By Angela Powditch
Fourteen years in prison! That’s how serious coercive control is.
It’s a form of domestic violence. The Queensland Government passed laws on 6 March this year to criminalise coercive control.
The legislation is expected to come into force next year and will carry a maximum jail sentence of 14 years.
Domestic and family violence (DFV) comes in different forms. Some physical, some non- physical. Some more subtle, like coercive control can be at times, yet just as damaging and soon to be illegal.
If you don’t know about this form of domestic violence, please do some research, as people you care about may be victims and they themselves may not even realise it.
It involves an ongoing and repetitive pattern of controlling behaviour by the perpetrator intended to establish and maintain control over their victim.
Coercive control is almost always an underlying dynamic of family and domestic violence. It involves depriving the victim of independence, agency, and liberty.
It is different for each victim but always causes harm, whether that be physical, emotional, financial, psychological, or mental wellbeing – temporary or permanent.
Some examples include gas lighting, name calling, putting victims down in front of friends, financial control, jealousy.
It can result in psychological harm and can escalate into physical violence.
The relationship often starts off well with respect and then slowly goes off course subtly without the victim realising there is a control strategy behind it, such as limiting the victim’s social life and/or requiring the victim to seek their permission to go out.
It often makes the victim feel like they are ‘walking on eggshells’ regarding anything they say or do. These examples are not an exhaustive list. Look online, there are many personal stories from victims.
Rather than detail my personal experience of economic abuse in a coercive context, I want to use this opportunity to relay some statistics to show how many of us suffer from these kinds of violence.
The ABS Personal Survey 2021-22 data outlines that:
* 23 per cent of women (2.1 million) and 14 per cent of men (1.3 million) have experienced emotional abuse by a previous or current partner.
* 16 per cent of women (1.6 million) and 7.8 per cent of men (745,000) have experienced economic abuse from a current or previous partner.
Stop and think about the stats for just those forms of DFV.
It means almost one in four women and more than one in six men have experienced emotional abuse. And more than one in six women and one in 12 men experienced emotional abuse.
Remembering that there is always underreporting and much higher rates of DFV in rural areas.
DFV is a violation of one’s human rights. While it can affect anyone it is a distinctly gender based problem. There are more female victims – in Australia and worldwide, that’s a fact. There are male victims also.
Statistically, there are most likely people you know who are victims/survivors. And for every victim there is a perpetrator living among us.
My experience of economic abuse led me to studying the law whilst juggling two babies as a single mum living in a rural region without family support close by.
It also led me to Oxford University where I studied International Human Rights Law with 69 others selected from around the world. I completed my Australian law degree and got involved with advocacy in this field and legal representation within the family law practice area.
To address coercive control, we need a shift in community attitudes and behaviours through a focus on awareness raising and comprehensive and respectful education. There also needs to be greater access to services, especially in rural areas, and enhanced integrated service responses. There also needs to be a strengthening of justice system responses to keep victims safe and to hold perpetrators accountable.
The Queensland Government are taking action to address these elements through reforms and initiatives such as the DFV specialist courts, funding perpetrator programs to stop the cycle of violence, collaborative service responses from the nine ‘High Risk Teams’ where officers from agencies such as the police, health, courts and child safety aim is to keep victims and their families safe. And of course, the new laws to combat coercive control.
But we also need more champions of change in the private sector and our communities.
I saw a momentum for change when I attended the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations in New York as an Australian delegate with the National Rural Women’s Coalition and UN Women Australia in 2018 and 2019 respectively.
I am just an ordinary woman, a former Gympie local, who experienced something terrible several years’ ago. I use my experience to try and help others to pay forward the kindness many showed me when I needed it.
So, check in on your loved ones, neighbours, and colleagues. You never know who could be suffering in silence particularly from this subtle form of DFV.
