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The red flags of coercive control

Date

09/10/2024

The Courier Mail

Coercive control is almost always the underpinning dynamic of domestic and family violence, and now, new Queensland laws are acknowledging just how dangerous and harmful it is.

Involving a pattern of abusive behaviours used against another person to exert power and dominance, coercive control overwhelmingly affects women, and precedes many domestic and family violence homicides in Australia, even in relationships with no recorded history of physical violence.

High-profile cases, such as the 2020 murder of Queenslander Hannah Clarke, and her three children, have brought this often unseen abuse onto the public agenda, and from next year, Queensland will join NSW and Tasmania in making coercive control a standalone criminal offence, with legislation colloquially known as ‘Hannah’s Law.’

Recent research reveals there’s still a significant way to go in building a broader level of awareness around the risk-factors, with an Australian National University (ANU) study last year finding 45 per cent of people either hadn’t heard the term coercive control, or didn’t know what it meant.

The behaviour of Hannah Clarke’s husband has been described as a textbook example of coercive control. The inquest following the firebomb murder-suicide that killed Ms Clarke and her children revealed that he would control what she wore, sought to drive a wedge between Ms Clarke and her family, criticised her, would lash out if she refused to have sex with him and had listening devices in her car and home.

Isolation, humiliation, gaslighting and surveillance are common features of coercive control, albeit with different characteristics, explained domestic violence educator and author Jess Hill: “Every relationship looks different, coercive control is bespoke, it amends to what will be most impactful in a particular relationship.”

According to Ms Hill, experiences across multiple cultural backgrounds tend to fit into the same basic architecture. “Victim-survivors will say things like, “it started off great, he seemed like an ideal man”,” Ms Hill said. “Then, slowly, he starts making accusations, becomes suspicious. It degrades from there to “he’s threatening me,” sometimes there’s also physical and sexual violence.”
Ms Hill’s book on control and domestic abuse, See What You Made Me Do, came out just months before Ms Clarke’s murder, and she said the case was a turning-point in understanding coercive control.

“We’ve spent so long focusing on the physical side of domestic and family violence, that the lived reality of coercive control victim-survivors is often invisible,” she said. “The murder of Hannah and her kids was such a breakthrough moment because there wasn’t a history of physical violence. People realised that coercive control can be so serious, it can lead to this kind of familicide.”

Ending a relationship does not necessarily mean an end to the abuse, or its associated dangers. Figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show that violence often begins, continues or increases when women separate from an abusive partner, with one in 13 experiencing violence for the first time, and one in seven experiencing an increase in violence.

In the case of Hannah Clarke, her husband’s behaviour spiralled after she left him. During that period, he drove off with their daughter for three days, telling Ms Clarke “you have caused all of this, it’s your fault,” accused her of having an affair, and made various threats and demands, with her murder occurring 11 weeks later.

Technology has added a new dimension to the way people using violence are able to monitor and control their current or ex partners, or other victim-survivors. Former police officer-turned domestic violence victim-survivor advocate, Stephen Wilson, highlighted the increasing prevalence of hidden cameras, trackers and spyware in coercive control situations. CEO of Protective Group, his company helps find and remove surveillance technologies used in domestic and family violence. “On a daily basis we’ll find a tracker in a car, spyware on phones, parental software used for unlawful means and hidden cameras in homes, bedrooms and cars,” he said.

A study by Women’s Services Network and Curtin University illustrated the enormity of the issue, showing an almost 250 per cent spike in reports of domestic and family violence perpetrators using GPS tracking in the five years to 2020, and an increase of more than 180 per cent in the use of video cameras to monitor victim-survivors.

“It’s something that causes great anxiety,” Mr Wilson said. “He might log into her rewards cards to see when she goes to the supermarket and turn up at the same time, or read her emails to see she has tickets to a football match and book the seats next to her. Women I’ve spoken to have said ‘I’d rather have a black eye than the torture he puts me through with this emotional abuse’.”

Protective Group CEO Stephen Wilson holding GPS trackers and Hidden Cameras

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