What is coercive control, and what would laws that could jail perpetrators look like? | The Drum

we now know that domestic violence can come in many forms and one of those is coercive control an insidious pattern of behavior that undermines a person's sense of self and sometimes their sanity but it's a little understood by many people and even harder to police under current laws in an exclusive provided to the drum dv perpetrators could be jailed for up to 10 years under proposed new coercive control laws set to be introduced to new south wales parliament next week now the bill being put forward by the state opposition not the government but it's the first attempt by a major party on the australian mainland to criminalize the dangerous behaviours underpinning many abusive relationships [Music] coercive control is sometimes referred to as intimate terrorism but what does it actually look like can mean anything from cutting off money locking women in the house telling a woman what she can eat and when she can eat it being constantly humiliated and insulted their behaviour is designed to undermine the victim and give the perpetrator a sense of control a survey of fifteen thousand women in australia found nearly six percent had experienced coercive control from a current or former partner in the early months of the covert crisis with one in five saying it was for the first time i've been absolutely breeding ground because people have been trapped at home with their abusers but it's not a new problem the murder of hannah clarke and her three children by hannah's estranged partner in february renewed calls for a law change he would soak and not speak for days he would threaten to kill himself go through her phone through her handbag in new south wales a coroner's review of intimate partner homicides found 99 of perpetrators had committed coercive and controlling behaviors toward the victim and shell harbour mp and opposition whip anna watson hopes to change that by criminalizing coercive control behaviors i wouldn't be doing this if i didn't think it could save lives the draft bill still needs to get the final tick of approval from her party but has the support of labour leader jody makai an opposition spokeswoman on women and the prevention of domestic and family violence trish doyle who spoke of her own experience of family violence in her maiden speech to parliament the night becomes one of ambulances police sobbing fear under labour's proposal coercive control behaviors including emotional and financial abuse could find the perpetrator jailed for up to five years it lists a number of behaviours that need to be proven and proven as part of a pattern perpetrators could face 10 years behind bars for aggravated coercive control which would include the abuse of a child labour says it covers all intimate partners from extended family members to exes and they say this bill goes further than tasmania which made changes to criminalize the behaviors in 2005. the new south wales version will be you know a tweak on what has worked best in the scottish model and the tasmanian model in a statement the new south wales attorney general told the drum that in considering any new laws caution would be needed so you didn't overreach in your endeavour in criminalizing behaviour he said the government had no immediate plans to follow suit saying he's still reviewing overseas jurisdictions including scotland which is considered the gold standard for criminalizing coercive behaviour there in one year more than 1 000 charges were brought under the act and 96 of reported charges were prosecuted their legislation has a much higher maximum penalty to account for the seriousness of this type of abuse but also they specify some of the behaviors that constitute coercive control which really helps reinforce for policing prosecutors what they should be looking for i've heard from some you know some folks in australia making these arguments don't you know this is criminalizing the family this is not you know this is just about people behaving badly all of those arguments that hold no water as far as i'm concerned peak domestic violence body women's safety today released its own position paper labour says many but not all of the 12 recommendations have been included within their draft bill you've got frontline specialists that are calling for this you've got victim survivors calling for this in unison it's something that we just need to roll up our sleeves and get done and that report from stephanie bolchiner for more on this we're joined by journalist and author of see what you made me do power control and domestic violence jess hill jess welcome back to the drum thanks julia now you've advocated for for some time and quite strongly for the need for coercive control legislation tell us why you think it's so important because the way that the criminal justice system is set up at the moment is that it looks for incidents and what we know about domestic abuse is that it's not about particular or specific incidents it's about a system of abuse so everything from isolation micromanagement of activities degradation threats gaslighting and inside that system of abuse physical and sexual violence may occur or it may not occur and at the moment the criminal justice system is really looking only for those incidents in which physical or sexual violence occurs but when they go to you know prosecute say destruction of property or an assault they miss everything that has gone on before and around that assault and therefore they miss how dangerous that perpetrator could really be now one of the one of the dominant things that critics say about this kind of legislation is that you just you're going to criminalize behavior that might be i don't know nasty or dominating or just a jealous person what what what's the response to that how do you establish actual patterns of behavior that can be potentially dangerous well i'd like them to actually sit in a courtroom and see what kind of incidents actually get past the criminal justice system and get prosecuted give us some examples yes so an example of something that was prosecuted in scotland was um there was a man who was threatening to kill his wife now it was so serious that she barricade herself inside her bedroom and outside he was sharpening knives he confiscated the phone so he she couldn't contact anyone so he was prosecuted there's no threat at all of criminalizing just normal but unpleasant behavior the sorts of things that we see being prosecuted in scotland and england and wales are really serious ongoing systems of abuse in which there are things like isolating a person from friends and family threats to harm or kill threats to hurt a child criminal destruction of property micromanagement and surveillance using online communication tools or spyware but you've got to prove at least two or more incidents that are like discrete incidents within the system of coercive control and it is really like the bar is set quite high a reasonable person has to see that that behavior would cause somebody else fear alarm or distress um and so i mean the sorts of stuff we're seeing prosecuted are the things that were hiding behind minor acts of violence within the relationship so for example i was in a courtroom the other day and there was a man who was being prosecuted for destroying three pot plants he'd come home from work he was on his laptop his wife was apparently getting annoyed about that she took the laptop outside and then he destroyed three pot plants that's all we hear about that incident we have no clue as to whether outside of that he has been controlling threatening demeaning surveilling her and so all that happens is you get judged on the seriousness of that incident alone but what coercive control legislation does is it says look let's look at the entire arc of the relationship and see what part that incident played within a greater scheme of behavior right which is some things that happen when we when we talk about that can happen in the media as well when we look at the what happened with hannah clark people were very quickly talking about the actual incident without seeing and understanding properly patterns of behavior that had built up to it but i want to bring amani haider in at this point amani you've spoken you've spoken and written powerfully before about how about growing up in a household where you you witnessed um you know your father behave abusively um towards your mother and she eventually died at his hands do you was this a situation of coercive control yes i think it was and perhaps the reason these things are so difficult for people outside of the relationship to identify is the fact that they can be quite insidious um cumulative and can take place in um through the use of emotional and psychological tactics that can really only target the victim so my mom was a social worker and a counselor and gradually learned to describe her experiences and she would say that she was being controlled and gaslighted and i think she experienced a lot of frustration about the fact that it was hard for other people to see that for me when when the murder took place it came as a huge shock initially because i was looking at it as an isolated incident because in my mind and the assumptions that i had learned from the world around me um abuse was always physical and it was hard for me to connect the dots and see that that this was part of a bigger pattern do you think that this legislation would have would have helped your mother has saved her definitely i think laws like this provide women with a language with which to express their experiences and they provide the law with a way to respond so perhaps if we were having more robust conversations about the nature of coercive control earlier on and perhaps if we had these mechanisms in place people like my mom might consider leaving relationships sooner they might be able to identify the abuse abuse um more readily and they might even put in place some more robust safety planning measures when they decide to leave um tori do you think that that we that we've basically normalized a lot of coercive controlling behaviors well i think yeah in in many cases we have i mean you know you get maybe younger women entering into a relationship and they don't recognize the red flags they maybe think that it's just yeah oh it's so it's sweet that is really you know he cares about what i'm doing every minute of the day right yeah it's supposed to be romantic and don't realize that that is a red flag and see that develops so yeah being able to name this i think is really really important i think the legislation helps you start to do that to unpick it and also i guess bring to light the myriad ways in which this can come out i mean i remember we had conversations here years ago in south australia about expanding domestic violence laws to include cruelty to pets and people like what you know what does that mean how you start to then look at specific cases for example where a man might say you know you do that again and the dog gets it and you can start to tease it out um so for for victims that i think is extraordinary because gaslighting is very much a part of this that they think i'm going crazy you know it's all in my head um and this will help to bring it out into the open jackie how do you think we have a conversation about what constitutes a healthy relationship given what what so many women are saying about controlling behaviors that can start so young i think it has to start in schools i don't think you're ever going to stop couples getting together i mean they're always going to be intimacy with couples and i think that you know the fact that 80 percent of murder victims happen to be in a relationship it's not about couples getting together it's about nobody identifying dangerous patterns of behaviour and avoiding them so so what you're saying is this legislation is designed to start that conversation no i'm saying we're having that conversation now uh well we are because the legislation's brought up but i'm not i'm not sold on the car i loved what jess said i'm not sold on the legislative solution um because um the scottish examples were clear i mean you know you know he's outside sharpening knives but you know we're talking about over a long period of time other little things like you know you know that the dog gets you know eats rat sack or or um you know that you know things get smashed and you know pot plants but it's only a symbol of what was happening so it's part of a pattern yeah but but for it to have got to that stage where she is so reliant and so subject to being gaslighted in such a fashion it started out with a relationship i would assume that was quite healthy or should have been red flagged from the start and i think there are other legislation i think that will do it much better than trying to put a man in prison for 10 years for something he's been doing for 10 years you know i mean you can almost my my legislation are you thinking of us i'm thinking of going back to the old income splitting and i think that's where women really miss out they they leave the workforce when they enter into a relationship and once they leave the workforce all power goes to the man it's my car it's my house it's my you know and you're in a relationship someone who believes that what are your choices kids are involved how do i you're saying financial independence is crucial but you're worried you're going back to the point of you're criminalizing you what you see is smaller actions you're you're look for get the jury to convict and given that the sentence is 10 years on this how many convictions did you get it said it had 90 of convictions were prosecuted but how many of them actually got a conviction well that they're still but it's only just been introduced so they're still waiting to change yeah so we can bring jess in on this point jess yeah look i i um i think jackie's sort of trying to come to a point here um i really want to make the point that coercive control is not about just what a perpetrator does to their partner but what they take away and we're talking about extremely dangerous and damaging forms of behavior that are tantamount to torture that is how coercive control is recognized internationally it doesn't just happen in relationships it happens in cult situations in prisoner of war situations we're not just talking about bad behaviors we're talking about times in which a woman's liberty may be entirely removed she may be trapped inside the house she may have her wages and benefits taken from her she may have she may have the right to drive taken away from her it's the removal of her autonomy that makes her vulnerable to all of the things that a perpetrator then can do which is to subject her to harassment and demeaning comments and reduce her self-esteem to a point where she may not be able to see herself in the mirror anymore and know who she is this is such a dangerous form of abuse it's the most dangerous form of domestic abuse in 99 of homicides in new south wales coercive and controlling behavior was there prior to the homicide you know this is the big red flag we made strangulation a separate offense because we noticed that it was eight times more likely that a woman would be killed if she was strangled by her partner so he realized that that needs to have its own separate charge and what i think we need to see with coercive control is that these like potential homicides but also incredibly degrading and damaging situations are being done in plain sight because we can't see the cumulative effect of abuse and all we can see are the physical incidents i suppose i want to go back earlier in the relationship so as soon as that female leaves the workforce and and gives over control um that we we go back to income splitting but it must be shown that it's going into her account and also that the employer has to make a provision out of that account to continue paying to her superannuation um so that all times in the marriage if if the male right from the start of the relationship wants to say it's mine it it's it's social your employer everyone is saying it's not that's dealing with the assumption that that it's only financial barriers that is that it's preventing a woman from leaving and not psychological which is often come in the way in when it comes to coercive claims often financial as well absolutely start that whole gaslighting i agree and i agree with what jackie's saying you know in the sense that financial abuse is absolutely key it's actually more prevalent in these coercive controlling situations than physical violence and it is the number one reason that women are afraid to leave is their fear of destitution but remember that a lot of these women are actually still employed um they have their wages and benefits taken from them they can be defrauded of their money there are they can have um leases or certain credit cards signed up in their name fraudulently um i mean what jackie's suggesting is an interesting protective measure but i think it's entirely separate to whether we criminalize coercive control and what comes as a result of that armani do you think there needs to be a shift attitudinally to the way we view relationships more fundamentally having kind of lived through what you've what you've lived through um i'd like to speak a little bit to the stuff that jackie was saying my mom had actually incrementally built herself a career and established an income for herself and was actually quite successful in that regard and victims exercise a lot of agency even though they're being abused or even though they're being controlled so i don't think it's right to erase the activities that they engage in to establish themselves or to assume that necessarily um they've given away that control at any point in the relationship my mom was murdered in her house that she owned she was paying the bills that at that time and essentially um my father um perhaps an aspect of of what happened was um that he was freeloading off um at that time so i think it's incorrect to sort of characterize it that way in relation to um thinking culturally and shifting our mindsets about what a healthy relationship should be i've been in workshops and classrooms where about well the majority of students have have actually indicated that they think that phone checking um regular uh monitoring of your whereabouts and activities like that are a normal part of a relationship and that are that are even romantic and they've absorbed these ideas from adults and also from entertainment around them so we do need to think outside of just criminalizing um behaviors and we do need to think outside of legal and castle responses and at the same time we need to be reimagining um the way that we structure our society as as just said so that we're not replicating abuse in in other structures and systems now i just want to before we lose you jess because we're almost out of time i'm conscious that you're that your books see what you made me do which you know won awards and was a best seller in australia has now just come out in the u.s and in the uk so you've kind of been looking at the research globally which you've been doing for some time anyway and and coercive control is something that is just starting as as um steph bolt she pointed out in her piece in a number of jurisdictions for example scotland what i i what did you have you noticed about kind of cultural differences when it comes to thinking about domestic violence where does australia stand in relation to those countries i think we have a really strong understanding of the gendered nature of this kind of abuse and that's not to say that doesn't happen in same-sex relationships it's not to say that it is not perpetrated by females in some um in same sexual relationships but our understanding i think that it is essentially a gendered form of abuse that it is something that that is underpinned by patriarchy both in the home but also in the systems that end up perpetuating it and and too often end up colluding with the perpetrator that is very strong in australia and that's been built by survivors by the families of of people who have been killed by the sector workers who have been in this um in this area for 40 plus years so in a lot of ways where we're ahead of the game i would say our understanding of coercive control is far far behind the uk and part of that is because when you introduce laws you change culture especially when you introduce laws with a good amount of fanfare and with the women's sector behind you and in front of you you know collaborating on the laws um and what has happened in the uk is we've seen fictional dramas we've seen radio dramas you know you've seen culture start to explain and show and depict what coercive control is and you know i think we haven't yet seen that happen in australia the news can only show us so much we need to be a fly on the wall and what's happened in the uk is there's been a lot of television shows and radio dramas that have shown that and so there's just a growing sense of what domestic abuse actually is we've had it completely wrong for 40 years not people in the sector but people in the public and the justice system has had a very masculine definition of what domestic violence is and what we have to come back to is what women and children have been saying for 40 years is that for a lot of them the coercive control is the worst part you do important work jess hill and congratulations on the ongoing growing audience for your book and thanks for your expertise tonight thank you julia jess hill she's journalist and author of see what you made me do now if this topic has raised any concerns for you at all please call 1-800 respect on 1-800-737-732 you

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 17,212

Keywords: news, abc, abc news, australia, DV, DFV, domestic violence, family violence, coercive control, Women's Health NSW, Trish Doyle, NSW Parliament, The Drum, Julia Baird, Jess Hill

Id: aDkFC6oTA00

Length: 22min 26sec (1346 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 15 2020