Domestic abuse encompasses far more than just physical violence. It often includes a less visible, yet deeply damaging form of abuse known as coercive control. This is characterized by a consistent pattern of controlling, coercive, and intimidating behaviors by a current or former partner.
Through these tactics, one partner seeks to dominate the other by exerting power over every facet of their life. It effectively traps the victim in an invisible prison of manipulation and fear.
According to Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS, 2021), coercive control is “the ongoing and repetitive use of behaviors or strategies to control a current or ex intimate partner and make them feel inferior to, and dependent on, the perpetrator.”
The fact that it can occur without physical violence presents unique challenges for legal recognition and makes it difficult to prove in court.
Evan Stark originally developed the term and its conceptual framework in his 2007 seminal work, “Coercive Control: The Entrapment of Women in Personal Life.” Stark’s research played a crucial role in highlighting how coercive control is central to understanding the most dangerous and damaging forms of domestic abuse.
Stark criticized the criminal justice system’s limited view of domestic abuse as individual episodes of physical violence. He argued instead that the continuous application of controlling tactics—including emotional abuse, social isolation, economic restriction, and manipulation—constitutes a more pervasive and damaging form of abuse.
Recognizing Coercive Control
Victims of coercive control might not realize or be able to express that the things they are experiencing in their relationship are part of a pattern of coercive behavior. However, controlling behavior often escalates throughout the relationship and even after a relationship ends. This significantly heightens the danger and risks to the victim’s physical safety. It is, therefore, crucial to recognize the signs of coercive control.
Coercive control functions through various manipulative tactics aimed at undermining the victim’s autonomy, self-worth, and independence. While the specific forms of coercive control can differ significantly across different relationships, they typically involve one or more of the characteristics described below.
1. Verbal and Emotional Abuse
Verbal and emotional abuse are critical aspects of coercive control. This form of abuse includes actions like criticizing, belittling, name-calling, mocking, and insulting, which perpetrators use to humiliate, degrade, and diminish the victim’s self-worth.
Controlling partners frequently employ tactics such as gaslighting, where they cause victims to doubt their sanity or memories.
Abusers also manipulate emotions strategically, alternating between affection and cruelty to condition the victim into compliance. This pattern creates an environment where the victim feels unable to leave the relationship despite the harm they are experiencing.
2. Controlling Acts
Coercive control often manifests through the micromanagement of a victim’s everyday life. This can include stringent rules that dictate minute details of the victim’s activities, from their appearance and diet to their social interactions and leisure activities.
More extreme forms of control can force the victim into major life decisions against their will, such as marriage, moving abroad, or quitting a job. These actions further isolate them and deepen their dependency on the abuser.
Abusers often set unreasonable curfews, enforce strict schedules, monitor communications, or make surprise appearances at their partner’s workplace or social gatherings. These acts constantly remind the victim of the perpetrator’s presence and power, further entrenching the dynamics of fear and submission in the relationship.
3. Physical or Sexual Violence
Physical or sexual violence may not always be present in relationships marked by coercive control. However, when present, these acts become powerful tools of terror and manipulation.
Perpetrators might employ a range of intimidating behaviors, such as blocking exits, clenching fists, slamming doors, or throwing objects near the victim to instill a constant sense of threat. Driving dangerously, making threats of violence, or displaying weapons provide a clear signal of their capacity and willingness to cause harm.
More severe actions involve sexual assault and direct violence against the victim, their loved ones, or their property, intensifying the atmosphere of fear and compliance.
4. Isolation from Support Systems
Isolation is a critical tactic in coercive control, where perpetrators work methodically to cut off victims from their external support networks. By doing so, they foster a crippling dependency, making the victim feel that the abuser is their only source of support.
The control may begin with subtle suggestions that certain friends are not looking out for their best interests. It may then move into outright accusations of family members being intrusive or disruptive to the couple’s relationship. Over time, these suggestions can escalate into demands. The abuser might explicitly forbid the victim from seeing specific people or attending social gatherings.
This breakdown of social connections is devastating, stripping the victim of any potential refuge or ally and embedding the abusive dynamics more deeply into their everyday life. As a result, it significantly hinders their ability to seek help or leave the abusive environment.
5. Monitoring, Surveillance, and Stalking
The use of technology to monitor and surveil the victim’s every move is another common tactic employed by perpetrators of coercive control. This intrusive behavior may include the installation of hidden cameras and GPS trackers on personal belongings or vehicles.
Abusers often check phones, emails, and social media without consent, frequently call or message, and may even use software to observe and control digital devices remotely. Such constant surveillance strips the victim of any sense of privacy or safety.
6. Financial Exploitation
Abusers often control finances to ensure their partner becomes economically dependent on them. This financial abuse may extend to interfering with the victim’s employment or education, misappropriating their income and assets, and dictating how much money they can use.
Abusers often coerce their partners into making large financial expenditures or take over their financial decisions completely. They may force their partner to accrue debt or manipulate expenses to create instability. Perpetrators may also restrict the victim’s access to work or dictate where and when they can work.
By creating an environment of instability around work and money, abusers leave victims isolated and vulnerable, making it exceedingly difficult for them to seek help or escape the abusive situation.
7. Manipulation of Children
Manipulation of children in abusive relationships is a particularly heinous tactic where abusers exploit children as tools of coercion. Perpetrators may threaten to harm or take away the children as a way to prevent their partner from leaving them.
When a victim leaves their abuser, they often manipulate child custody arrangements and maintenance payments. They might direct the children to spy on their other parent, or disrupt the children’s schedules.
Such actions not only weaponize the children within family law proceedings but also profoundly impact their wellbeing and the parent’s ability to function effectively, both personally and professionally.
Diverse Tactics of Control
In addition to these common coercive tactics, control within relationships can take on many diverse forms. Perpetrators may coerce their victims into criminal activities, neglect their medical needs, or misuse religious beliefs by mocking or hindering the victim’s spiritual practices. They might use technology or societal expectations to discredit victims, such as threatening to disclose private information.
Another sinister aspect of control is reproductive coercion, where abusers dictate aspects of a victim’s reproductive health, such as access to or use of birth control or decisions around pregnancy.
Substance control is also common, with perpetrators fostering their partner’s dependency on drugs and alcohol or controlling their access to these substances.
Furthermore, threats of institutionalization and false allegations to authorities are tactics used to limit a victim’s autonomy. Abusers may also restrict access to essential healthcare or withhold legal documents like passports or visas to deepen the victim’s entrapment.
These multifaceted strategies of coercion ensure that victims remain isolated, dependent, and firmly under the control of their abuser.
The Price of Resistance
Coercive control operates through a pervasive and calculated scheme of intimidation, where the perpetrator establishes a regime of fear and compliance. A sense of threat looms constantly over the victim, signifying the severe repercussions of disobedience. As Evan Start notes, “Coercive control is the perpetrator establishing in the mind of the victim the price of her resistance.”
The victim learns to expect and fear punishment for not meeting their partner’s expectations. The victim’s life is dominated not just by actual incidents of abuse but by the ongoing possibility of such incidents, making resistance seem as dangerous as it is futile. These dynamics underscore the chilling effectiveness of coercive control.
Coercive control represents a grave violation of human rights, robbing individuals of their autonomy, dignity, and sense of self-worth. Recognizing the signs of coercive control is crucial in providing support and resources to those trapped in abusive relationships, empowering them to break free from the cycle of abuse and reclaim their lives.
References
Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS). (2021). Defining and Responding to Coercive Control: Policy Brief (ANROWS Insights, 01/2021). Sydney: ANROWS.
Home Office. (2023). Controlling or Coercive Behaviour Statutory Guidance Framework.
Katz, E. (2022.). Coercive Control in Children’s and Mothers’ Lives. Oxford University Press.
Stark, E. (2007). Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life. New York: Oxford University Press.
