CCChat-Magazine_Issue-20

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