Sally Challen's case drew a lot of attention in the UK, because she killed her husband by hitting him in the head repeatedly with a hammer. Her case seemed open and shut, and she was convicted of murder. But at her original trial, her husband's coercive and controlling behaviors were never raised. Coercive control was not yet illegal in the UK, and therefore not available as a defense or even considered relevant to the "crime." Even on appeal, Sally was not released from prison because of her husband's coercive control, but because she had been mentally ill at the time of the killing.
The piece of the puzzle that advocates and survivors of coercive control are attempting to connect through education and awareness is the connection between coercive control and the severe mental distress it causes. Sally Challen wasn't mentally ill prior to her husband's coercive control. Coercive control likely CAUSED her mental illness. Even if it didn't cause it originally, it most certainly exacerbated it beyond her ability to cope. How do we know that? Because Sally Challen doesn't remember killing her husband. She didn't want to kill him. She loved him. But the coercive control she was experiencing so completely overwhelmed her body, mind and soul, that she reacted violently to protect her very being. I can relate, and so can many other targets of coercive control.
Research shows that nearly two-thirds of female prisoners are survivors of domestic abuse. And, according to Evan Stark, the majority of domestic abuse cases include coercive control. Why does this matter? Because this means that many of the women in prison are there for fighting back against abuse or trying to protect themselves from abuse and/or coercive control. In the US, we aren't tracking coercive control, but we must start. We must criminalize coercive control in order to protect women and girls from being prosecuted for protecting themselves against coercive controllers, and to make it easier for women to leave them. Society is blind to the invisible ways coercive control entraps women within the intimate terrorism that characterizes these relationships. Coercive controllers make escape nearly impossible.
Criminalizing coercive control will save lives!
If you have never been a victim, target or survivor of coercive control you can't fully grasp the terror, rage and pain of having someone who says they love you rip your life apart, while enjoying it. This kind of horrific abuse causes severe trauma. Sally didn't want to kill her husband. She just wanted what all victims of domestic abuse and coercive control want... she wanted the abuse to STOP!
Now the Criminal Cases Review Commission is reopening murder cases in order to put right the miscarriages of justice that characterize a good portion of our female prison population. Personally... I will be cheering from the sidelines, and praying that women are released from the hell that they have suffered because a coercively controlling man destroyed their life. They will never be able to get back what he stole from them, but we can at least grant them the dignity, the agency and the freedom to claim the rest of their own lives.
