#CoerciveControl is said to be #InvisibleInPlainSight. The murders of these family members makes this fact crystal clear. As tightly knit as this community is, it appears that the #CoerciveController was not suspected to be abusive, let alone homicidal.
The mother of the murdered children had filed for divorce.
Separation/Divorce is the most dangerous time for victims of #DomesticAbuse, #DomesticViolence and coercive control. #CoerciveControlExperts know the signs of escalating coercive control. The person who sent police to check on the mother must have understood what might be happening. Yet the murders were not prevented. Why? Because our system is currently designed to protect the perpetrators and not the victims. #VictimBlaming is rampant worldwide. We need #SystemicTransformation to fill the enormous gaps in the systems that are failing to protect victims. We need to address the attitudes that are keeping abuse in place and helping abusers justify coercive and controlling behaviors. We need to learn the #8stagesofhomicide, and put policies and practices in place worldwide to intervene, before coercive control escalates to stage 8.
Victims are drowning in #PsychoSocialQuicksand, not only because of the coercive controller's actions, but because of the failure of systems to recognize the coercive control, believe the victims, and protect them from escalating abuses of power.
Please stop emboldening coercively controlling abusers! Please stop protecting them from consequences! Please stop enabling them to continue creating chaos, and destroying innocent lives.
This coercive control research shows what domestic abuse advocates and survivors of coercive control have known all along... that one of the abuser's most powerful weapons to harm his partner or ex-partner is to weaponize the children. It seem counter-intuitive that a father would knowingly hurt his kids to get back at his ex, but that's exactly what happens when one person is a coercive controller and the other is his targeted victim (I say "his" not because women are never coercive controllers, but because research shows that the majority are men abusing women).
The more awareness is raised in the general public about domestic abuse, domestic violence, intimate partner violence and coercive control, the harder it becomes for coercive controllers to get away with their abuse. Physical violence is still thought to be the foundation of domestic abuse, but it's not true. "Coercive control is the foundation of nearly all domestic abuse" my friend and colleague, Dr. Christine Cocchiolla, reminds us. (As an expert in coercive control with lived experience and post-graduate certification in coercive control, I have come to see coercive control as the umbrella under which all abuses of power occur).
Physical violence, within the pattern of coercive control, is often reserved until the targeted victim begins to realize they are trapped and tries to free themselves. Treating a person with love and kindness over a period of time, and then withdrawing that love, while at the same time, using physical violence to punish them for a perceived "mistake", can be especially devastating, and create a trauma-coerced attachment.
Physical violence within domestic abuse is often the smoking gun that coercive control has been operating all along and has now escalated to a dangerous level. Physical violence is not the foundation, it is the tip of the iceberg, and the rest of the coercive controller's tactics are hidden below the surface.
Coercive control rarely starts with physical violence. Coercive control is intended to completely dominate the targeted victim... to rob the targeted victim of their autonomy, dignity and freedom. Coercive controllers exploit their targeted victim's resources for their own personal gain, and often in very subtle ways. The more savvy a targeted victim, the more subtle the tactics of coercive control are likely to be. The smarter and more naturally confident the targeted victim, the more likely it is that the abuse will be "invisible in plain sight". People don't want to be slaves, and that is essentially what the coercive controller is trying to do... make the targeted victim his slave.
In order to entrap their targeted victim, the coercive controller will often manipulate and deceive them using tactics like manipulative kindness (AKA love-bombing). This tactic, where the coercive controller showers the targeted victim with praise, admiration, love, and attention, is a setup, a con, a FRAUD! It is not love, and it reveals (very briefly) the insidious and dangerous pattern that lies beneath. This is incredibly dangerous for the victim, because once the targeted victim believes the coercive controller loves them, the coercive controller sets out to entrap and enslave them, draining the life out of them.
But what about those victims who escape, you ask? Don't they reach safety and regain their dignity, freedom and autonomy? Doesn't divorce end the coercive control? Rarely!
After escaping a coercive controller the targeted victim has to overcome major hurdles, and the most common one is that the coercive controller will weaponization the children. Coercive controllers do not care about their children, not in the way healthy people do. They see them as property and tools for manipulation and abuse. They are furious when their targeted victim leaves them and even more furious when the protective parent obtains custody of the children.
This is so unacceptable to the coercive controller's feelings of superiority and entitlement that he will often go to great lengths to weaponize the children in order to further destroy the targeted victim.
For the targeted victim, this tactic can be the nail in the coffin, and as this study found, can have extremely detrimental impacts on their health and well-being.
It is time we stop enabling coercive controllers to use courts, police and health services to re-traumatize victims! It is time for #SystemicTransformation!
I was struck by this poem (below) at the beginning of the Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice
Programme (VKPP) Domestic Homicides and Suspected Victim Suicides 2021-2022Year 2 Report. Why? Probably because it rang so true for me as a coercive control survivor and expert in coercive control. I have, many times, felt the hopelessness and helplessness of coercive control and trying to get it recognized by those I thought would help me... but never did.
This poem gave me chills!
Domestic abuse homicide and domestic abuse suicide follow a pattern. Jane Monckton-Smith's research uncovered 8 stages of domestic violence that lead to homicide and/or suicide. In this article she wrote about the 8 stages of domestic abuse suicide, which include coercive control as the main feature of stage 3. (If you would like to read it for yourself, I suggest starting on page 20). Here is a brief overview of the stages.
Intimate Partner Suicide Stages: (Monckton-Smith, 2022)
1. History - Victim has a history of vulnerability / Perpetrator has a history of domestic violence
2. Early Relationship - quick intense involvement
3. Relationship - characterized by coercive control
4. Disclosure - discloses the abuse, usually to family member or friend
5. Help-seeking - reaches out to the system for help / often the system is unhelpful
6. Suicidal Ideation - in the victim and/or perpetrator
7. Entrapment - "In most cases the victim considered, and had said, they were trapped in a situation from which they felt there was no escape (Monckton-Smith, 2022)."
8. Suicide - Victim dies by suicide
After you read the stages, I recommend reading the poem below. I think you will SEE, and if you are a survivor, you will probably FEEL, the 8 stages mounting, and the #PsychoSocial Quicksand of #CoerciveControl increasing.
A 999 call, there’s a body on the beach,
Please listen to my story, I have so much to teach.
Are there any identifiers, do we know who she was?
My name is Lyndsay and I have so many scars.
Policies and protocol, reports to complete,
You’re not listening or seeing me coz my life’s obsolete.
We’ll have to tell the family, is it your turn or mine?
I was abused and belittled, broken in spirit, body and mind.
Have we got all we need here, witness statements and things?
I’m sorry for my suicide and the trouble it brings.
Telling the family is not easy at all,
We have listened and if missed anything just give us a call.
You’ve not listened to anything, you don’t know my life.
You’ve got what you need though, next of kin and the like.
You’ve got someone to identify the body on the beach,
But you’ve missed the desperation in my family’s speech.
They are begging you to help me, to know who I am,
I’m a mother, daughter, sister and friend but I’m also the wife of a cruel, monstrous man.
I fought for my life, fought with all that I had,
But I was coerced and controlled and abused so bad.
I was left feeling worthless and scared and sad,
The abuse left me thinking that I was going mad.
Should we question capacity, could that give us a lead?
Please don’t insult me. Question abuse, that’s what I need.
You see, if you ask the right questions and understand who I was,
I’m no longer a body, crime number or report, I die as a victim and that’s who I was.
By Laura, for her twin sister Lyndsay (Home Office, 2022)
The signs of #coercivecontrol are #InvisibleInPlainSight. These grieving family members are most likely telling the truth when they say there was "no warning sign". But I would be willing to bet that there were signs of coercive control. The family members just didn't know what to look for. It's not their fault they missed it. Most everyone misses it, because coercive control, the #1 risk factor for #DomesticViolenceHomicide, can be very subtle and insidious. It is difficult to detect and even harder to address.
A pattern of coercive control that has entrapped a victim/survivor in #PsychoSocialQuicksand may or may not include physical violence. With no #PhysicalViolence present, the couple may appear to be happy, as they did to their extended family members in this article. Even when there is physical violence, it may be hidden from view. Domestic violence has long been a crime perpetrated behind closed doors.
The coercive control in my most dangerous "relationship" (it wasn't really a relationship - it was a fraud) was extremely subtle. It appeared to me as love and care initially, as it does in stage two of the eight stages of domestic violence homicide/suicide. My ex followed the 8 stages of domestic abuse homicide all the way up to stage 8. He did not kill me, but he sure as hell tried. When I was suicidal from the torture I was experiencing, instead of being supportive, he doubled-down on his coercive control.
Coercive controllers feel entitled to anything and everything connected to their family members. They see family like property, to be used and exploited for their own pleasure. So, when a targeted victim doesn't comply with a coercive controller's demands, the coercive control will likely escalate… sometimes as far as domestic abuse homicide or domestic abuse homicide/suicide.
I need to return to my research now, so I don't have time to go into the tactics of coercive control today, but you can read my other blog posts and/or check out this terrific article by Dr. Lisa Fontes to learn ways to detect coercive control.
Every day I read articles of victim/survivors and targets of abuse and coercive control being failed by the system. The media tends to characterize the level of corruption, misogyny, racism etc. in these stories as "shocking". However, what is most frightening thing about these cases of systemic coercive control is that they are not "shocking". They are common, they are increasing, and they are only the tip of the iceberg.
While there are many many professionals working diligently within systems to protect victim/survivors and hold perpetrators accountable, these courageous and dedicated professional's efforts are, unfortunately, far outweighed by the powerful systemic coercive control that keeps abuses of power in place.
Coercive control is said to be invisible in plain sight (Stark, 2007, Fontes, 2015), which makes addressing it very difficult indeed. And, because coercive control is invisible in plain sight, most people cannot recognize it even when they come face to face with it. This advantages the perpetrators, who use people's ignorance against them to exploit vulnerabilities, within the minds of the victim, the bystander, and within systems.
Perpetrators manipulate and deceive outsiders to see them as the victim. They do this using a strategy called DARVO, which stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse, Victim and Offender. And this strategy is highly effective at keeping coercive control invisible in plain sight. So, when the details of systemic coercive control and corruption do finally come out into the open, as in this article, society thinks these are isolated incidents... rare. But they are not! The truth is that victims, survivors and targets of coercive control are very often afraid to report the abuse. The media is also discouraged from reporting on them, often by wealthy powerful owners who don't want their own abuses of power to be highlighted. So, we can assume there are far more "incidents" than the ones we know about.
Coercive controllers minimize their own negative behavior and they mischaracterize the target's (victim) responses to the coercive control as being the problem. Until professionals become savvy to the tactics coercive controllers use, they will be complicit in harm to victims, survivors, and targets of coercive control.
If you would like to learn more about how to address systemic coercive control within your organization, you can book a free consultation here with a coercive control expert.
If you are a victim, survivor or target of coercive control and need assistance on a civil, criminal or family case you are involved in, you can book a free consultation here with a coercive control expert.
I ran across this article this morning while working on my coercive control research study.
Family court can be extremely re-traumatizing for victims of domestic violence, domestic abuse and coercive control. While this article on surviving family court was written for survivors in England and Wales, many of the suggestions are applicable to domestic abuse and coercive control survivors in other countries as well. And they are a good list to read and review for survivors attempting to navigate family court.
If you know attorneys, therapists, court professionals, GALs, police or anyone who works directly with survivors of domestic abuse or coercive control by an individual or group, please consider recommending participation in my coercive control research study.
The research study on coercive control includes seven training videos on coercive control and abuse by individuals, groups and systems, and can be accessed by clicking THIS link
If you are entrapped in a custody case in family court or a domestic violence case in criminal court with a narcissist, psychopath, abuser, coercive controller, or anyone who is a high conflict personality, sending professionals involved in your case to participate in this study can help inform them of the dangers of coercive control. Participants can learn about the tactics and strategies of coercive control and why the trauma created by it is so devastating. These training videos on coercive control can help overcome biases and misconceptions that trap protective parents in abusive relationships and they spell out for professionals in domestic abuse, domestic violence and coercive and controlling fields what to look for and how to hold perpetrators accountable.
This study is open until July 31, 2022, and we still need both survivor and professional participants. Please consider participating, and PLEASE SHARE!
Two of my favorite researchers on coercive control and domestic abuse are releasing new books. Dr. Emma Katz specializes in research on the coercive control of children and Professor Jane Monckton Smith researches intimate partner homicide, which is intimately connected with coercive control. Monckton Smith's research on the 8 stages of domestic homicide is an absolute must-read for anyone assisting victims of domestic abuse, domestic violence, coercive control, stalking and post-separation abuse. And, Katz's work on the coercive control of children is likely to be a game-changer for protective parents in custody battles in family court.
Please join me in congratulating these incredible authors and researchers on not only their new books, but also on their daily commitment to ending domestic abuse, coercive control and domestic violence homicide!
You can buy Dr. Katz' book Here.
You can buy Professor Monckton Smith's book Here.
I am excited and THRILLED to announce that my MSc dissertation research study is open for participation!
If you care about reducing, preventing and/or intervening in coercive control, domestic abuse or cults, this research presents a great opportunity to expand your own knowledge, as well as help forward research that may eventually transform policies and practices in the real world.
Please share these flyers within the groups that qualify and that you feel could benefit.
Include the live link whenever possible, please: https://bit.ly/3OJpkHs
If you live in the Austin, Texas area and care about reducing domestic violence, domestic abuse and coercive control, please consider attending the Handmade with Hope Silent Auction on Saturday, July 30th, 2022, held at the Kendra Scott Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute at The University of Texas at Austin’s Doty Fine Arts Building.
The Texas Advocacy Project's 2022 Teen Ambassadors of Hope and UT's Community-Driven Initiatives Program, The E.A.T. Project, join to launch the Handmade with Hope benefit. Purchase and promote the artistry of Kate Marcus, and her showcase of local, sustainably-sourced artwork + accessories inspired by the testimonies of domestic abuse survivors. Donations will go to the and their funding of free legal services for Texan domestic abuse victims.
Both programs have incorporated their missions of encouraging civic engagement, influencing healthy relationships, and precautions against teen dating violence into this charity event. Celebrate, commemorate, and consider the prevention strategies, statistics, and stories that focus on the intimate partner violence culture & community. Attendees are to support the fundraising campaign and learn more about the world that encompasses domestic violence. With your presence, we hope this youth-organized initiative educates & grows care for both intimate partner violence victims' and local sustainability.
If you are available to attend, RSVP: https://pp.events/aayOR1J5.
Please share the invite with your friends, family, and colleagues. In the case you're unable to attend; please visit the link attached below + see how you can support us virtually.