Coercive control laws are being proposed and passed around the world. Laws that define coercive and controlling behaviors began in the UK, and Australia, Scotland, Canada and the US are taking steps to address coercive control in criminal and/or civil legislation. But coercive control legislation is moving slowly, and I believe one big reason for that is not that we haven't defined what coercive control IS, but that we have not defined what it is NOT.
You see, at it's most basic, coercive control is a pattern of behaviors that violate another person's autonomy. It is a pattern of abuses of power. When one person ignores another person's right to their own thoughts, feelings and behaviors, in order to control or dominate them, that IS coercive control. And definitions of coercive control are being codified across the world as coercive control legislation is being proposed and implemented.
But there is a major problem. There are many people fighting to stop, or at least slow down, the passage of coercive control laws. Why?
Logistically coercive control can be hard to prove, because our current laws do not define the thing that coercive control violates... Consent.
Current coercive control laws offer examples of coercive and controlling behaviors. But this presents problems when it comes to implementation.
Domestic violence, family violence, domestic abuse can be more easily proven than coercive control, because these laws rely heavily on incidents of physical violence, and physical violence is easier to prove. If you have a black eye when the police arrive, it is pretty clear that you are the victim. Physical violence is rather black and white. However, domestic abuse, domestic violence and coercive control, without the presence of physical violence, is not as straight forward. Even physical violence is not straight forward when victims fight back.
Over the past fifty years domestic violence and domestic abuse advocates have attempted to put laws in place to protect victims. However, mandatory arrest laws and primary aggressor laws have often had unintended consequences for victims. In some states dual arrests, where both parties are arrested, are common, and worse, many cases involve arresting the victim instead of the perpetrator.
Why is this happening?
The truth is domestic violence, family violence and domestic abuse laws have never really been adequate to address the ways victims experience abuse or the ways perpetrators exploit systems to avoid accountability. Most current laws still focus on the single incident model of physical violence, which ignores nearly all coercive control. If all the system looks for is physical violence, it misses psychological violence, emotional violence, financial violence, weaponization of children, abuse by proxy, stalking, veiled threats, cultural violence, sexual violence, spiritual violence, litigious violence etc.
The single incident model misses nearly 100% of Consent Violations!
Joyce Short, Cheif Executive of the Consent Awareness Network says in this Indoctrination Podcast interview, that if there is fear, fraud or force involved, there is no consent. Well, isn't that exactly what coercive control is... the use of fear, fraud or force to violate consent.
Right now crimes of domestic violence, sexual assault, abuse by controlling groups like cults, human trafficking, all contexts where coercive control thrives, are rarely reported, charged or prosecuted. Why? Because we don't have the thing that coercive control violates defined in the law. We have not defined consent, and so police, attorneys, and judges have nothing against which to compare the perpetrator's actions with illegal activity.
So, when a woman alleges she has been raped, a violation of her bodily autonomy, because consent is not defined in the law, she is expected to "prove" that she did not consent, but with no definition for the jury to refer to. How can a jury determine if she consented unless they know what consent means? And, because, in the US, we have a presumption of innocence, most perpetrators are never held accountable for rape. The same is true for domestic violence victims and victims of coercive and controlling groups.
However, if consent were defined in law as Freely Given Knowledgable and Informed Agreement (#FGKIA) or as FRIES, Freely Given Reversible Informed Enthusiastic and Specific, it would become much more clear that a crime had occurred. These are two possible definitions of consent that could be codified in the law, which, if they were, could potentially lead to a much higher percentage of coercive control cases being charged and prosecuted.
Evan Stark calls coercive control a "liberty crime", and I would argue, that makes it a criminal violation of consent.
What do you think of these two potential definitions of consent? Do you prefer one over the other? Why?
