Coercive control – what’s going on?
It’s only in the last year or so that coercive control has become really talked about. And there’s a few reasons why this has occurred.
The high-profile death of Hannah Clarke and her children is one. It’s been highlighted that Hannah didn’t experience physical violence, but she was exposed to extensive controlling and coercive behaviours by her partner Rowan Baxter.
Jess Hill has been advocating strongly on the issue in the media and with her book “See what you made me do”. She’s just aired a three-part series on SBS highlighting the complexities of coercive control.
ACROSS AUSTRALIA
The coercive control discussion and debate is in full flight across the whole of Australia. Particularly around the criminalisation of coercive control.
In October 2020, the New South Wales (NSW) government established a Parliamentary Joint Select Committee to inquire into and report on coercive control.
You can find the paper here
As of today - 24th May 2021, when I downloaded the link below, 153 submissions had been written! The link to all the submissions can be viewed here. (Trigger warning – some are personal stories that may traumatise some readers).
In February 2021, the Queensland government announced a taskforce would be established that would explore options to make coercive control an offence.
The Criminal Law Consolidation (Domestic Abuse) Amendment Bill 2020 has been introduced to the South Australian Parliament.
The Northern Territory (NT) government is looking at criminalising coercive control. Here is an article by two NT lawyers on the issue (go to page 29). It’s an interesting read and reflects the importance that any law reform will need to respond to local complexities (something we need to think about for Western Australia if we follow suite).
Victoria's Department of Justice and Community Safety is looking at options to strengthen responses. The Family Violence Protection Act 2008 recognises family violence can involve coercion and emotional, psychological and economic abuse, as well as patterns of abuse over an extended period.
Tasmania has already some offences that cover economic abuse and emotional abuse or intimidation offences that were introduced in 2004.
AND OVERSEAS
Coercive control offenses have been introduced in England and Wales (2015), Scotland (2018) and Ireland (2019).
Family violence specialists from the UK have shared their models with us here in Australia, providing an insight for sector professionals and researchers who are contemplating coercive control criminalisation.
NEW TERM FOR AN OLD PROBLEM
For the majority of us in the sector, coercive control is a ‘newish’ term for an old problem. Coercive control was recognised decades ago by feminist researchers and also by Sociologist Evan Stark. We also know it as power and control, patriarchal terrorism or intimate terrorism – as coined by Michael P. Johnson, or as a form of psychological abuse.
We all use or have used the Duluth power and control wheel. It’s an oldie but a goodie (just needs an update with technology added!). We all work in a sector that considers family violence to be more than just an isolated incident, and we are trained to recognise, assess and respond to patterns of coercive controlling behaviour.
Western Australia (WA) is one of the states and territories in Australia that have a common risk assessment and management framework (CRARMF). It’s a benefit to everyone’s family violence practice that we have this comprehensive framework which provides a shared understanding of risk assessment and management.
The CRARMF has been built using evidence-based risk factors and indicators, and homicide data. So, the risk factors for coercive control have been considered and are already in here. As coercive controlling behaviours are high risk for homicide, these are core to the risk assessment.
It is a little outdated in regard to technology that’s evolved so rapidly since it was written in 2015. It remains a valuable and ‘common’ framework that is used by all the services across mainstream, statutory and specialist services, ensuring a consistent approach.
We have to use this framework as is (most state family violence services are mandated to) but sometimes when providing client-centred practice, there’s a need to tailor support differently around client choices. There may be a need to investigate certain aspects further to meet client needs. In this case, I am a fan of using a variety of evidence-based tools to supplement assessment and support for clients.
I have shared some recent tools at my coercive controlling behaviour training. One of those was the 8-stage pattern for tracking intimate partner homicide risk escalation by criminology expert Dr Jane Monckton Smith. Here’s a short article that outlines the stages.
(If you would like my 3-hour basic training on Coercive Controlling Behaviours for your organisation please email me at hello@theorangestory.com.au. I can also Zoom this in two parts if you reside in a rural or remote region. I’ll be in Kalgoorlie in July 2021 offering this training).
If you haven’t done my training, and want to keep updated with coercive controlling behaviour tools and resources - please stay in touch via Facebook, newsletter or my website. I will keep updating the various tools, resources and information as I keep sourcing what’s available in the coercive control space.
FINALLY - wHAT I RECOMMEND IS…
We need to agree on a definition.
Yes, I believe we need to agree on a definition of what exactly is coercive control – preferably a nationally agreed one – or we still will have the constant differences across the states.
If you look at the NSW enquiry paper - this is exactly what they are hoping to define with the first question. It’s a complex phenomenon which is viewed differently by many, so to define it is a good starting place to build a consistent approach to working together on this problem.
Let me know your thoughts on what WA should do in the coercive control space in the comments.