Commencing prior to 1970, the battered women's movement, spearheaded by survivors and driven by aspirations to diminish domestic violence and safeguard women seeking refuge, initially framed domestic violence through a lens that persists in law enforcement and the legal system today. This lens, known as the violent incident model, continues to shape perceptions and responses to domestic violence.
The violent incident model proves to be especially inadequate when applied to the intricate and nuanced patterns of behavior characteristic of domestic abuse, domestic violence, and coercive control. Why? Because relying solely on this lens to evaluate cases, particularly those involving coercive control, is akin to judging a book solely by its cover. By focusing solely on individual incidents, the most crucial elements of the pattern—the context—are overlooked, thereby undermining a comprehensive understanding of the situation. When law enforcement and court professionals employ this insufficient perspective to assess targeted victims and offenders, they not only overlook the critical elements of the behavior pattern, but they also frequently misconstrue the dynamics entirely, leading to harmful, and even dangerous outcomes.
The Quicksand Model™ of Coercive Control provides one possible solution to this problem. The Quicksand Model™ was created by synthesizing 70 years of evidence-based research on coercive control, plus trauma learning styles, metaphor and alliterations, to make it easy to learn and apply. While there are other models that apply to individual contexts, like Evan Stark's framework for coercive control within domestic abuse, Cialdini's 7 principles of persuasion that applies to influence within sales, Biderman's chart of coercion, based on prisoners of war research and Steve Hassan's BITE Model of Authoritarian Control from cults, The Quicksand Model™ of Coercive Control was designed to apply across all of these contexts and more.
The Quicksand Model™ was purposefully crafted and refined to aid professionals in comprehensively understanding the entire context of behavioral patterns, steering them away from the limitations of the violent incident model towards a more holistic perspective.
Today, I'll delve into two significant issues with the prevailing violent incident model (there are many more that I'll save for another blog).
1. It fosters a false equivalency that often causes professionals to mistakenly perceive the victim as the perpetrator and vice versa.
2. It places undue emphasis on physical violence, effectively allowing perpetrators to evade detection despite exhibiting other forms of abusive behavior.
You might be wondering, what exactly is a false equivalency? Well, if you've experienced coercive control, you've likely encountered false equivalencies numerous times. Coercive controllers often create false equivalencies to cause confusion, cognitive dissonance (aspects of double vision) and to avoid accountability. It's simply a sophisticated way of saying "comparing apples and oranges." The violent incident model essentially compels our systems to make this comparison by disregarding context. But what does that mean? Let's break it down with a quick example.
Take Mary and Scott, a married couple. Scott becomes angry with Mary for not having dinner ready at 6 pm as he demanded. In frustration, he slaps her to assert his dominance and to motivate her, in his mind, to comply with his demands in the future. Distressed, Mary attempts to leave the room to escape Scott's verbal abuse, but he blocks her path, continuing to belittle her. When Scott grabs Mary's arm to restrain her, she instinctively slaps him back and then pushes past him to escape.
According to the violent incident model, both Scott and Mary are guilty of assault and domestic violence because they both engaged in physical violence. However, this is a false equivalency because their actions are not equal. Their motivations, levels of fear, harm inflicted, and goals differ significantly. By solely focusing on the physical altercation, the system effectively treats perpetrator and victim as equally responsible. But are they truly equally responsible? Scott's actions were driven by a desire for control and domination, while Mary acted out of a need to preserve her dignity, autonomy, and safety. Scott's violence extended beyond the physical slap, encompassing emotional abuse and coercion, aspects overlooked by the violent incident model. Mary's slap likely left her feeling frightened, humiliated, and diminished, impacting her self-esteem and autonomy. Holding Scott accountable for his actions requires acknowledging not only the physical violence but also the broader context of coercion, fear, and degradation inflicted upon Mary.
We need to abandon this violent incident model for a more effective pattern-based approach, one that not only provides for context, but requires it.
