Over the last decade in many European countries, legislators, magistrates, government ministers, law enforcement agencies, lawyers and service providers have recognised that prevailing approaches to domestic violence were failing and have adopted the new model of “coercive control” to reframe domestic violence as a crime against rights and resources rather than as an assault.
Criminalising coercive control
- Drawing on interviews with several hundred French professionals, victims, service providers and academics, the Chandler-Vérien French parliamentary mission on domestic violence tasked by Prime Minister Borne with improving the judicial treatment of domestic violence stressed the urgency of translating coercive control into law and called on coercive control to be at the core of future information campaigns and professional training.
- We believe that enacting a coercive control offence in France would be a significant advance in the equality agenda.
Coercive control: a “liberty crime”
- Coercive control has been referred to as a “liberty crime” because of the experience of entrapment it produces, analogous to being held hostage.
- The rights infringed upon include autonomy, dignity and self-determination, even more so when victims have a disability.
current domestic-violence laws have failed to hold perpetrators accountable and to protect victims, mainly women and children;
the lack of social control and legal sanctions encourages aggravation and recidivism, creating a revolving door in French courts and prisons;
victims confront situations that more closely resemble captivity than an assault.
A system of impunity
- The French state’s High Council for Equality has found that the conviction rate for perpetrators of domestic violence amounted to a “true system of impunity”.
- The gap between the current criminalisation of domestic violence and its reality as experienced by victims can erode trust in the justice system.
- The conviction rate of perpetrators and the number of domestic homicides in France reflect the perpetrators’ lack of accountability.
Surveillance, isolation, intimidation, control, personalised credible threats
- In most cases, violence and/or sexual abuse is accompanied by intimidation, isolation, control tactics, and personalised credible threats.
- These begin in the house and can extend to every activity, including work, and involve children, other family members and unrelated others, including professionals, as spies, informants or co-victims.
- Because perpetrators aim to monopolise all the resources and privileges available in a relationship or family space, their adult partner is usually their primary target.
- But any person who is seen as obstructing this monopoly is likely to be targeted as a secondary victim, including children, grandparents, siblings, friends, neighbours, coworkers, as well as law and social services professionals.
What about the children?
- Coercive control of women by men is the most important cause of violence against children and child homicide outside war zones.
- This often occurs after a separation, in the context of legal proceedings relating to the child’s custody and parental rights or during visiting rights.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
