Lorraine Courtney
Victims of emotional abuse have suffered in silence, but not for much longer
THE new Domestic Violence Bill is going to have an amendment that makes “coercive and controlling” forms of domestic abuse a recognised offence and the committee stage of the Bill passed in the Seanad on Tuesday. No such law currently exists in Ireland, but this amendment shows the Government’s understanding and recognition that violence in intimate relationships can take many shapes.
There’s lots of nasty behaviour that goes on in relationships that hasn’t been considered abusive by our courts until now.
Campaigners like Safe Ireland and Women’s Aid have been speaking out about the problems of coercive control for years, about how it’s often a predecessor to domestic violence, and how emotional abuse can be as damaging as a black eye.
In 2015, a new UK law was introduced to target perpetrators who submit partners or other family members to serious psychological and emotional torment, but stop short of violence. They can now face up to five years in prison. It can be brought against someone who is preventing their victim from going out with friends or having hobbies, refusing them access to money and determining when they are allowed to eat, sleep and go to the toilet.
The Irish legal system has always been slow to catch up. Domestic violence was only seen as a problem that needed to be legally addressed in the 1970s. Domestic violence in Ireland was first recognised on the statute books in the Family Law Act
1976 with the introduction of the first civil remedy for domestic violence. Marital rape only became a crime in 1990 and our national conversation about domestic violence has been evolving very slowly and cautiously over the past
30 years.
The gobsmacking statistic here is that one-in-five women in Ireland who has been in a relationship has been abused by a current or former partner. In 2016, there were 16,946 disclosures of domestic violence against women noted during 19,115 contacts with Women’s Aid Direct Services. Out of these there were 11,078 incidents of emotional abuse.
Official figures do not exist, but on November 6, 2012, 371 frontline domestic violence support services participated in a national ‘census’ co-ordinated by Safe Ireland.
They counted the number of women and children receiving support because of domestic violence within a 24-hour period – 537 women and 311 children were accommodated or received support from a domestic violence service.
Yes, coercive control is a subjective, individualised thing. One partner taking control in certain situations is quite normal in relationships (like where to do the weekly shop or what utility company to use). And something which may have little effect on one person may have a massive effect on another. It becomes abuse when the control element becomes a set of rules that are punishable when broken.
In 2007, Waterford Institute of Technology’s Fergus Hogan and Máire O’Reilly Centre published a shocking research paper of victims’ testimonies. One case study didn’t speak of any actual physical violence, but she was clearly in an abusive relationship with coercive control.
“I don’t know if you would call it even violence, but like threatening,
‘They slowly chip away at your self-esteem. To others, they might seem charming – but, behind closed doors, it’s a very different story’
kinda ‘You’d better watch your back now, if you put one step wrong now’ – like, I don’t know, you’d be harmed or something,” she said. “I don’t know what way he put it, but he put it in a sneaky way as if to say like he’s not really threatening you.”
Coercive control basically means that your partner bullies and berates you as they slowly chip away at your self-esteem. To others, they might seem charming – but behind closed doors it’s a very different story. It includes humiliating you, controlling what you can and cannot do, deliberately embarrassing or demeaning you, undermining your self-worth or confidence, convincing you that you are wrong, and more.
And, all the while, they work hard to cut you off from the people you love and who might be able to recognise your relationship for what it is: toxic. But toxic can become deadly. Domestic femicide reviews in the UK have shown that in a staggering 92pc of the reviewed cases of women who were murdered there was evidence of years of coercive control beforehand.
Of course it’s hard for those of us who’ve never been in an abusive relationship to understand why a person doesn’t just leave, but there are so many facets to manipulative, controlling relationships.
And the misunderstanding a question like this shows often contributes to feelings of shame in many survivors, so many of whom may feel forced to keep quiet about their experiences for years afterwards.
Including coercive control in the new Bill is crucial, although how we plan on policing it, never mind prosecuting anyone, especially as we don’t have the best record in responding to domestic violence cases right now, remains to be seen. But this is progress.
Because this invisible abuse, that nobody can see, so often hidden behind the veneer of a charismatic man, and buried under layers and layers of crushed self-esteem and fear – this kind of horrible abuse will finally be recognised in Irish law.