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Coercive control: Lockdown a 'perfect storm' for threats, gaslighting and intimidation

Friday, 8 October 2021

The abuse took a turn when Claire’s* partner promised to stop hurting her.

He kept his word, in a way. The physical violence ended. But it was replaced with a relentless campaign of threats, rules, gaslighting and name-calling.

He would threaten to kill the dog if she left. If she wouldn’t give him sex, he would threaten to have an affair.

The implication he could hurt her hung in the air. He was a big, powerful man, prone to small displays of strength, such as shoving Claire as he passed in the hallway.

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**

“He could have killed me with a couple of punches,” she said.

Claire was out of the relationship well before the pandemic, but said being together during lockdown would have been a nightmare of “never-ending merciless control”.

Holly Carrington, a policy advisor for domestic abuse charity Shine, said lockdown exacerbated an abuser’s ability to coercively control their partner.

“With intimate partner violence, we talk about it as entrapment,” she said.

There are layers of entrapment. The first is the partner’s controlling behaviour. On top of that is how people respond: ignoring the behaviour, minimising it, victim-blaming all help abuse thrive.

There’s an extra layer for people who belong to communities already targeted with discrimination and abuse: rainbow communities, disabled people, the elderly, Māori and Pasifika.

“If you’re from one of those communities you’re more likely to experience violence, and you’re also less likely to access services that provide effective support.”

Lockdown creates a “perfect storm”. People might have just enough support to feel they’re coping in normal times – with that gone, it’s a case of surviving.

This lockdown, agencies are pushing the message that it’s OK for victims and their children to leave, in anticipation that violence will once again increase as tensions escalates and victims are cut off from the outside world.

Claire describes herself when she met her ex-partner: a successful 40-year-old with her own home and a good job.

“He zeroed in on my insecurities and managed to turn a capable, independent woman into a snivelling idiot.”

The name-calling was huge, she said. He would tell she was fat, or he didn’t like her clothes, or that she’d be useless at her new job. Her self-esteem plummeted.

Claire says the constant gaslighting had her questioning her sanity.
Claire says the constant gaslighting had her questioning her sanity.

The gaslighting ate away at her. It could be something tiny, she said – they’d agree to meet at 10 past, then he’d be adamant he said 1 o’clock. A “blackness would come across his face”, and she knew she’d be in for a huge argument and the silent treatment for days.

“Questioning my sanity was a huge thing towards the end, thinking it was all my fault.”

Women often say psychological abuse is worse than physical violence, according to clinical psychologist Dr Alison Towns, who has spent almost three decades working in family violence.

Physical violence has a beginning and end, but psychological abuse never stops.

Some victims may be micromanaged down to the position they sleep in, she said.

Often traditional gender roles are reinforced, the man casting himself as the “provider”, earning and controlling the money, while the woman is isolated at home and prohibited from working.

In Claire’s relationship, she kept her job as it “suited him” for her to be bringing in money, but he controlled what it was spent on. Constant texts from him lit up her phone throughout the day: “Where are you? What are you doing? Drop everything, I need you to do this”.

Coercive control is “the classic central part of domestic violence”, Towns said, but even police, social workers and judges don’t always understand what it means and looks like.

If you break it down, she said, coercion was about making threats or intimidating someone, and control could involve isolating the victim from friends and family, controlling their finances, micromanaging their lives.

“So long as the control is working, there’s very little need for any form of physical or sexual violence to maintain control,” Towns said.

It’s when the woman exerts independence that physical violence comes into play, often to reinforce the threats and demonstrate what the man is capable of, she said.

Often the coercive control builds slowly, Carrington says. In the early days of love, a partner insisting on going everywhere with you, to see family, the doctor or optician, can feel like a display of love. Then it starts to feel stifling. It also blocks any chance of the victim telling other people what’s happening.

Child are weaponised, both during the relationship and through the Family Court process.
Child are weaponised, both during the relationship and through the Family Court process.

Julia Hartley Moore is a private investigator who sees coercive control in “every single one” of her cases investigating infidelity and child custody arrangements.

In one case, a young woman’s parents raised concerns they never saw their daughter without her boyfriend. She was close to her family, but he eroded the relationship until she stopped contacting them. When they caught up with her, they found he’d moved her from Auckland to Christchurch, where she was isolated without a car, a job, money or friends.

“There’s always sexual abuse, emotional abuse, economic abuse.

“Often my clients are high-end people, and they are still controlled financially by their husbands.”

Those husbands will often manipulate them into sex that’s outside their comfort zone involving extreme acts or other partners by telling them, ‘If you love me, you’d do it’,”she said.

Children are weaponised, too. He might threaten the children, turn them against their mother or use custody as a threat: “You’ll lose the children if you don’t do what I want”.

This continues through the Family Court and parenting orders, Towns said. That might look like an onslaught of threatening messages before the school holidays, manipulating care arrangements or keeping the children for an extra day.

It’s the man saying “See, I can do it, I’m breaching the order, what can you do about it?” – knowing the woman would have to get a warrant and go back to the Family Court to challenge him, potentially costing $10,000.

He can also create narratives of her that are used against her in court, Towns said. If she’s getting upset in the courtroom, he can paint her as hysterical and unfit.

That might have started when they were in a relationship. When she’s isolated at home, he can create a narrative that she’s mentally unwell and not up to leaving.

New Zealand needs a workforce that’s trained to recognise coercive control, Holly Carrington said, including police, court-appointed psychologists and social workers.

The whole criminal justice system is set up for crimes that are one incident, not recognising that coercive control and domestic violence is a long history and pattern of behaviour, she said.

It isn’t clear whether legislating around coercive control is the answer. It’s included in the wording of the Family Violence Act, but some people, including Hartley Moore, want to see it as a separate charge.

Situations where there is no physical violence present a challenge for legislators. Coercive control has been criminalised in the UK and laws are being debated in Australia, but critics say they are hard to enforce and may not make women safer.

Alison Towns wants coercive control to be on the school curriculum. The patterns of behaviour can start in young dating couples, and early education could prevent a lot of harm, she said.

Claire left her partner after 15 years. She said she would have got out earlier if she had somewhere like Pet Refuge to look after her dogs, but she couldn’t leave them behind knowing he might hurt them.

He poisoned her friends against her, and to the outside world he looked like the perfect man: charming, good-looking, great with kids.

She was too embarrassed to tell her adult children what was happening.

“When you don’t have bruises to show … I felt like no one would believe me.

“The biggest thing I could say to anyone in a similar situation is don’t let yourself be ashamed.

“Try to reach out to somebody. I wish I had the courage to tell somebody what was going on.”

*Name has been changed to protect victim’s identity.

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