CCChat-Magazine_Issue-20

Contents
Editor's Notes
5 It's no longer 2020 and, with the New Year, there
is renewed focus on criminalising coercive
control in more jurisdictions.
The CCChat Interview
7 Paul McGorrery talks about his research into the
criminal law's response to emerging harms such
as psychological harm and coercive control
Movie Screening & Discussion
16 Information on the screening of Rachel Meyrick's
groundbreaking documentary on the Family
Courts - 'What Doesn't Kill Me.'
The CCChat Interview
21 Cassandra Wiener advises governments and
activists around the world on the doctrinal
implications of domestic abuse law reform.
Raising Awareness Through Art
28 RS uses cartooning as her voice, whilst working
with her partner on the issue within their
relationship.
Why Coercive Control Should Be A Crime
32 Jess Hill, author of the multi-award winning book
'See What You Made Me Do' shares her
thoughts.
Coercive Control Legislation
39 Where is Coercive Control a Crime ? We take a
look at the enacted legislation in the various
jurisdictions.
Making The Invisible Visible

Editor's Notes
About The Editor
Min Grob started
Conference on Coercive
Control in June 2015,
following the end of a
relationship that was both
coercive and controlling.
Since then, there have been
several national
conferences as well as
smaller events.
Min’s interest lies in
recognising coercive control
in its initial stages, in
identifying the ‘red flags’ of
a potentially abusive
relationship before a person
becomes too invested in the
relationship, as that is when
it will be much more difficult
to leave, as well as the
challenges faced when
living with and recovering
from trauma.
Min has talked on
identifying covert abuse
and, with the use of
examples from social
media, she identifies a
number of covert tactics that
are commonly used to
manipulate. These tactics
will often be invisible in plain
sight- as the abuser seeks
to remain undetected.
Min is also a public speaker,
and speaks on both her
personal experience of
coercive control, family
courts and the livedexperience
of trauma - as
well as more generally of
abuse that is hidden in plain
sight.
Let's Grow The
Conversation!
To contact Min:
contact@
coercivecontrol.co.uk
New Year, New Focus
Happy New Year to all the readers of CCChat!
Whilst 2021 doesn't appear to be much different to 2020, so
far, it DOES bring with it a renewed energy and resolve. If the
last year has taught me anything, it's having the clarity of
mind to definitively know what I don't want and the
determination to not be a bystander or onlooker when it is so
often the easier option - but to speak up (hopefully) without
judgement and peacefully. Fingers crossed!
This issue looks at criminalising coercive control and why all
jurisdictions should be looking into this, if they are not
currently considering it. The interviews with both Cassandra
Wiener and Paul McGorrery are really fascinating- they bring
with them a huge wealth of knowledge and insight. I hope you
enjoy reading their interviews as much as I enjoyed
transcribing them!
The next issue of CCChat will be looking at cults but also
more widely at coercive influence - something that is very
topical and relevant, as this issue goes out, so keep an eye
out for it.
In the meantime, I hope you all keeping well and please, stay
safe.
Min x
www.coercivecontrol.co.uk
Making The Invisible Visible

The CCChat
Interview
Paul McGorrery
Making The Invisible Visible

The CCChat Interview
Paul McGorrery
Paul McGorrery is
a lawyer and PhD
candidate in
criminal law and
family violence in
Australia.
His research
focuses primarily
on the criminal
law's response to
emerging harms
such as
psychological harm
and coercive
control.
He is also co-editor
of the recent book
Criminalising
Coercive Control:
Family Violence
and the Criminal
Law.
P
aul McGorrery has been looking at
coercive control and how it is being
reported, in the British media. His insights
have been fascinating and I was thrilled to
be able to have a conversation with him
about his work. This is what we spoke
about:
M: Hi Paul, thank you so much for letting me interview you
for the magazine. I’ve been really fascinated in the research
you’ve been involved in but, for the readers who don’t
know you, could you talk a little about what you do?
P: I wear multiple hats. I have a full time role as manager
of legal policy at the Sentencing Council in Victoria. But
everything I do around coercive control is separate to that
and is part of my PhD research at Deakin Law School, into
how the criminal law responds to non-physical forms of
harm generally, but especially in the context of family
violence.
I think a lot about why I’m in this space because I
acknowledge it’s not my space. I see myself as an ally at
most, but I think there’s a level of empathy because I was
bullied quite a lot in primary school and high school and
there is certainly some correlation between bullying and
coercive control. Twenty years later, I found myself
working in workers’ compensation at the federal level in
Australia, and I found that psychological injuries were
accounting for 7% of all workers’ compensation claims but
33% of costs, so there was something really serious going
on with non-physical harms that people were suffering,
and I became fascinated by the notion.
I then started prosecuting criminal cases down in Victoria,
so I moved from Canberra to Melbourne, and they had all
of these family violence cases – one in particular always
stood out for me - her husband had tied her to the bed and
tortured her for a good hour or so – and it was all because
he thought she was cheating because she’d sent an email to
a male friend. At the end of it, he allowed her, and this was
his language, he ‘allowed her’ to get up and kiss his feet and
beg his forgiveness after he had shaved her head and
thrown all her hair into the bin.
Making The Invisible Visible

I’m ashamed to say that this was at a time
when I wasn’t educated about coercive
control as a course of conduct, so I was
looking at it as a single incident about
what happened on that night and I was
trying to figure out how the criminal law
could respond to what he’d done because
she had developed an eating disorder, a
sleeping disorder and none of the
offences I had available to me - because
her physical injuries were relatively minor
- really matched up to what he’d done to
her.
I wanted to charge him with causing
serious psychological harm, something
that had never been done in Australian
history.
That was the offence I needed access to,
to really capture his behaviour. It would
have forced me and the police to look
beyond what happened that night and
potentially find a quite extensive history
of abuse leading up to it.
M: I didn’t realise that was your catalyst.
P: Yes, it’s how I became interested in this
space. But I’m always careful this isn’t my
space – I’m a white male who will never
understand what it’s like to not feel safe
to walk the streets at night. I am, though,
someone who has been in the position
where I was left, as a justice system actor,
powerless upon seeing coercive control
behaviours even though I didn’t know
what it was at the time.
"At the end of it, he allowed her, and this was his language, he ‘allowed
her’ to get up and kiss his feet and beg his forgiveness after he had
shaved her head and thrown all her hair into the bin."
I had done some research and it turned
out that there were four cases in the UK
that have been reported on, where
someone had been found guilty of causing
psychological harm as a form of bodily
harm. I tried to do that here but it got
rejected, I was told that the criminal law
wasn’t ready to recognise those sorts of
harms. We still managed to convict him
and he got two years in prison for some
other offending, but that whole case
spurred my entire PhD thesis on whether
and how we should criminalise the
infliction of psychological injury.
It was during that journey that I
discovered the groundbreaking offence of
coercive control in England and Wales.
That was the offence I needed in that
case, to give the victim, who was
courageously willing to be crossexamined
by her perpetrator about the
psychological harm she had suffered, to
see justice done.
M: I know that Australia is looking into
criminalising coercive control. How is
that progressing?
P: That’s a good question. Australia is
quite unique because we have eight subjurisdictions,
each territory is responsible
for their own criminal law, for the most
part, so in order for Australia to
criminalise coercive control, eight
different jurisdictions have to bring in an
offence.
What’s really interesting is that four
jurisdictions have announced interest in
these offences and are currently, at least
reviewing whether or not to do it. In
South Australia, the Liberal party, which
is the more conservative party, despite its
name, has started reviewing it. In
Queensland they have just had an election
and the Liberal party said they would
have introduced a law if they had won,
but they lost.
Making The Invisible Visible

The more left-leaning party, Labor, have
hedged their bets in Queensland and said
that they would start looking into it. In
Victoria, the Labor party, which is in
power, has announced they’re doing a
review but, most importantly in New
South Wales, there is currently not just
bi-partisan but tri-partisan support –
Labor, Liberals and the Greens are all in
favour of criminalising coercive control -
at least preliminarily, until the
consultation has been done. They’ve
announced a big parliamentary inquiry to
seek submissions from victim-survivors,
the domestic violence sector, academics,
overseas people with experience, to make
submissions before the 29th of January
next year on whether and how this could
play out.
P: One of the concerns that gets raised in
most countries with jurisdictions that are
criminalising coercive control, is whether
it will be misused against women, who
are primarily victims rather than
primarily aggressors, and/or whether it
will criminalise behaviours in
relationships that are trivial and that
aren’t deserving of state intervention.
We wanted to find an exhaustive account
of every case we could find and the factual
details of them, to know whether women
are being charged and found guilty of this
offence and what behaviours perpetrators
are found guilty of – what are they alleged
to have done?
"That was the offence I needed access to, to really capture his behaviour.
It would have forced me and the police to look beyond what happened
that night and potentially find a quite extensive history of abuse
leading up to it."
M: It will be really interesting to see how
that goes.
P: I would actively encourage anyone
reading this, with a viewpoint to share, to
make a submission. I would particularly
encourage any victim-survivors in the UK
and Ireland (especially Scotland where so
much effort has been put into getting
these new laws right), who would feel
comfortable doing so, to share what the
new laws have meant for them. Has it
been vindicating, disappointing, outright
damaging? Yours are the stories that
matter most.
M: So, I know you were researching all of
the coercive control cases in England and
Wales and, from reading the articles and
reading about the cases, what did you
find?
Unfortunately, unlike most Australian
jurisdiction, England and Wales trial or
sentencing courts don’t routinely publish
their sentencing remarks, which is where
you would find a lot of detail about the
case from the judge’s perspective –
summarising the prosecution and defence
submissions. England and Wales also has
43, I think, diffuse police forces which
means that if you wanted access to police
records, you would have to submit
Freedom of Information requests of every
single one of them.
We tried three or four and got knocked
back every single time, and so we looked
at every media report using certain search
criteria in various news outlets, Google
and whatnot that mentioned someone
being charged with and found guilty of
controlling and coercive behaviour. We
found a quarter of the cases that had been
prosecuted in the first 28 months of
operation of the new offence.
Making The Invisible Visible

Confiscating identity documents
-especially for women who weren’t
citizens - was really prevalent, and image
based abuse - taking images or more
commonly, threatening to distribute
intimate images of someone’s partner.
Effectively, what we found, and I’m
saying this quite confidently, no one in
their right mind would read any of the
107 cases we found that had details
associated with them and say that that
was an overreach of the criminal law. In
every single case, the abuse was severe,
prolonged and had significant effect on
the victim and no one would have any
qualms in describing it as entirely
wrongful and unreasonable behaviour.
We found about 140. We didn’t know the
outcome in 20 as it wasn’t reported - it
was pre-finalisation. But of the remaining
118, this was quite astonishing, 107
offenders had been found or pleaded
guilty, which is an incredibly high rate
and, most importantly, this is the thing
and it didn’t surprise me, that over 99%
or 106 of the 107 offenders were male and
the only exception was the Jordan Worth
case which reads like a genuine reversal
of the female perpetrator of coercive
control, not a case of mistaken identity of
a woman who was the primary aggressor.
We also looked at all the behaviours that
perpetrators have engaged and used Evan
Stark’s prism of those five dimensions -
physical and sexual violence, isolation,
intimidation, degradation and regulation
– which includes both monitoring and
manipulation.
We not only coded for those dimensions
themselves but the very specific types of
behaviour like confiscating a mobile
phone, which was incredibly prevalent,
threats to self-harm were also really
prevalent, threats to harm an animal,
threats to harm a family member.
M: What I noticed, when the Serious
Crime Act (which criminalises coercive
control in England and Wales) was still a
Bill, quite a significant number of family
lawyers were opposed to this proposed
law. Many said that coercive control was
already being considered in the family
court - I’m wondering if that is what you
found?
P: Now that you mention it, it has been a
bit of a trend that those more regularly
involved in family law, rather than
criminal law, do seem to have a sort of
opposition especially. This could at least
partly be because a lot of legislation in
Australia places far too much emphasis to
maintaining shared custody, even when
there is a history of family violence and it
puts both the child and the victim at risk
and I think that developed a distrust, that
I can fully empathise with, of the system
being an inappropriate response to this
sort of behaviour.
M: In all the case you looked at, how
many of them were coercive control
without any evidence of physical
violence?
P: So, one of the things that we found was
that 82 of the cases involved actual
physical or sexual violence at some stage
in the constellation of coercive control
Making The Invisible Visible

behaviours and another 14 involved
threatened physical or sexual violence, so
96 out of 107 but we didn’t know the facts
in about 4 of them, because there was no
factual detail provided, other than
someone being found guilty and
sentenced. So that leaves two
possibilities: First, that something
happens along the system that filters out
cases that don’t involve physical or sexual
violence - whether it’s not reported by
victims, the police aren’t taking such
cases seriously enough, prosecutors aren’t
charging it, or it’s not making its way to
conviction for whatever reason.
Alternatively, and I think Evan Stark has
suggested this, almost every coercive and
controlling relationship has had an
incident, somewhere along the way,
I’m sort of wondering how the training
can pick that up, by looking at coercive
control from the ground up – as opposed
to looking at it in its more extreme forms
and then working down. Does that make
sense?
P: The thing that I have to wonder about
is that, even if you train police, how can
they ever know about it, if no one ever
reports the low level coercive control to
them? Which is why I and many others -
even those opposed to criminalisation- all
share a singularly common goal of
improving community awareness of
coercive control because when you start
having those dinner table conversations,
about what it can look like, that it doesn’t
have to be physical abuse.
"When you start condemning it at the dinner table....It denounces the
conduct and it just makes sure everyone is alert for it and ready to respond,
if and when they can."
actual threatened physical or sexual
violence and that incident, or multitude
of incidents, hangs like a Damocles sword
over the victim so that during the rest of
the non-physical abuse, it reinforces the
perpetrator’s control and he doesn’t need
to threaten or engage in further violence
anymore.
M: That’s certainly been my experience,
that the fear of violence is equally as great
as being violated. What I’ve noticed with
the police here, and this is where they
have received training, and this is purely
anecdotal, but even with training, not
everyone gets it and far too many look at
coercive control as a tick box exercise and
a series of incidents – so they can only see
the coercive control if there is violence
there and then they work back from the
violence and see coercive control almost
as an ad hoc crime- but they aren’t seeing
the pattern of behaviour and what
distinguishes it from a series of incidents.
When you start condemning it at the
dinner table, so that people like Hannah
Clarkes’ parents don’t have to say that
before she was killed, their child didn’t
know that it was abuse. Increased
awareness can really help. It denounces
the conduct and it just makes sure
everyone is alert for it and ready to
respond, if and when they can.
M: I totally agree with that and it’s
something I’d very like to pick up again,
for another issue of CCChat as I feel very
strongly that we, as a society, are too
willing to overlook abuse that is seen as
low-level without understanding how it
can then escalate.
Going back to something you said earlier,
you talked about the similarities between
bullying and coercive control. That is
something I have also found.
Making The Invisible Visible

Something I’ve noticed is that it can be
difficult to identify abusive behaviour
because so much of our perceptions are
informed by biases, so for example, if we
like somebody, and they engage in
abusive behaviour we tend to minimise it
because we like the person, whereas if we
dislike a person who engages in the same
abusive behaviour, we are more likely to
notice it and tend to maximise that.
Do you see a way of being able to
acknowledge that bias so that we can
actually see abuse for what it is, otherwise
the criteria or benchmark is going to be
constantly shifting and the exact same
abuse but from different people will be
interpreted differently?
But there is a possibility that lovebombing,
as it seems to be described,
could be a red warning sign for leading up
to coercive control, but, on the flip- side,
you might have an enamoured love-sick
person and it may very well be
reciprocated, so it’s hard to see that as a
red flag, but I think that educating people
that just because the relationship started
out well, doesn’t mean that it’s really
going well is really important message
that hasn’t yet hit the community.
Jess Hill is currently pushing quite
strongly for this in Australia, that teenage
girls aged 16-19 are not only one of the
most at risk groups but also the least
likely to recognise coercive control, so we
need to start educating.
"He doesn’t start off as the bad guy, you don’t go into a
relationship thinking “what a prick, I’ll date him”.
How can we evaluate abusive behaviours
more consistently? Otherwise we end up
with a situation where some abuse is
overlooked or even considered acceptable
because we like the person?
P: One of the fascinating things that I’ve
found, and we didn’t include this in the
article, it was just my anecdotal
observation, but when we were reading all
of the cases and you read that the
prosecutor said this, the defence lawyer
said that, inevitably one of the sentences
in every article was that “the relationship
started out well”.
It’s practically uniform with coercive
control, that he doesn’t start off as the
bad guy, you don’t go into a relationship
thinking “what a prick, I’ll date him”.
Not just with TV ads but somehow
accessing teenagers in high school, before
these relationships start.
M: I think it needs to start way sooner, in
primary education because even at that
age, children are already being influenced
by what they see and what they hear.
There needs to be a societal shift in
thinking.
P: We don’t know what it will take to get
there. I think criminalisation is one of the
only things that will make a difference.
It’s never going to be a panacea but it will
make a difference.
M: I do believe that it’s a starting point. If
you have the crime, people will talk about
it and viewpoints will then start shifting.It
will make a difference.
P: Exactly.
Making The Invisible Visible

"I think criminalisation is one of the only things that will
make a difference. It’s never going to be a panacea but it
will make a difference."
P: I should say, too, that I will always
advocate for any law reform commission
in Australia to not just ask how to
criminalise coercive control but whether
to do it in the first place.
I’m almost certain that this is the right
thing to do but if the overwhelming
majority of Australia, and even despite
the evidence overseas, and the assuaging
of concerns, are still adamantly opposed -
maybe because of the potentially
disproportionate effect it could have on
First Nations people - then I would
happily stand back and say now is not the
right time.
I don’t think that’s the case but we should
always ask whether to do it, before we do
it, otherwise people who are opposed will
always feel like we never heard them out.
M: From what I’ve seen, many of the
reservations to criminalising coercive
control are concerned around how a
perpetrator can manipulate the law and I
can understand that fear but I also feel –
with every part of my being that we
cannot reduce a victim’s opportunity to
report an abuser for fear of the abuser
gaming the system.
Submissions to the
New South Wales’
inquiry on whether and
how to criminalise
coercive control can be
made here:
https://www.parliament.ns
w.gov.au/committees/
inquiries/Pages/lodge-asubmission.aspx?pk=262
6
Making The Invisible Visible

Cassandra Wiener
On the Criminal Law and Coercive Control
Cassandra is a lawyer,
initially training at
Simmons & Simmons,
before leaving the city
to teach law at the
University of Law.
Currently she is
finishing up her ESRC
funded doctoral
research at the
University of Sussex
looking at the criminal
law in the context of
domestic abuse, and
working on a book for
Routledge ‘Coercive
Control and the
Criminal Law’.
Cassandra is
passionate about all
things but her
particular interests are
in the areas of criminal
justice and domestic
abuse.
She advises
governments and
activists around the
world on the doctrinal
implications of
domestic abuse law
reform.
For more information
on Cassandra's
publications, please
go to her website:
cassandrawiener.com
C
assandra Wiener is a researcher in the
School of Law at the University of Sussex
as well as the co-founder and trustee of
the Treebeard Trust which supports
transformative initiatives to empower
women affected by violence. I was thrilled
to be able to interview her for this issue.
M: Cassandra, could you tell me about your research?
C: I look at coercive control and the criminal law. My work
really involves three different spheres. Firstly I work with
survivors and Independent Domestic Violence Advisors
(IDVAs) to understand what coercive control is, thinking
about how it is perpetrated and also about how it harms
those who are affected. Secondly I think about criminal
justice, and work with police and the judiciary to look at
how coercive control is being policed and prosecuted. And
then the final piece of the jigsaw is the criminal law itself –
which actually often gets overlooked in this whole
conversation. But, actually, the criminal law is the
foundation stone for everything else, and my research
shows that if we want to improve things for survivors we
need to start with that.
M: What made you decide to go into this?
C: I got interested originally when I was doing a Masters in
Human Rights at the University of Sussex. My favourite
module was Women and Human Rights. I’m a lawyer by
background and training, (I used to practice in the City for a
while, before I had kids), and it became immediately
apparent to me that there is a huge gap between how the
criminal law is structured, and what we know about
women’s experiences of domestic abuse. I began thinking
for the first time about what a blunt instrument criminal
justice is, but how important it is, and about how this
tension is really highlighted in the case of domestic abuse.
At around that time, there was a campaign kicking off to
make coercive control a criminal offence. The offence
finally came into force in December 2015 as section 76 of
the Serious Crime Act; and I just decided that it really
needed looking at. I put together an proposal, and was
lucky enough to get a grant from the Economic and Social
Research Council, to conduct an early legislative review.
Making The Invisible Visible

M: There is a question I’d like to ask you,
because it’s something I struggle to
understand, why is it that sec 76 was only
going to apply to those in an intimate
relationship or in a family living under the
same roof but it didn’t include postseparation
abuse and why does the
stalking law have to step in when the
relationship has ended because that
doesn’t make sense to me at all. It leaves
all kinds of gaps.
It’s been really exciting, as there has
been a lot of interest in the new law, both
in the UK but also around the world.
While it was/is a truly progressive step I
think the overall message from my
research unfortunately is that we could be
doing this a lot better.
M: That’s certainly how I feel. The law felt
a bit rushed through without enough
thought going into implementation.
C: I think it was rushed through. The
consultation period was only six weeks,
the equivalent consultation in Scotland
ran for around eight years, so that gives
you an idea of the different approaches
taken.
M:Wow! That’s mind-blowing.
C: Yes, so Scotland really did it properly.
They ran consultations with survivor
groups, they’ve really worked with
Women’s Aid Scotland and, as a result,
they’ve crafted a piece of law that
potentially works more effectively than
ours, but it’s early days. The Domestic
Abuse (Scotland) Act (aka DASA) only
came into force on April 1st 2019.
C: No, it doesn’t make sense. In essence,
there are two parts to my answer to that
question. First of all, I can tell you what
was happening at the time to tell you why
the law was drafted the way it is and then
secondly, I can tell you a bit about what
we’re trying to do to get it put right.
Initially, in the House of Commons, when
it was debated, at the end of the six week
consultation, it was right at the end of the
coalition government and they were
desperate to get something through.
There was only one debate in the House
of Commons and the Attorney General at
the time, who was Robert Buckland,
didn’t really understand coercive control
at all and, to be honest, I don’t think
Theresa May understood it herself.
The consultation was limited and
although this sounds strange now, no
effort was made to unpick what was
meant by ‘coercive control’ at all. As a
result there is no definition of coercive
control in section 76, and police and
prosecutors struggle as a result. One
particular issue is that it is constructed as
emotional or psychological abuse,
whereas we all know coercive control
involves physical behaviours.
To an extent, that’s still a misconception
that’s run with by the popular press. You
know, you’ll often read about a case and
you’ll see ‘ the emotional abuse was
prosecuted’, or whatever. Connected to
this is the mistake that had bigger
repercussions actually, which is that
Buckland constructed coercive control as
stalking within a relationship.
Making The Invisible Visible

He came at the whole thing from the
perspective of a ‘gap’ in the law.
Politicians love to work with ‘lacuna’ that
need ‘fixing’… and in this instance there
were a couple of cases in the preceding
five years (R v Widdows [2011] EWCA
Crim 1500 and R v Curtis [2010] 3 All ER
849), where a Court of Appeal Judge
(Lord Justice Pill) decided that the
stalking regulations don’t apply if a couple
are still in a relationship.
In fact, the stalking regulations were
being used at the time to prosecute some
of the behaviours that make up coercive
control, and Pill LJ’s ruling gave the
police a problem.
In fact, coercive control and stalking are
not the same thing. And yes, Buckland
was right to say women were better
protected in 2014 when they had escaped
their abuser, because being able to use
the stalking laws to prosecute coercive
control is a lot better than nothing. So
there is/was a gap, it’s a rather more
fundamental gap that the one he
constructed. Anyway, to cut a long story
short, Buckland constructed section 76
around the gap he identified and, as you
say, the fall out from that means that
when a woman is at her most vulnerable,
when she has just left her abuser and the
abuse ratchets up – as we know it does
at the end of a relationship, that’s when
section 76 doesn’t apply.
"What makes sense is to do what Scotland did – try to understand the
behaviour you’re criminalising before you draft the law – that makes sense."
It meant that where a couple were still
together they couldn’t use the stalking
laws, even to prosecute those parts of
coercive control that do look like stalking.
They just had to fall back on the old
violence against the person offences –
you know, GBH, ABH, common assault
etc. That is why Buckland decided to
construct the behaviour around the gap
that he found, rather than the other way
round.
What makes sense is to do what Scotland
did – try to understand the behaviour
you’re criminalising before you draft the
law – that makes sense. What Buckland
did was he started with a gap, so he
looked at the law and he was like ‘Oh my
God, the police can’t do anything if
they’re still together. They’ve got the
stalking law for if they’re apart, but if
they’re together, there’s this gap.
The police can still use the stalking
regulations, but many of the coercive
controlling tactics that an abuser uses
post separation have nothing whatsoever
to do with stalking. This is therefore
completely crazy on every level and,
fingers crossed, something that’s going to
be put right in the new Domestic Abuse
Bill.
M: I hope so!
C: We really really hope so. I am working
with Surviving Economic Abuse to try to
get an amendment in the Domestic
Abuse Bill to put it right.The Bill has its
second reading in the House of Lords
next week and we have got the support of
many peers who are working hard to get
this right, this time around. So it’s a
question of fingers crossed, at the
moment.
Making The Invisible Visible

M: I hope it’s successful because what’s
currently happening- use the coercive
control law for when you’re in a
relationship but then use the stalking law
when you’re out just doesn’t make
sense.
C: To be fair, the stalking law does cover
aspects of coercive control – as I said
abusers can and do stalk their victims
post separation, but not all post
separation abuse is stalking – economic
abuse, abuse of legal process, what
about child contact orders? We
understand coercive control better now,
than we did even three years ago.
because then the police will know that if
they’ve got coercive control they run with
s 76 and if they haven’t, they run with the
Protection from Harassment Act.
M: Do you worry that, once the law has
been amended to include postseparation
abuse, that there might be a
risk that abusers are going to claim
parental alienation is coercive control and
weaponise it?
C: Definitely. It’s a very real risk and I
haven’t realised how bad the situation
had got in the family courts. I don’t know
what planet the family courts are existing
on at the moment, but they seem to have
gone back to the 1960’s in terms of how
they approach domestic abuse.
"If the family courts had proper coercive control training, they would find it
easier to identify where the balance of power in the relationship lies, which
would in turn prevent abusers from claiming ‘parental alienation’."
M:Something else I don’t understand, and
I may be wrong here but my
understanding is that police forces don’t
get training for coercive control and
stalking at the same time. So, from what
I’ve seen, not all police officers
understand the connection between the
two laws- and that’s certainly what I’m
hearing from people who contact me.
C: I think the coercive control training
does cover stalking, so stalking is a
coercive controlling tactic and as such I
think it does crop up in the one day
programme used currently to train police.
The stalking training may not cover
coercive control because it was drafted
before the coercive control law but it does
not mean it’s not useful and, as for being
confused about which law to use, I think
that’s largely because of the end of
relationship hiccup that we’ve talked
about and I think that once that has been
put right, it will be more straightforward
Parental alienation is supposedly where
one parent (usually the mother) somehow
turns her children against the other
parent. As far as I can tell, it is a nebulous
doctrine imported from the United States
that has, as far as I can make out, limited
social science research back-up. In fact,
in my experience, domestic abuse is
often the reason a scared child doesn’t
want contact with the abusive parent. But
at the moment, I am hearing about cases
where abused women have their children
taken away from them and given to
perpetrators with ‘no contact’ orders
against the abused mother, on the basis
that she has perpetrated ‘parental
alienation’. Which is terrible for
everybody, but especially for the children,
whose voices are ignored completely. My
view is that if a child tells you he is scared
of his Dad, it might be wise to at least
investigate the possibility that… his Dad
is scary.
Making The Invisible Visible

Especially if his Dad’s abusive behaviour
has come to the attention of social
workers and police. So yes, that is a big
concern. BUT I would also say that if the
family courts had proper coercive control
training, they would find it easier to
identify where the balance of power in the
relationship lies, which would in turn
prevent abusers from claiming ‘parental
alienation’. Family courts need to be able
to get to the truth – and proper training in
coercive control will enable that.
M: It does concern me that family court
judges are mentioning parental alienation
and it’s not clear they really understand
the dynamics of domestic abuse and
what goes on.
C: I know. It’s suddenly cropped up all
over the place and it never used to be a
thing in this country – literally in the last 2
years. Dr Adrienne Barnett has done
some great work on it and says it really
needs looking at. I think Covid-19 has
made it worse, I think it has exacerbated
the situation - it means that courts are
effectively shut down, hearings are taking
place by Zoom and, for survivors, it’s
really tough. Safelives have just been
awarded a grant to begin the process of
training magistrates and possibly family
solicitors to provide assistance to the
Family Courts in understanding domestic
abuse, which is great news.
M: I think that’s really crucial. In my
situation I was a litigant in person for
nearly 20 hearings and at the time, I
remember ringing every solicitor I could
find, who was offering a free initial
consultation and I literally talked to nearly
100 lawyers. What really struck me was
that you don’t get the same advice and
that really shook me because you’d
expect to go to a solicitor and be given
the same advice and it really wasn’t the
case. Not only was it really confusing,
deciding which advice to follow, but it also
meant that I had very little confidence in
the advice I was getting.
Making The Invisible Visible

C: It’s really different and it’s not good. M:
What I’ve seen, and it’s not just limited to
lawyers, I’ve seen it with social workers
and I’m sure it also applies with Cafcass,
although I have not had much
involvement with them but there’s this
belief that because they have seen a lot
of domestic abuse or it comes across
their workload often, that they think they
understand it but often they clearly don’t.
C: They don’t understand the power
dynamic and they don’t understand
coercive control. So, often, ‘domestic
violence’ is still a bruise outside a pub.
M: Do you think the gaps in the England
and Wales legislation have been dealt
with in the Scottish legislation or do you
think there are still gaps there?
C: I think it’s a bit too early to be
absolutely sure but I think from a doctrinal
perspective, yes. The way that they’ve
drafted the Scottish law addresses all of
my concerns with sec 76, however it’s a
bit early to see whether, in practice, that
has the impact that I hope it will have but
early indications are good.
M: In Australia, there are some survivors
who are opposed to coercive control
being criminalised.
"I think there is definitely interest around the world in criminalising
coercive control and, in a sense, England and Wales
have really led the way on that, so that is exciting."
M: Or it’s anyone who is checking your
phone without understanding the context.
It might be wrong but it’s not necessarily
coercive control. I understand you’re
doing some work in Australia. Can you
talk about it?
C: Yes, I have been involved. At the
moment New South Wales are doing a
consultation on introducing new coercive
control laws and I’m excited to have been
approached to prepare a submission for
that consultation which I am doing jointly
with Professor Evan Stark.
We’re doing a response together for the
deadline, which is the end of January. I
think there is definitely interest around the
world in criminalising coercive control
and, in a sense, England and Wales have
really led the way on that, so that is
exciting.
C: That’s interesting, can you tell me a
little more about that?
M: Yes, from what I understand, the view
is that a law won’t work and that the legal
systems have to change before new laws
are introduced as the law can be
weaponised against victims by their
abusers.
C: We haven’t seen that here, except in
the family courts with the issue of ‘
parental alienation’. To be honest, I don’t
necessarily think there’s a link between
the coercive control legislation and the
allegations of parental alienation in the
family courts. I think those two things are
existing side by side. I’m not sure that
there’s any evidence that there’s a causal
relationship in fact, if anything, as I said I
think it’s the converse.
Making The Invisible Visible

I think it’s a lack of understanding of
coercive control in the family courts that is
driving the ‘parental alienation’ furore. So,
in general, in terms of the impact of
legislation, the women I speak to say they
find it very helpful, that is gives them a
normative language to express what has
been done to them in a way that is helpful
for recovery. It’s useful for women to be
able to understand what has happened to
them, in terms of a criminal offence, and it
is quite validating.
Mainly, the impact of criminalising
coercive control is enormously positive,
because the criminal law does have a
powerful normative sociological function
that tells people what is acceptable and
what is not.
C: Yes, and I think that’s the thing: so that
even though the law is imperfect, it’s a lot
better than nothing, and even though
criminal justice, as a response, is a very
blunt instrument, it’s better than no
instrument, in my book.
M: Absolutely . I know you’ve got to get
on, are there any final words you’d like to
say around coercive control?
C: I think the thing that is really
preoccupying me at the moment is trying
to get something in the Domestic Abuse
Bill, which is currently going through
Parliament, to make sure that the
coercive control law applies to post
separation abuse. I think it’s so
important.
"The impact of criminalising coercive control is enormously positive,
because the criminal law does have a powerful normative sociological
function that tells people what is acceptable and what is not."
To be able to hold your head up and say:
‘yes, what happened to me was wrong’, I
think it is liberating and women tell me
they find that empowering.
M: I agree. As someone who has had
lived – experience but who hasn’t
benefited from the law, I would still say,
every single time, criminalise because
you then have a standard, you have
something that society can change for.
C: You say you haven’t benefited, but do
you think in a sense you are still able to
articulate what has been done to you, in a
way that you wouldn’t have been able to
before?
M: You’re right. I hadn't thought about it in
those terms and I certainly know more
going forward relationship-wise.
It’s heart-breaking that I have to tell
survivors I work with that they’re only
protected by the new law up and until the
point at which they are brave enough to
leave, it just sits really uncomfortably with
me.
M: It doesn’t make sense how the same
behaviour can be criminal in one aspect
but not in another.
C: In particular, for a lot of women, the
economic abuse and the difficulties with
child contact and the abuse of legal
process are actually so structurally
disastrous that it is impossible for them to
get on with their lives and that isn’t
covered by the existing harassment and
stalking legislation at all.
M: And just another reason for why it is
so difficult to leave the relationship.
Thank you so much Cassandra, it's been
really fascinating.
Making The Invisible Visible