Dr Emma Katz is widely regarded as one the world’s foremost academic experts in her area of research — how coercive control impacts children and young people.
Emma specializes in the harms caused by father-perpetrated coercive control, as well as children’s and mothers’ resistance and recovery. Read more in her book Coercive Control in Mothers’ and Children’s Lives, published by Oxford University Press.
Decoding Coercive Control with Dr Emma Katz aims to revolutionize the old ideas about domestic violence that are outdated, inaccurate and victim-blaming.
Each post is a resource that provides key information that people can use in order to make better sense of coercive control and gives victims-survivors the validation for their lived experiences that they so richly deserve but rarely receive.
This post goes to the heart of that mission: It tackles the common and harmful myths about coercive control that are held by “the public” — in other words by a large number of people in society.
So how do you explain coercive control to that person in your life who doesn’t quite get it?
In this post I’ll break down:
Why the common responses that people have to victims-survivors and to perpetrators are often based on misunderstandings of the abuse that is happening; and
How these misunderstandings can be harmful and hurtful for victims-survivors (and helpful and emboldening for perpetrators).
It’s my hope that readers might be able to show this post to someone in their life who doesn’t quite understand coercive control, and that it might be eye opening for people who previously haven’t read much around this subject but who are willing to learn about it now.
It is also my hope that victims-survivors who’ve been on the receiving end of harmful or hurtful responses will feel validated by what they are about to read here.
Let’s start by breaking down the common view about domestic violence and abuse that sees “seriousness” in terms of hitting and injuries, known as the “physical incident model”.
Victims-survivors often get told many hurtful and harmful things based on this myth. They essentially get told that unless they were subjected to severe, frequent violence, they weren’t justified in complaining about the abuse or fighting back physically or verbally against their abuser. People say things like:
“They didn’t hit you that often so the abuse wasn’t that bad”
“They haven’t hit you for a long time, so the abuse is over”
“They never hit you so there was no abuse”
“We can’t help you with the stalking, economic abuse, or the weaponization of your children. Come back if they hit you, then we’ll do something.”
Some coercive controllers are very physically violent, perhaps causing injuries that might require hospitalization. Others are violent at a lower level; for example, their violence takes the form of slapping, pushing and shoving. Meanwhile, some are not physically violent at all.
Physical violence is extremely harmful, but does that mean that the less violent abuser is less harmful? No it doesn’t.
Coercive control perpetrators’ tactics vary based on their resources and personalities, and they tailor their approach to their abuse based on what they think will work best.
In this post we’ll go through those tactics, the reasons behind how perpetrators think, and also a 6 Stage Timeline of how coercive control develops and can be spotted.
Coercive control perpetrators have a clear goal.
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