Richard Hogan: Coercive control slowly reduces the victim to 'nothing'
Coercive control is a type of abuse that is almost impossible to see. It is an invisible prison that subjugates and obliterates the agency and self of the person caught in its terrible grip. It is a protracted system of control designed to shrink the victim's life down to nothing so that they are dependent on the perpetrator for nearly everything. To achieve their heinous outcome, the perpetrator (usually a man) will utilise tactics such as micro-managing the minutia of their life, humiliation, and surveillance via technology. They will gaslight and degrade their partner so that the ground beneath them is constantly moving. Disorientated, and uncertain about what is happening to them, the victim becomes easily manipulated and controlled.
Violence is often the last weapon used by a coercively controlling partner. That is what makes this crime so difficult to police and makes a victim so utterly vulnerable. In fact, many victims often describe how violence would have almost been easier to experience because at least then they would have known they were being abused.
With coercive control, the victim rarely knows what is happening to them until they are in a situation that is almost impossible to get out of; one that can be extremely dangerous. The victim begins to question their ability to survive without the controlling partner, or in more severe cases they realise that leaving is more dangerous than staying.
The fact that the first conviction under Section 39 of the Domestic Violence Act 2018 took place on the 11th of February in 2020, illuminates just how unsafe people feel to come forward. The recent conviction of a member of An Garda Síochána, Paul Moody, for coercively controlling his partner, brought into focus the pervasiveness of this type of abuse. His partner experienced vile and terrifying control at the hands of someone she met online.
What was particularly troubling about this case is that while Mr Moody was exerting his grip on the victim's life, she was sick with cancer. The court system has to show women of this country that it will no longer tolerate such abuse. The sentencing of Mr Moody did just that. However, the maximum sentence to the court for coercive control is five years. Moody received three years and three months, even though his crimes were at the higher end. Laws need to get tougher, to make a perpetrator think twice about the consequences of their behaviour, and to empower women and men to come forward.
In my experience, working clinically with people who have been coercively controlled they can often come to view themselves as "losing their mind" or "becoming mad." Everything in their world is unsettled.
Their relationship with their parents is targeted by the perpetrator, too. In a bid to remove all that is good and wholesome in the life of the victim, family and friends are pushed away. The victim is often rewarded for alienating their close network of support and punished when they don’t.
Parents of a child that is being abused like this, really struggle with how to support them. They become victimised by the perpetrator also. It is complete devastation for everyone caught in the perpetrator's dark orbit. It all happens insidiously and slowly, starting with comments about friends and family, the odd degrading comment about their appearance, constant knocking of their confidence, rewards when they align to the narrative being created, and outbursts when they seem to exert independence.
It is all designed to disorient the victim and separate them from those they love. This attack on someone’s perception of themselves and the world around them, is why Amnesty International has classified the process of coercive control as torture.
Coercive control is all about enslaving someone to the will of another. In my experience, the perpetrator, who is generally consumed with their belief about their right to have control and power in their life, (often arising from a troubled childhood where they experienced trauma and have developed the pathological thinking that they are entitled to exert control over their partner) seek out a very agreeable and malleable partner. (not always the case but generally)
They begin to slowly work on tearing down their victim's sense of self and autonomy. Of course, not everyone who has had trauma or attachment disruption in their childhood goes on to become an abusive adult, but trauma-based entitlement is often present in people who are abusive. Their terrible logic is, "this happened to me, so I’m entitled to do this to you."
The victim of Mr Moody’s abuse articulated perfectly in her victim impact statement, what it is like to experience such behaviour:
“It felt like my mind was broken glass. I didn’t know what was right or wrong anymore because he was breaking my mind.” The courts have to take a zero-tolerance approach to such crimes so that any woman out there reading this who has been told by an abuser that, "no one will believe you" will hear society reverberating back, "they are wrong, we will believe you." Next week, I will outline how you can support your child who is being coercively controlled.
