurisdictions with mandatory arrest laws in domestic violence cases.
Threatening or Attempting Suicide. In extreme cases, abusers may threaten or attempt suicide, framing the victim’s behavior as the cause. These threats may create strong feelings of guilt and fear, trapping a person in the relationship since they feel a need to “protect” the abuser.
Impact on Victims
The use of self-harm as a coercive control tactic has devastating effects on victims, exacerbating the harm already inflicted by the abusive relationship.
Legal Consequences. Individuals may face wrongful arrest, restraining orders, or criminal charges, which can damage their reputation, financial stability, and future opportunities. Stark (2007) notes that coercive control often traps victims in a legal web, further isolating them from support systems.
Emotional and Psychological Harm. Victims of this tactic often experience severe guilt, confusion, and self-doubt, compounded by the stigma of being labeled as an abuser. This emotional toll can lead to anxiety, depression, and PTSD.
Isolation and Loss of Support. When false allegations succeed, individuals often lose access to critical support systems, including friends, family, or professional networks, who may believe the abuser’s narrative.
Child Custody Battles. In cases involving children, false allegations and fabricated evidence can influence custody decisions, allowing the abuser to gain control over the children as another form of manipulation.
Signs an Abuser is Using Self-Harm as a Tactic
Recognizing when an abuser is using self-harm as a coercive control tactic requires careful observation of patterns and behaviors. Several key indicators can emerge over time. The abuser’s accounts of their injuries may not align with physical evidence or other witness statements, creating inconsistencies that raise red flags.
Many abusers who employ this tactic have a documented history of manipulative behavior, including previous false allegations or other controlling strategies. Frequent calls to law enforcement to report alleged abuse may indicate an orchestrated effort to build a false narrative against the victim. Additionally, past incidents of threatening self-harm, suicide, or using emotional blackmail often precede an escalation to more severe manipulative tactics, including self-inflicted injuries used to control and intimidate their victim.
What Can Victims Do?
If you suspect an abuser is using self-harm as a tactic of coercive control, there are steps you can take to protect yourself:
1. Document Everything. Keep detailed records of interactions, including text messages, emails, and recordings. If safe, record interactions to capture the full context of any disputes.
2. Involve Legal Support. Seek the advice of an attorney experienced in domestic violence cases. Legal professionals can help you gather evidence to counter false allegations and navigate the justice system.
3. Build a Support Network. Connect with domestic violence advocates, therapists, and support groups. These networks provide emotional and practical resources to help you navigate the situation.
4. Be Proactive with Law Enforcement. If you anticipate false allegations, consider filing your own report outlining the abuse and providing evidence of coercive control. This can establish a record of the abuser’s behavior.
5. Seek a Protective Order. In some cases, obtaining a restraining order can prevent further harassment and limit the abuser’s ability to manipulate the legal system against you.
How the Legal System Can Respond
The legal system needs better tools to handle cases where abusers manipulate evidence and harm themselves to control their victims. Police and investigators need training to spot these tactics – what looks straightforward on the surface often masks a complex pattern of abuse.
Courts tend to focus on physical evidence from single incidents, but they should be looking at the bigger picture: how has one person been trying to control and isolate the other over time?
Additionally, when someone is facing false accusations from their abuser, they need immediate access to legal help and advocates who understand these situations. Without this support, victims can end up trapped in a nightmare where the systems meant to protect them are being used as weapons against them.
The use of self-harm to falsely accuse victims is one of the most extreme and damaging tactics of coercive control. It exploits societal and legal assumptions, turning systems meant to protect victims into tools of further abuse. Recognizing and addressing this behavior is essential to protecting survivors and ensuring justice.
References
Stark, E. (2007). Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life. Oxford University Press.
Johnson, M. P. (2008). A Typology of Domestic Violence: Intimate Terrorism, Violent Resistance, and Situational Couple Violence. Northeastern University Press.
Dutton, D. G., & Goodman, L. A. (2005). Coercion in intimate partner violence: Toward a theoretical framework. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 6(2), 83-104.
Bancroft, L. (2002). Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. Berkley Books.
Featured Image: When abusers self-harm to get victims arrested it’s a particularly insidious tactic of coercive control. Source: Generated with Adobe Firefly
