Courage to shine a light on the crime of coercive control

A HARROWING documentary on RTÉ One on December 11 about Garda Paul Moody’s reign of terror over his partner and the mother of his son will bring to light the relatively new offence of coercive control .

Domestic violence is often associated with physical brutality where tell-tale signs like bruising and scars are clear. Operating largely on a psychological level, coercive control is more subtle, and consequently harder to detect.

Relatives and friends of victims may have a hunch that something is not right but like the victim who is being psychologically tormented by their partner and perhaps gaslighted into believing they are at fault or that their abuse is imaginary, they are hamstrung by evidence that is elusive and promotes self-doubt rather than conviction.

The extraordinary courage of Nicola in waiving her right to anonymity to tell of her horrific abuse at the hands of Garda Moody lifts the veil of silence on a hidden crime that happens behind closed doors and leaves no physical trace.

It abandons victims to suffer alone, their loved ones in no position to offer support either because they are entirely unsuspicious or have nothing more than a nagging instinct about what is going on.

The documentary Taking Back Control shows how the warning signs of Moody’s domineering and abusive character were there almost from the beginning.

When Nicola met Moody she had just finished treatment for breast cancer and was eager to meet someone and start a family.

Feeling like she had been given a second chance at life, she met Moody on a dating app and they ‘clicked’ instantly.

But at the same time, Moody also started isolating Nicola from her friends and made no secret of the fact that he had done background checks on her family on Pulse, the Garda computer system.

A group holiday with friends left one of Nicola’s pals very wary of him. Moody rang Nicola constantly. ‘My phone never stopped ringing…’ she says in the documentary. ‘But I didn’t realise at that stage it was wrong.’

Moody’s controlling and abusive behaviour escalated quickly. He smashed up her apartment in a rage and he secretly took pictures of her as she was dressing.

The sisters of Denise Morgan, who originally from Tullyallen, Co. Louth was shot dead in a murder-suicide in New York in October, describe a similar pattern of early warning signs and red flags in Denise’s doomed relationship.

In an interview for RTÉ Prime Time, they claimed that Denise’s former partner Joed Taveras, who subjected her to years of coercive abuse, was always jealous and controlling but that he had become physically violent in the weeks before her death, particularly when he realised she was about to leave him.

Nicola tells the documentary how after she tried to end her relationship with Moody, he followed her in his car shouting abuse and jamming on the brakes in front of her.

Moody inadvertently alerted gardaí to his behaviour and was found guilty of coercive control receiving a prison sentence of three years and three months.

By highlighting the early warning signs of coercive control in relationships, this documentary should make it more difficult for people like Moody to terrorise their partners with impunity.