Coercive control is an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim. It includes isolating others from family and friends, and emotional abuse.

Expert Evan Stark likens it to being taken hostage: “The victim becomes captive in an unreal world created by the abuser, entrapped in a world of confusion, contradiction and fear.”

Identifying if it’s happening to you:

Common examples of coercive behaviour, designed to control you, are:

• Preventing you from seeing friends, or telling you that your family is no good for you
• Virtually imprisoning you in your own home
• Monitoring your time
• Monitoring you via online communication tools or spyware
• Telling others that you’re depressed or unwell and don’t want to see them
• Withholding affection as a form of punishment
• Constantly criticising you, humiliating you or mocking you
• Trivialising your thoughts and feelings
• Telling you the abusive behaviour is your fault, so you’re the one who ends up feeling guilty
• Giving you gifts to apologise – after they’ve attacked you

There are many ways a perpetrator may physically harm their victim, ranging from slaps, scratches, kicks or punches, to serious physical assault or even murder. As domestic abuse usually escalates over time, it is vital for you to tell a friend, relative or professional the first time it happens – or for you to believe her if someone confides in you.

Physical abuse can be choking or strangling, holding her down, suffocating, cigarette burns, cuts and biting. Pushing or throwing down the stairs, banging her head against the wall. It can be starvation, or force-feeding. 

Physical abuse can involve restriction of movement, including tying her up, or locking her in cupboards, rooms or in the home. Withholding her passport so she cannot travel is another restriction of free movement.

35% of all domestic abuse begins during pregnancy.  Physical abuse can mean injury to the unborn children. Our clients are attacked while holding children, so that children get hurt. Sometimes children in an abusive relationship are physically abused themselves.

Financial or economic abuse is designed to reinforce or create economic dependence, limiting your choices. It makes it less likely that you’ll be able to access support and more likely that you’ll stay in an unsafe relationship for longer.

The behaviour can include:

• Not allowing you to have your own money (even if you’ve earned it)
• Making you account for every penny you spend
• Telling you that you can’t manage money, or you spend on worthless things
• Denying you basic necessities
• Not consulting you on financial decisions that affect the family
• Taking all earnings and benefits
• Denying you use of credit or debit cards
• Preventing you from having a job, or making it impossible for you to get to work
• Threatening to deny you access to a phone, the car, or other economic assets
• Using money as a source of power with which to threaten you

Survivors of domestic violence and abuse often talk about the threats, intimidation and constant mind games as psychological abuse.

Threats to harm you, themselves, children or pets, are very common. Threats to take the children away or kidnap the children, blaming you for the abuse (“You made me do it because…”), erratic and unpredictable behaviour, are all part of psychological abuse.

Psychological abuse can be very obvious, or it can be very subtle, like gaslighting.

Gaslighting is where you are made to think that what you saw, or remember, or heard, was wrong. The word comes from a 1938 play, Gas Light, where the abusive husband made his wife think she was going mad, by systematic manipulation – and she finally did as a result of this abuse.

The effects of psychological abuse can go very deep leading to, amongst other things, low self-esteem, lack of confidence, fear and lack of trust.

Abusive partners commonly use words to abuse and intimidate.

This can include:

• Calling you names (including sexual names)
• Putting you down
• Shouting and yelling a lot
• Threats
• Making you feel bad about yourself
• Blaming you
• Making you feel guilty

Online abuse can be part of controlling behaviour, with your partner reading your emails or texts, and checking locations of social media posts. It often happens over long periods and escalates over time.

It can also include abuse on social media channels, sharing intimate photos or videos without your consent, and using GPS trackers or spyware to monitor your whereabouts.

Spiritual abuse is the use of religion to control the behaviour of the partner. It usually involves deliberately misquoting, or making up religious laws that do not exist.

It is easy – and very common – to use religion as a method of coercion, as our clients have experienced:

• “It says in the Torah that a wife has to obey her husband.”
• “The Shulchan Aruch says a wife is obligated to sleep with her husband whenever he wants.” (including when she is niddah, ritually impure around menstruation, when a woman abstains from intercourse)
• “My Rabbi said you are not allowed to refuse.”

These types of spiritual abuse are often possible because in more Orthodox communities, it is men who study the Jewish texts and learn with Rabbis. As the wife, you may feel you do not have the level of knowledge to challenge what your husband is asserting, and assume he is telling the truth.

Spiritual abuse can also include:

• Coercing you to do what he is demanding by suggesting he has G-d on his side and that by disobeying him, you are also disobeying G-d
• Using a rabbi to threaten you so you’ll stop speaking about the abuse, for example saying your children will no longer be able to attend their school; a ban will be put on your business; or you and your children will be cut off from your community
• Refusing to give you a religious divorce (a Gett)
• Refusing to let you practice your religion