Coercive Control: What We All Need to Know – Episode 1

hello I'm dr. Turner Pittman I work for in gender equality which is a Tasmanian statewide Family Violence service we are going to be putting out videos every Thursday on a variety of social media channels the purpose to clarify and examine different aspects of family violence and coercive control as part of our education and prevention services this particular series is for our clients your clients your friends or family and the general public we feel that knowledge saves lives and it helps us all recognize what family violence and coercive control might look like and what it might feel like and what it might be like and to recognize the loss of human rights and are inherent to all unequal relationships so stay tuned and I will be back in one minute to carry on [Music] hello again so this is a 10 part series on coercive control it's a concept that is really potent it covers a lot of ground and it is so so important that we all understand it it unpacks the pattern of control and the course of conduct that's at the very core of family violence it's not always understood well it's sometimes framed up in different ways but one way to frame it all up is coercive control and the phrase is critical some definitions it's a maligned pattern of domination now malign means threatening intimidating and it's destructive it's a pattern of behavior designed to oppress an intimate partner and it's the course of conduct which denies you your liberty or your equality or your freedom so without any reference to physical violence it names up what will happen to the other person in relationship to a coercive controller they'll be dominated they'll be oppressed and they'll be denied their freedom there are as you can imagine many many ways of achieving that and very very likely is there to be no physical violence or the sort of physical violence that doesn't ever get addressed and is very hard to get evidence for so to understand that coercive control may or may not include physical violence is the very first main point so earlier this year an atrocity took place in Brisbane in Australia that spurred advocates to push for cause of control to be criminalized in Australia as it is in the UK Wales and Scotland the very public murders of Hannah Clark and her three children by her ex-partner and the children's father shocked the nation he allegedly controlled every aspect of her life which is what can cause have control is about there was no reported physical violence and allegedly Hannah says she didn't think it was family violence because there was no physical violence and so many people all around the world and particularly in Australia are now consumed with wondering why is this happening so often and what is it that we're missing here are the words of Saira Malik an investigative journalist writer and presenter the SBS voices Australia she summed up very very beautifully what everyone is so concerned about take a listen [Music] [Applause] [Music] very potent words by Sarah Malik they speak for many of us Tasmania is an Australian jurisdiction that has tried to capture this maligned pattern of domination particularly in regard to emotional and financial abuse in the Tasmanian Family Violence Act in 2004 it writes it states a person must not pursue a course of conduct that he or she knows or ought to know is likely to have the effect of unreasonably controlling or intimidating or causing mental harm apprehension or fear in his or her spouse or partner a course of conduct includes limiting the freedom of movement of a person's spouse or partner by means of threat threats or intimidation they are fine words and they go to a large way a long way to capture the essence of coercive control unfortunately though no relationship breaks down neatly into offences or forms of abuse such as emotional abuse or financial abuse coercive control cuts across goes underneath and joins the dots between all the acts and forms of abuse that are named up legally and actually expresses more that has ever really been named up legally let's start with a very short history of how white Western culture made sense of domestic violence it's quite an interesting history and it helps explain the process of conceptualizing family violence or domestic violence and why it's taking us such a long time to in the Western world anyway to all have a similar explanation and conceptualization of what it really is about pre-1970s western women were expected to focus on family and domestic responsibilities rather than participate in family life or the workforce it was not a level playing field women did not have the same rights whatsoever in that era so for example as head of the household a man could dispense physical chastisement to his wife and children her wife could not refuse sexual access for her husband and there in straightaway lies why physical violence could happen because it was allowable and also a woman could not refuse sexual access for her husband men actually had Authority as well as social and legal control over women women had to ask big protest lobby and create movements for equal rights and often at very great personal risk a husband could reap many many benefits and privileges from being married that were not reciprocated for the wife another atrocity is that in Australia the indigenous Australian people's the actual and traditional owners of this land were withheld Australian citizenship until 1967 let alone equality that wasn't even on the cards they would withheld Australian citizenship until 1967 into this era of abject inequality blame-the-victim thinking was absolutely rampant so anybody who was beaten had a hard time had misfortune was at a loss there were they were subject to blame the victim thinking now this is disturbingly evident in a study from the USA it's a famous study conducted by Snell Rosenfeld and Roby in 1964 titled the wifebeaters wife they state these beatings fulfilled these castrating or masochistic women's needs women and these relationships posed a treatment dilemma for clinical psychiatry the blame-the-victim thinking is so clear and women were considered to be castrating or masochistic instead of there being any bigger picture thinking as to what was going on socially what was the social quality of the of the relationships possible how could there be a good relationship when it was so unequal when women had no social political or legal leverage compared to men in the 1970s though the statistics of women ending up being injured hospitalized murdered reached such a level and it became so obvious especially as the statistics were better and better kept and recorded that the research started to really pay attention to this physical violence and what do we do about it and how do we how do we know when that when it becomes a chargeable offense and we call it domestic violence so they looked at how many episodes of physical violence had to happen what level of injury needed to occur was there the intent to hurt and is there any evidence and what combination of that constitutes domestic violence and a chargeable offense but what wasn't understood is what else happened in the relationship 24/7 underneath instead of as well as over and above any incident where there might have been physical violence of any kind whether it ended in injury or not it wasn't until the 1980s that research has really started to focus on the non physical abuse but initially that was only concerning relationships where there was actually physical violence so researchers would talk to women who could claim who could say yes I've experienced physical violence okay great we need to talk to you about the non-physical parts of your relationship and in that era there were better research techniques previously it was all surveys and tick boxes and and women being asked closed questions yes or no how many incidents but not open questions such as tell me about can we explore can we look into what happened in the other parts of the relationship and allowing women to articulate and express and to paint a picture of their life with their abusive partner other than physical violence these better research techniques started to really change our conceptualization of domestic violence but the idea that the non physical abuse which was sometimes called emotional sometimes called psychological abuse sometimes called both there was very little standardization of what that meant there wasn't really the realization that that could occur independently of physical violence until the mid 1990s so up until the mid 1990s women who were being controlled like henna for example but we're not experiencing physical violence would completely left out of statistics and the conceptualization of domestic violence they won't count it that wasn't understood and that is still what's happening now less and less but it is still prevalent in the community that there will be a blame the victim thinking and that if there is an outright physical violence then quite likely the woman's just as bad as the man or there's an interactional problem or a conflict or problem or you know someone is a little too stressed cognitive psychologists in the 1970s and 1980s so even earlier had already drawn links between what they saw to be the mind control and the manipulative strategies used on women in domestic violence to those used by captors on prisoners of war hostages and kidnap victims they'd already made those links but those links weren't really taken as much notice of an in the domestic violence literature as the forms of abuse were focused upon in 1993 and 2002 the researchers pence and Palmer and Bancroft raised the parallels between the attitudes the behaviors and the justifications used by men who abused women and any oppressive organization or system so for example they spoke about what happens to whistleblowers when they raise something in an organization that they saw as unjust as unfair as illegal as affecting people badly as corrupt and what would happen to them the silencing of them the intimidation of them the sidestepping of them and ruining their careers and defaming them in public that's what they said that's exactly what they thought family violence domestic violence was actually all about could include physical violence but it may not the dynamics and strategies of control was similar to tactics used to sustain any group domination such as racism classism heterosexism ableism ageism any ISM the strategies of control the dynamics of that process of saying we're better than you are we don't think you have the same value as we do they are the same strategies very used in domestic violence and that was being raised in the research back then in 2000 and not in the late 1900s in 2000 itself an Australian child and family counselor called war drew parallels between the coercive techniques used in family violence and systematically deceptive and entrapping cults now that raised an even stronger relationship between what happens to somebody who is being abused what goes on other than incidences or episodes of our physical violence what actually is happening between the two of them 24/7 the idea of being systematically deceived and trapped really starts to add potency to what family violence is is all about not only that another argument has been raised by pence and Palmer that interpersonal relationships can be compared to international relationships and that really what happens that between individuals mirror global and national relationships in their own interpersonal relationships so just consider what happens when one country takes over another country starts to govern it starts to criticize it starts to change the cultural style never nicely and never kindly always against the other countries will and at its expense utilizes all its resources denies the indigenous population any freedom or equality and that is what we actually mean when we think that a colonizing process is a far more formidable process to understand it is far more extensive than say talking about forms of abuse somebody colonizing you means that they actually take over how you operate how you even think about yourself what you're allowed to do what you're not allowed to do what parts of your original culture before they came along are you allowed to keep and what aren't you allowed to keep what kind of resources are you being used for so what we're talking about here are the mechanics of oppression and they all can be whether enacted by a country an organization a system a group or a person for example strategies that silence intimidate and defame any voice of dissent trivializing denying or justification justifying the inequalities or just injustice is caused and refusing to address the actual issues raised that is what women tell us happens 24/7 within the relationship they don't have a voice they don't actually have any influence in the relationship there may not be any physical violence but they have lost control of their own country they are no longer governing their own country they no longer can say what their culture is they no longer are in charge of their own resources either they have been colonized and their government taken over they are now being governed coercive control how men entrapped women in personal life that is a book written by stark in 2007 he states that there is no counterpart in men's lives to women's entrapment by men in personal life due to coercive control he's very clear about that he's not saying and no one is saying that women can't be abusive that women can't be violent that women don't have their ways of relating that are not okay but what he is saying that when it comes to gender and when it comes to interpersonal relationships men it's much more easy for men to entrap women than the other way around and why is that because socially legally and politically women have less leverage coercive control he says is a liberty crime other than a crime of assault so coercive control is also about what you are allowed to do and what you're not a lot to do not allowed to do and what you are made to do just as much as it might be about physical violence Starks work informed the decision in UK Wales and Scotland to criminalize coercive control because those countries realized just the loss of human rights inherent to being in relationship with the coercive controller and that in Orgel conscience they could not allow that to keep happening Stark says that the women in my practice have repeatedly made it clear that what is done to them is less important than what their partners have prevented them from doing the violence model has always trivialized this it's never really addressed the loss of rights inherent to living with coercive control coming up is a clip from understanding course of control by Professor Evan stark he did this clip in 2016 take a listen of coercion and control parts of abuse but none of the laws were reflecting that because they were defining it only as violent incidents because in order to commit domestic violence you have to have proximity to a victim in order to commit coercive control you do not coercive control is an amazing form of oppression because it crosses social space and in order to investigate and interdict coercive control you have to follow course and control through social space you've got to follow the surveillance you've got to follow the stalking you've got to follow all of the elements that allow the perpetrator to continue to be in control when she's at work when she's shopping when she's at her mother's house when she's at the hairdresser's all of those are sites throughout the entire community much more effective in that sense than physical violence so bottom line is that the violence model that we were using where we equated domestic violence with individual discrete assaults was having the effect of trivializing what women were experiencing wise words from Professor Evans stark the tactics used in coercive control can appear insignificant to an outsider and to even the person inside the relationship they can seem invisible hard to express very difficult to articulate and they do not require proximity to the victim but can work across social space there are so many ways now to control somebody when you're not even in the same room or living in the same house you can do it electronically you can do it through social media you can track cars it is just an endless array of ways to control somebody now the presence of conflict or interactional difficulties can actually be coercive control families friends practitioners and the law can inadvertently miss diagnose and aid in a bit the coercive controller unfortunately that is still very very common because somebody who is perpetrating coercive control will never ever actually admit to that but has become very very good at deflecting blaming and shaming the other person and also defining them just like the whistleblower defaming them so that no one will take any notice of them the coercive controller takes for their benefit your financial and sexual resources your labor your time your energy and your attention without reciprocation or empathy you do not get it back now it is very similar to how relationships used to be pre-1970s where a man was able to control a woman because he was able to chastise her and had no right to deny him sexual access that was the marriage contract publicly all may seem to be okay but privately there's a patent use of tactics that will instill shame blame guilt obligation confusion and fear in you with or without the use of his equivalents here's a YouTube clip from the Scottish women's aired in 2019 it's called hidden in plain sight coercive control and domestic abuse take a listen to this from the outside we look like the perfect couple a teacher married to a doctor but inside I feel like a hostage he told me who I'm allowed to talk to and who I'm not allowed to talk to and then he acted like it was all just a joke it wasn't he's deadly serious he gets the kids to tell him who I see and where I go he told me he'd put hidden cameras in the house to watch me when no one's there after I passed my accountancy exams I had a good salary but he controlled every penny I spent he even kept a spreadsheet in the supermarket I'd stand in front of the serials scared stiff about what he might do if I chose the wrong kind he complains that I don't call him enough then that I call him too much he gets into my email and deletes things and he sends messages from my account [Music] you're a useless mother you get everything wrong you're losing it the way he undermines me it makes me doubt myself what if I make mistakes in front of the class is it all in my head it's Marcia plates right beside me and then laugh at me when I flinched in you he didn't have to hit me to keep me under control he'd get angry then apologize you know I love you but you make me lose my temper it's your fault I thought I'd be safe if I toured the line he kept coming to see me at my work to check up on me my colleagues thought it was sweet that he was so attentive he told them she needs a lot of attention she's a Weber unstable I felt too ashamed to tell them what's going on at home so I left my job it's like I don't know who I am anymore and that is the effects of coercive control is that after a while you don't know who you are anymore because you're constantly being told that you're the one in the wrong and you're the one to blame but not only that going behind her back and defaming her to others is a very common technique so in a relationship like that where there's a cause of controler trying to make any changes trying to assert yourself trying to extricate yourself or leave is actually dangerous regardless of whether there's been any physical violence it's almost like you have no right to the cause of controller doesn't think you have any right to actually have a life of your own away from them and when you think about how often women were told you just need to assert yourself you need to be assertive that may never work being you can be as assertive as you like about the dynamics are so thick and fast and strong that there is really no one who can remain assertive long and hard enough in order to be able to counter it and when we find that person we would like to bottle it imagine if we focused on the mechanics of oppression rather than arguing that women are as violent as men or what about men it's not like that we're not concerned about of course we are and this happens to men as well and it can happen to any gender we no longer can just talk about two genders but the store the argument that you know one gender is worse than another or just as bad as the other missus the entire point of really coming to terms with and clarifying beyond doubt what the mechanics of oppression are between people and where they get played out because when we know that we can see it we can counter it and we can prevent it and I don't just mean by the person in the relationship preventing it I mean we can socially and legally prevent it we can use education to help prevent it knowledge really does save lives and it helps us work towards equality so that an unequal relationship of tweet between people of any gender is really obvious and it's really unacceptable to everybody and in summary then if we think about coercive control and what will has been said in this video there are many things that coercive control has been likened to and if we think about these points now in relation to relationship with another person it hot the whole idea of what coercive control is really starts to broaden out for you have a little watch of this [Music] the next nine videos will cover coercive control in relation to the dynamics of it the tactics that are used the styles that there are of course of control there are many different ways of being a coercive controller there are many different styles the effects of it on the other person the stages that it goes through what happens for children the post separation consequences and challenges are frankly enormous and not yet well understood and finally how to transform yourself after having an experience of being coercively controlled by a partner that you had hoped would love you for who you are please feel free to like or share this video or contact us via the details shown it's been the details are coming up it's been really lovely to have you here thank you for listening and watching and I look forward to seeing you again next week bye bye you [Music]

Channel: Engender Equality

Views: 13,618

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Id: ei7Uhtf8w7Q

Length: 33min 3sec (1983 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2020