Coercive control

The report sets out how for many domestic abuse victim/survivors caught up in the criminal justice system, it is the experience of coercive control that has directly led them to be accused of offending. It draws on the experiences of seven women, exploring how this happens and what needs to change to ensure victim/survivors are protected from abuse and not unfairly criminalised. Coercive control is now understood to be a form of domestic abuse, representing a pattern of behaviour over time through which the perpetrator exerts control over the victim/survivor.

Ten years ago, in an attempt to equip the criminal justice system to hold perpetrators to account for coercive control, legislation was introduced (through Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015) to make ‘controlling or coercive behaviour’ a specific criminal offence. This has also since been included in the statutory definition of domestic abuse (at Section 1 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021).

Personal accounts

The core content of the report is a series of seven personal accounts who were unfairly criminalised as a direct result of suffering coercive control. I reproduced brief summaries of four of these accounts below:

‘Olivia’, then a serving police officer, was convicted of misconduct in public office and lost her job after her controlling ex-boyfriend, also a police officer, coerced her into giving him her password into the police computer system. Olivia’s mental health and career prospects have been severely damaged, which has in turn affected her young daughter.

‘Isabella’ was prosecuted for theft and fraud after her severely abusive and controlling partner used her bank account and phone number to sell stolen caravans. Proceedings were eventually dropped when prosecutors belatedly realised her ex-partner had been convicted of eight counts of rape against her. When Isabella was told the proceedings were going to be dropped, she explained to a Community Psychiatric Nurse she had been planning to commit suicide before her trial began.

‘Choum’, an Asian woman whose first language is not English, was subject to lengthy investigation by the police in response to repeated false allegations by her severely abusive and controlling white British ex-husband.  He had subjected Choum to appalling coercive control including routine rapes and treated her as a servant.  She reported him to the police but the matter was closed with no further action. No charges were brought against Choum, but her mental health was severely affected and she has since lost her job because of the police record of the allegations. She comments:

“It is very unfair. He abused me, controlled me, scared me…He flipped the case – he turned their attention on to me.”

Megan (her real name) is a survivor of coercive control who was prosecuted and ultimately acquitted for allegedly assisting her abusive ex-partner after he had murdered his cousin. She explains:

“I kind of resigned myself to the legal system carrying on what my ex-partner had done. I was still the one being blamed. I was being charged, I was being accused, and I felt like they were just doing his job for him really.”

Common trends

All the survivors’ accounts detail common features of coercive control and its devastating impact on them and their families. As the accounts make clear, criminal justice responses which fail to protect victim/survivors and actually serve to punish them can effectively extend the perpetrator’s abuse. This compounds the damage already caused to the victim/survivor, leading to long-lasting additional harm.

The accounts uncover multiple failings in the criminal justice process, including:

• Underlying failures by criminal justice practitioners to understand and successfully prosecute coercive control.
• Lack of any effective defence for victims of coercive control who are accused of offending.
• Police failures to gather, review and pass on evidence of coercive control experienced by suspects who are also victims.
• Susceptibility of criminal justice practitioners to unfair stigmatisation of victims and manipulation by perpetrators of coercive control.
• Failure by criminal justice practitioners to understand the particular barriers to justice faced by Black, Asian, minoritised and migrant victim/survivors who are accused of offending.
• Delays in CPS decision making, failure to take account of written representations on behalf of victims accused of offending and no means of redress for defendants facing inappropriate prosecution decisions.

Recommendations

The report makes 11 recommendations for reform, including the introduction of an effective defence for victims of coercive control who are coerced into offending, and a joint police and CPS protocol for gathering, passing on and taking account of evidence of coercive control where a suspect in an offence may also be a victim.