Why do we need to focus on the pattern of coercive control?
In short, the murders of seven family members by a Mormon father in Enoch, Utah is a classic example of why we need the context of coercive control to be the focus of domestic violence and abuse prevention efforts. If you haven't read the news about these murders yet, you may wish to do so before reading on.
The fact that police, prosecutors and, at minimum, someone with whom Tausha Haight had an appointment (perhaps a domestic violence advocate), knew that she was likely in danger, and yet the murders were carried out anyway, tells us our systems are not working effectively to protect victims... especially victims of coercive control.
Tausha had filed for a divorce. She was a Mormon mother of five, and she was married to an abusive man, very likely a #CoerciveController, from whom she was trying to escape. These facts alone indicated Tausha was at high risk of fatal domestic abuse. Victims of domestic violence who are religious can be especially vulnerable to coercive control, due to the patriarchal structure of most religions. Religions in general, and Mormonism, in particular, tend to victim-blame and minimize perpetrator's coercive control, often covering up the abuse and sweeping it under the rug. Victims seeking help from church leaders rarely find the help they need to escape, and often are met with similar coercive control tactics within systems which often re-traumatize them.
I do not have enough details yet, but it is almost certain that Tausha was trapped in the PsychoSocial Quicksand™ of coercive control. Research has shown that nearly 100% of domestic violence that escalates to homicide/suicide is preceded by a pattern of coercive control. Jane Monckton-Smith's research shows that domestic violence homicide and suicide most often include a pattern of coercive control by stage three of the 8 stages of femicide. she identified in homicide cases.
The good news is that if we know there are 8 stages for femicide and domestic violence homicide/suicide, then we can predict them, and we can prevent them. But in order to put this research into practice to protect victims of coercive control, we need a systemic, multi-pronged approach. We need #SystemicTransformation! And the first order of transformation is to change the lens, or the context, through which these cases are viewed.
Currently systems predominantly use a single incidence model of physical violence when assessing cases. What this means is there is a focus on each individual act of physical violence as separate and disconnected from any others. At minimum, there are two big problems with this model. 1. Physical violence is not the biggest risk factor for fatal domestic violence, coercive control is, and 2. The dozens, hundreds or thousands of non-criminal acts of abuse are completely ignored by this focus. While these non-physical abusive acts of coercive control may not be crimes (depending on where you live), that doesn't mean they are not harmful, and it doesn't mean they do not violate the victim's human rights. But this focus on physical violence ignores human rights violations. It is time we re-focus and prioritize the rights of victims above the rights of perpetrators.
Currently we are failing to view domestic violence, domestic abuse and child abuse through a lens that acknowledges the pattern and the harms of coercive control. Coercive control is a pattern of abuses of power. It can include physical abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse, financial abuse, spiritual abuse and more. #CoerciveControllers use a combination of tactics of abuse to gain control over their victim's behaviors, thoughts, emotions and the information (BITE) they have access to. They use terroristic torture tactics of coercion and control to exploit and entrap their victims. These are the same tactics used by terrorists and kidnappers, and against prisoners of war.
These are the same tactics that were likely being used to exploit and entrap members of the Haight family in, what I term, the PsychoSocial Quicksand™ of coercive control.
If the pattern of coercive control had been discovered earlier could these murders have been prevented? I don't know. We can't know for sure. But what we do know is that appropriate coercive control assessment (possibly at the time of the 2020 allegations brought by his daughter) may have been exactly what this family needed to hold their abuser accountable and help them escape and survive the regime of coercive control that they were trapped within. At that time, Tausha believed her husband needed "a wake up call", and she did not want to press charges. But I do not believe her husband was "asleep".
I don't remember exactly where I heard this, but the perspective shift really stuck with me.
"You can't wake someone up who's only pretending to be asleep". If you are a professional who works with victims and/or perpetrators, please, please, please stop assuming perpetrators do not know what they are doing. It is a very dangerous assumption.
I do not argue that all coercive controllers know what they are doing 100% of the time, but I do argue that nearly all coercive controllers are at least partly aware that they are manipulating, deceiving and harming others for their own benefit. And whether they are completely conscious of it or not, they are still 100% responsible for the harm they do (the possible exception to this might be a victim groomed or threatened into becoming coercively controlling without their consent).
Personally, I am still being prevented from escaping PsychoSocial Quicksand™ by systems that are either unwilling or unable to protect me and my children... systems that have ignored the tactics of coercive control that continue to be used to harm me and my family. I have experienced first hand the victim-blaming, minimization, and coverups that protect my coercive controller from accountability. Perhaps Tausha Haight experienced similar issues. Perhaps not. I will never know for sure, because I will never have the honor and privilege of speaking with her, her mother or her children about what was happening to them behind closed doors. May they rest in peace. My hope is that the systems get the "wake up call" that Tausha hoped would end her husband's abusive behavior.
UPDATE: NOVEMBER 2, 2023:
New research published October 2023 has established a new term for interfering in the relationship between a mother and child. It has been termed Child And Mother Sabotage (CAMS), and pertains to coercive and controlling behaviors by a father against his child and the mother of his child. THIS is the term to use if you are a protective mother who's relationship has been damaged by your child's coercively controlling other parent. Dr. Emma Katz, one of the world's leading researchers in the field of coercive control of children and mothers, wrote this compelling article on the term child and mother sabotage (CAMS), just this week.
Keep the term child and mother sabotage (CAMS) in mind while reading the following article, originally published January 2023.
The proliferation of the terms parental alienation syndrome, parental alienation, and alienation in family court are so frequently used that both coercive controllers and survivors of coercive control are using them to describe what is happening to their children when the "couple" separates or divorces. This is problematic. Why? Because parental alienation was created as a deceptive and manipulative strategy for coercively controlling and abusive parents to avoid and deflect allegations of domestic violence, domestic abuse, child abuse, child sexual abuse, and coercive control in family court. In short... Parental Alienation Syndrome, and all variations of it, including parental alienation, and simply, alienation, are primarily being used to DARVO court professionals, especially those in family court and child protection, into thinking that the protective parent is alienating the abusive parent from their children. As a DARVO tactic of coercive control, Parental Alienation allegations are taking the focus off of protecting children, and instead are being weaponized to protect and embolden coercively controlling abusers.
In my last blog post I explained how guilty coercive controllers often use DARVO to avoid consequences, play the victim, and flip the script to blame the victim. Victim blaming is rampant in our county (the US) as it is in most countries around the world. Society's inclination for victim blaming makes DARVO incredibly effective as a smokescreen for coercive controllers to maintain plausible deniability and hide their pattern of coercive control in plain sight to silence the whistleblower.
Back to Parental Alienation Syndrome and why survivors need to be cautious using this term. PAS, or "Parental Alienation Syndrome" is a theory. It is not based on empirical evidence. It was created by a man named Richard Gardner who, in addition to claiming that abuse allegations are often false, also believed incest, child sexual abuse and pedophilia are normal and healthy for children. He wrote and self-published a book on his Parental Alienation Syndrome theory, and he sent it to family court professionals. In his book Gardner basically DARVO'ed attorneys and judges into disbelieving legitimate claims of domestic violence, child abuse, and especially, child sexual abuse. Through deception and manipulation, Gardner convinced many many people that PAS is a valid and science-based approach to determining the validity of allegations of abuse (which, of course, it is not).
Gardner misled court professionals, including judges, attorneys, guardians ad litem, custody evaluators, etc. to believe that the majority of abuse allegations brought by mostly mothers, are false. This incorrect assumption, that most allegations are false, is now the predominating belief in family court. The truth is that research has found that most allegations, nearly ALL allegations of abuse are true. False allegations of domestic violence and child abuse are rare. But Gardner convinced courts that if abuse allegations are raised, they are most likely an attempt by the mother to retaliate against the father in order to get a leg up in family court. This has led to a pervasive incorrect belief that women lie in family court and that fathers need to be protected from abuse allegations. If child does not wish to have contact with the "alleged" perpetrator, Gardner has instilled the belief that it is a sign that the accuser has alienated the children. This assumption, the entire foundation of PAS, is not only false, it is incredibly dangerous, especially to targets, victims and survivors of coercive control, domestic abuse, domestic violence and child abuse. Family courts in the US are currently placing approximately 58,000 children each year into unsupervised contact with these abusers, in large part, because of Gardner's PAS theory.
So... if you are a victim, I do NOT recommend you use the term Parental Alienation Syndrome, or any of it's equivalents. "But... that's what my abusive ex is doing!" you say. "He is turning my children against me."
I don't doubt that if you are dealing with a coercive and controlling abuser that your children are being turned against you. As a matter of fact, there is probably a high likelihood that your abuser is turning a lot of people against you.... or at least trying to. But if that is what your coercive controller is doing, it is not helpful to your case or your children to call it Parental Alienation. It's best to refer to it by another term. If we call it PAS, we add fuel and legitimacy to the LIE that when a child doesn't want to see a parent, and there have been abuse allegations (sometimes there's even documented proof of the abuse), then the child has been "alienated."
PAS is a theory, which in effect, only works for abusers to avoid accountability for their abuse, and legally embolden them to take custody from their adult victim. Joan Meier found in her research, conducted by the US Department of Justice, that although proponents of PAS claim it happens to both genders, that is NOT how it is playing out in family court. In family court Parental Alienation Syndrome is being used primarily by coercively controlling abusers to retaliate against adult and child victims of abuse. It is mainly being used by abusers as a weapon to take custody away from a parent who is trying to protect their child from their abusive and/or dangerous ex partner.
Parental Alienation Syndrome as DARVO:
DENY: "I'm not abusive. I never hit my wife, and I would never harm my child."
ATTACK: "She is to blame, not me. She drinks too much and she's a bad mother. She just doesn't want everyone to know she's been having an affair. That's why she says I'm abusive."
OR, the covert coercive controller's ATTACK: "I just don't understand why my ex wife hates me so much. I think maybe she just hates men. She was abused as a child, and has always struggled with her mental health, but I never imagined she would take it out on me and the children."
REVERSE VICTIM & OFFENDER: "I just want what's best for my children. I love my children. She won't let me see them. I miss them so much. How can I protect myself and the kids? She is turning the children against me."
DARVO using Parental Alienation Syndrome is very effective.
So, if we can't call it Parental Alienation, what can we do if we are the survivor, and our coercive controller is turning our children against US? We need to use other terms, terms that accurately describe the behavior without legitimizing PAS.
Instead of calling what your abusive ex is doing to turn your children against you Parental Alienation, which, for the most part is only used to protect abusers, I prefer to call it abuse by proxy or parent child relationship sabotage. I use the term parent child relationship sabotage when referring to an abuser harming the relationship between the protective parent and the child in an attempt to: gain sympathy, punish the adult victim, hide their own abuse or generally gain the upper hand. Parent child relationship sabotage is a term coined by Dr. Emma Katz in her ground-breaking new book Coercive Control in Children's and Mothers' Lives. Katz' research has shown the significant detrimental effects of coercive control on children, and especially on their relationships with their mothers, when a coercive controller uses this tactic.
Abuse by proxy is the term I use, and recommend, when referring to abusers using coercive control to manipulate others into either abusing the victim directly, or into viewing the victim through the coercive controller's distorted and potentially dangerous lens. Professionals, friends, family and community members are often easily manipulated into seeing the victim as the problem, at least in part, either through the use of PAS or some other form of DARVO.
Lying in family court, calling CPS with false allegations about a victimized parent, turning police against the victim, there are endless ways in which a coercive controller might use abuse by proxy and/or parent child relationship sabotage. These may seem to equate to PAS, but they are NOT Parental Alienation Syndrome. We must distinguish these coercively controlling behaviors from the weaponization of Parental Alienation Syndrome, which is, in and of itself, abuse by proxy and/or parent child relationship sabotage.
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When a coercive controller feels a loss of control over their victim, escalation of coercive control is almost inevitable. Escalation can mean many things. It might mean that the coercive controller will use physical violence for the first time, or it might mean that they will double down on gaslighting them.
Gaslighting is very destabilizing. It can cause the target of coercive control to doubt their own perceptions and even their entire reality. Victims of gaslighting slowly lose touch with their own identity and the manipulation and deception of gaslighting can literally cause a targeted victim to lose their minds from this incredibly dangerous tactic of coercive control. But regardless of the way the coercive controller escalates, they almost always do. Coercive controllers spend a lot of time and energy gaining dominance over their targeted victim, so when the target of their coercive control starts to wake up to the abuse they are experiencing, and ask the abuser to stop, this is perceived as a threat to the coercive controllers entitlement. Escalating coercive control will often prevent a victim from being able to escape, keeping the coercive controller's abuse of power intact.
At first targeted victims often comply with the coercive controller's demands, in order to "keep the peace." However, human beings are not able to thrive in an environment of coercive control, so eventually most victims try to establish or re-establish boundaries. This will also often lead to escalation. Punishing the target for daring to stand up for their own thoughts, feelings and rights is another way the coercive control can escalate. By the time a targeted victim has discovered they are being abused, and attempted to stand up against it, the coercive controller has already studied their target for what punishment will be most painful, and most likely to re-establish compliance. This means that punishments can feel shocking, sadistic and cruel to victims, further destabilizing them and decreasing their ability to stand up and/or escape.
As this pattern continues with the coercive controller making demands, the target attempting to resist domination, and the coercive control escalating with punishment, gaslighting and/or physical violence, the victim sinks deeper and deeper into the trap I call PsychoSocial Quicksand™. If undetected and unaddressed, eventually the pattern of coercive control can reach stage 8... domestic abuse homicide and/or suicide.
One research study found that 99% of domestic abuse homicides were preceded by coercive control, making it the number one risk factor for intimate partner homicide. Coercive control is evident by stage 3 of the 8 stages of domestic abuse homicide, making domestic violence homicide predictable and preventable. Because researchers have focused primarily on domestic violence, and especially physical violence, research that specifically focuses on coercive control is relatively new, so most of our systems are still using the single incident model to guide policy and practice, rather than risk assessments that identify the pattern of coercive control.
"Drawing on interviews from the Australian Homicide Project with a sample of men
convicted of killing intimate partners, we examine the backgrounds of perpetrators
and the contexts in which the killings occurred and find that fully half report no
physical or sexual assaults against their partners in the year prior to the homicide".
This means that the systems are still focusing on the wrong thing, and this is leading to the predictable and preventable murders of (primarily) women and children, all over the world, every single day!
Even less studied and understood is the link between coercive control and suicide. Dr. Jane Monckton-Smith's research uncovered that the 8 stages also apply to suicide. Coercive control causes trauma with symptoms like anxiety, depression, and hopelessness, often related to PTSD, which is common for coercive control victims. These can all be contributing factor to suicidal ideation.
Sylvia Walby's research in the UK found 1 in 8 female suicides related to domestic violence and abuse. "This equates to 200 women taking their own lives and 10,000 attempting to do so due to domestic abuse every year in the UK. That’s nearly 30 women attempting to complete suicide every single day." And that's just in the UK. How many women worldwide are attempting suicide to escape coercive control?
Losing one's sense of reality and identity, also often caused by coercive control, can increase suicidal ideation. In addition, coercive controllers can become suicidal when they lose what makes them feel powerful. Keeping their coercive control victim entrapped may be what has kept that person feeling stable and powerful, so suicide risk increases for both perpetrators and targeted victims of coercive control when the victim refuses to comply. When perpetrators escalate to domestic violence homicide, they often kill themselves as well.
Most victim/survivors I've spoken with have told me that at one time or another they felt suicide was be preferable to living with coercive control. Many who became advocates tell me they did so to resist their feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and suicidal thinking, as well as to stand up for other victim/survivors who are still trapped in Psycho-Social Quicksand™. Many targeted victims protect themselves from suicide by reminding themselves that their children need them. But this becomes more difficult to do when courts place those children into the unsupervised custody of the coercive controller.... increasing victim's terror and distress. Incredibly common with coercive controllers is the weaponization of friends, family and systems to play the victim and punish their victims by damaging important relationships and convince untrained, and/or well-intentioned, professionals to do the coercive controller's dirty work for them. The use of DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) is often used to flip the script, making the victim falsely appear to be the perpetrator and the perpetrator to be the victim.
Suicide may seem like a selfish act.... especially when a mother dies by suicide, leaving children behind. But if you have never experienced the terror, trauma and helplessness of the PsychoSocial Quicksand™ of coercive control, you simply cannot understand what targeted and entrapped victims of this horrible abuse go through. Once your children have been turned into weapons to harm you, and the systems designed to protect you have abandoned you and blamed YOU for the abuse you suffered, emboldening your coercive controller, suicide can feel like your last remaining act of resistance against the torture of coercively controlling abuse.
More research is needed to corroborate links between coercive control and suicide. Because coercive control can be invisible in plain sight, I believe there are many deaths, both homicides and suicides, that are connected to coercive control that have not been identified as such. We need better detection, intervention and prevention and we need #SystemicTransformation to improve our responses to these cases.
If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, help is available in the US from the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline @ 9-8-8. If you are a friend or family member of a coercive control survivor, here is a resource you can use to support them, and a Partnered with a Survivor Podcast to help understand the torture they may be experiencing, from which they could be desperate to escape.
#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!
