0-Coercion and control report with pics FINAL

carers, or friends. The majority of perpetrators in Hourglass’ data from 2020 were sons
and/or daughters or other family members’ (Hourglass 2020:7).
As in domestic abuse, financial abuse between family members can easily be reframed as a
family spat, relatives fighting over money, debt, and therefore hard to spot. It can be even
harder to identify for the individual - coming as it does from someone close to them.
Because this type of abuse is not from the ‘outside’ it’s often not seen as scary or
damaging, whereas in reality, with abuse from inside your family or inside your home there
is no escape. ‘The most common location of abuse risk (is) the person’s own home at 43.8%
(Safeguarding Adults Collection (SAC) 2019-20) and most perpetrators of abuse are well
known to their victim’ (Brown et al 2021:17).
Victim blaming and shaming
Victims of financial abuse are often blamed, drawing a further parallel with domestic abuse.
The adage ‘why didn’t they leave?’ (an abusive relationship) translates to ‘why did they fall
for it?’(the scam). Victims can be labelled as naïve, stupid or greedy ‘however, such labels
are unhelpful and superficial generalisations that presume all of us are perfectly rational
consumers, ignoring the fact that all of us are vulnerable to a persuasive approach at one
time or another’ (OFT 2009:5) This links to the need to recognise that vulnerability has
evolved - it is situational, and our approaches have to evolve as it changes.
The language and labels we attach to abuse are important ‘words such as “scam”, “con”,
“swindle”, “bamboozle” and “cheat” are sometimes used to describe fraud. The slang
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