Coercive Control and the Law
- knowthepattern
- Jan 13, 2022
- 3 min read
"Coercive control" in the words of activist and professor Lisa Aronson Fontes, PhD,
is a strategy some people use to dominate their intimate partners and maintain their privileges. It usually includes some combination of isolation, degradation, micromanagement, manipulation, stalking, physical abuse, sexual coercion, threats, and punishment. (1)
While the United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Scotland have criminalized this form of psychological abuse, in the United States only the states of California and Hawaii have passed laws to prosecute abusers. South Carolina has legislation which has not yet been passed. Lawmakers in Britain were significantly influenced by the 2007 book by Evan Stark entitled "Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Their Personal Lives." Stark's research is profoundly revealing. First, that physical violence is simply a manifestation of ongoing emotional abuse including three main factors: intimidation, isolation and control. Secondly he cites a failure of law enforcement to properly analyze the causes of abuse, addressing cases only from the visible result. Effective results can only be attained when we take into account the root of the problem and consider the dynamics more thoroughly.(2)
Having spent most of his career studying these cases, Stark argues that "most abuse victims are driven to seek help more because of a pattern of oppression in an intimate relationship than the violence. Such oppression prevents women from freely developing their thoughts, behaviors, personality features, interests, and pursuits.
Finally, Stark provides the research showing that oppression of this kind often leads women to criminal acts themselves. As a result, when we fail to recognize and address the real problem, what underlies physical attacks, we are only perpetuating the and even expanding the cycle of violence by ignoring the fact that victims are so often compelled toward such acts as a natural human defense mechanism.
Recent attention to the psychology of domestic violence has finally shed light on the issue of "reactive violence," in which a victim, driven toward violence in reaction to ongoing attacks, which may themselves be obscure, denied by the perpetrator and leaving no visible scars. Yet when the victim is worn down or provoked to the point of reacting aggressively, her actions are criminalized. This reactive violence is often amplified by the original perpetrator as a means defense or justification. Law enforcement officials however, can only take into account what is apparent at the scene of an incident. Mandatory arrest policies, which vary by state but require that someone be taken into custody when police respond to a domestic violence call, have too often led to the incarceration of victims, only making their ultimate recovery, mentally, emotionally as well as legally and financially, far more difficult if not impossible. (3)
Evan Stark's advocacy in the United States contributed to passage of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act. Yet the bill still criminalizes only actions causing significant visible injury. Time Magazine quoted criminal behavior analyst Laura Richards, who helped pass recent laws against coercive control in Ireland and Scotland. She wrote “we’re beginning to understand that it isn’t about one-off incidents. Abuse is a pattern... and coercive control is the very heart of it.”(4)
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