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Coercive control conference

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coercive control, international conference, Lady in Red, theatre, Bury St EdmundsOne-day conference.

An International Conference on Coercive Control is due to take place at the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds on 6 March.

It will feature prominent speakers from the US and UK including Professor Evan Stark and Dr Lisa Aronson-Fontes and award-winning theatre, an informative one-day event on the issues of domestic abuse and the impact of coercive control.

The old nursery rhyme of ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me’ may have been good advice in the playground but is certainly not true of domestic violence where emotional and psychological abuse can be more scarring and harder to recover from than physical abuse.

One of the reasons is that the damage is not immediately apparent. Get a black eye and the hurt is there for all to see, but mental scarring has always been much more difficult to define.

Under the Serious Crime Act 2015, the definition of domestic abuse has been widened to include the offence of ‘controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship. This law carries a maximum sentence of 5 years.

What is controlling and coercive behaviour?

The law says that it is now illegal for an intimate partner or family member to repeatedly or continuously engage in behaviour towards another person that has a serious effect.

Crucially, it is behaviour the offender knows or ought to have known would have a serious effect.

The new offence has links to harassment, stalking and revenge porn all of which are already illegal, as well as to sexual coercion.

Coercive control is a ‘course of conduct’ offence; it is not defined by one single criminal act but rather a number of acts occurring together, forming a pattern.

Not all the acts are, of their own, coercive in nature, the act of coercive control is specific to the relationship but identifying it is not as difficult as it sounds, if you know where to look.

The important thing to understand with coercive control is that it is largely invisible and has very little to do with anger, therefore anger management will have no effect on an abuser who uses controlling tactics in a relationship.

Anger, quite often, is used as a tactic to subjugate, meaning that an abuser will ‘rev himself up’ to project anger in order to intimidate.

With coercive control the abuse happens so gradually that victims of coercive control may not even realise they are being abused.

It is not necessary for abusers to use violence, although some do, the threat of it can be enough to frighten someone into submission.

Low level violence that doesn’t mark and therefore leaves no evidence is another tactic. Being pushed into a wall, grabbed by the hair or wrist, maybe even by clothing, doors being slammed in the face, being elbowed, rough sex when angry, all feel threatening and act to undermine and dominate.

The early signs of coercive control can even look like devotion. ‘I just want to be with you’, ‘I really miss you when you see your friends.’

The coercive controller targets single mothers, the newly divorced, widows or those undergoing medical treatment as they are already vulnerable. After, for example, a divorce, it can be flattering to be loved so intensely but it is just one of the ways of isolating the victim from family and friends.

When the controller becomes more established, he may even forbid his partner’s close friends and family from coming to the house or he may be deliberately rude or flirt inappropriately so that they become uncomfortable and withdraw.

Speakers at the conference are from the USA and the UK and include:

Professor Evan Stark, the US award-winning author of ‘Coercive Control’, has an international reputation for his innovative work on the legal, policy and health dimensions of interpersonal violence, including its effects on children;

Lisa Aronson Fontes, PhD, is a pioneering author, speaker and researcher in topics related to the abuse of women and children. Author of coercive control book ‘Invisible Chains: Overcoming Coercive Control in Your intimate Relationship’ and well-known expert on cultural issues in child maltreatment and violence against women.

Dr Jane Monckton Smith, an expert in the area of homicide, stalking, coercive control, and criminal investigation. She is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and an Independent Domestic Homicide Review Chair;

Ciara Bergman, Senior Risk Assessor for the Domestic Violence Intervention Project’s Family Courts Team (DVIP);

Mark Coulter, managing director of MenCentric, providing consultancy and training to statutory and third sector agencies; and

Min Grob – Survivor.

And the Certain Curtain Theatre Company will perform Lady In Red, an award-winning play exploring one woman’s attempts to leave an abusive relationship and the barriers she faces.

It helps the audience to finally answer the age old question ‘Why doesn’t she just leave?’ which remains the main obstacle to many people fully understanding the true nature of domestic violence.

It explores the whole relationship from the warning signs, through pregnancy, the barriers to seeking help and covers all aspects of domestic violence, with a particular focus on the emotional and psychological abuse – coercive control and its effects.

For further information about the conference, click here.

For tickets, click here.

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