Why We Need Coercive Control Legislation and What Should That Legislation Contain?

 by V. Jones

I care about coercive control and family violence because my family went through it in the form of a protracted child custody battle. I obtained court orders for my children to have therapy and for my ex-husband and me to work with a Court-Ordered Parenting Time Coordinator. Unfortunately, the legal system works very slowly, and my ex-husband was able to slow it down further. Moreover, even when I had therapists in place, my ex-husband frequently refused to follow their orders. This left my children in abusive situations for years before I could obtain proper help for them from the legal system. My son, who stayed with me but had to keep visiting his father for years, developed Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which is a stress-related disorder. My daughter, who chose to live with her father and with whom I had very little contact for a year and a half, developed Borderline Personality Disorder, which is a common mental health disorder among people who have experienced prolonged or severe child sex abuse.

I need to explain that I, Virginia Jones, the author of this article, am a former psychiatric nurse, so I am familiar with psychiatric diagnoses and mental health treatments.

My family's story, which fills twenty file boxes of emails, legal documents, and my daughter’s hospital discharge notes, began in February 2007, when my son’s stepmother tried to force him to look her in the eyes and repeat her criticisms of me back to her. My son has a superpower—Asperger’s Syndrome. It is very hard to manipulate him. He refused to do what his stepmother ordered and remained on her bad side until our family’s court-ordered parenting time coordinator allowed him to stop visiting his father five years later. 

My daughter, however, is a people pleaser who cares deeply about what others think of her. After she chose to live with her father in 2012, my contact with her dropped to almost zero almost immediately. Nearly two years passed before I had regular contact with her again. By then, a judge ruled in my favor in the lawsuit her father filed against me to take custody of her from me permanently, and restored my contact with her.

Over the eight years of coercive control to which my ex-husband and his second wife subjected my children and me, my son developed Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which is a stress-related disorder. My daughter, however, developed Borderline Personality Disorder, which is common among survivors of chronic, long-term child sex abuse.

But my family was not the only family subjected to coercive control during long-term child custody battles. I know both a child sex abuse survivor and a domestic violence survivor who lost custody of their children to the men who abused them. They could not afford the lawyer, court-ordered parenting time coordinator, and family systems therapist who helped me regain contact with my daughter and at least partial custody of both my children.

Unfortunately, the judicial system worked very slowly. The slowness and the high cost of the judicial system cause disruptions and losses in family relationships. And children suffer. Parents suffer too. We need another way.

What We Need for Divorced and Separated Families

Because not all parents and not all jobs are equal, 50/50 time sharing in parenting plans should not be assumed to be automatic. Separating and divorcing parents who differ in their opinions about parenting time should first work with a social worker to come up with a mutually agreeable plan. The social worker's first concern should be the family's mental health. If parents still disagree, they can present their case to a judge, either with or without the assistance of lawyers.

The First Step is Prevention of Mental Health Problems

1. When people marry, become parents after marriage, or become parents without being married, they will be required to take classes on how parental conflict can traumatize children, classes on Nonviolent Communication, listening skills, and mindfulness and/or similar practices that have been scientifically validated to calm stress and the wounds of trauma, such as centering prayer.

2: All separated and/or divorcing parents with minor children who separate or divorce should be automatically required to communicate about parenting issues, parenting schedules, and any changes to parenting schedules through a parenting app and/or email. Parenting apps can be used for emergencies or communications that require a response within minutes, such as when a parent is late to pick up or drop off children for visitation. Emails allow parents to be more detailed and precise in their communications. The reason parents will be required to use parenting apps and emails is to allow third parties to examine their communications for conflict behaviors.

3: During separation and divorce, all parents will be required to retake classes on how parental conflict can traumatize children, to relearn or strengthen their Nonviolent Communication (NVC) skills, how to listen more empathetically to both their children and co-parent, and how to calm the agitated mind through mindfulness and similar practices, including yoga and centering prayer.

4: All counties should hire social workers to work with separated and divorced families, who can examine emails and text messages between separated and divorced parents to identify situations involving conflict. The social worker should be able to communicate their findings to the parents and require the parents to retake classes in Item 3. If the conflict between parents continues, the social worker reviews the emails to determine which parent is more responsible for family problems and conveys this and her documentation (the parent’s emails and parenting app messages to a judge, who can then rule on which parent appears to be more responsible for the conflict in the family. The parent who is more responsible for the conflict will have their parenting time decreased, their child support share increased, and will work one-on-one with the social worker about specific problems and retake classes on mindfulness, NVC, and listening skills, while continuing to communicate with their co-parent on parenting issues via the parenting app and email. If they are not able to improve their communication and relationship issues, they may have their parenting time further decreased, and child support further increased. If they noticeably improve their skills, their parenting time can be increased, and child support can be adjusted to reflect this increase.

5. Judicial decisions need to be timely—made within one month, so children do not remain in a bad situation for a long time.

6. Parents who cannot improve their behavior can still see their children in visitation supervised by a family systems therapist. If the family systems therapist believes the dysfunctional parent is improving, they can recommend to the family’s social worker or judge that the parent's parenting time be increased, and child support can be adjusted accordingly.

7. If the family systems therapist thinks the parent is not improving or is mistreating the child or the therapist, they can terminate the parent’s right to see the child, but they must give the parent a three-month warning before they terminate a parent’s right to see a child. This termination will also increase the parent’s share of child support.

8. If a parent has their parental rights terminated, they can appeal if they work hard to improve their mental health and communication skills and are able to demonstrate that improvement to both a social worker and their judge. 

9. Family situations are better coordinated if families keep working with the same social worker and judge.

9.  Examples of coercive control in separated and divorced families occur when parents criticize or harass their co-parent by demanding frequent schedule changes or trying to take away a co-parent’s vacation, holiday, or birthday time with children. Another example is when a co-parent harasses the other co-parent with health-related issues. For example, my ex-husband sent me numerous emails the evening after I got out of surgery on my elbow, and I was on a bed rest order.

10. Wealthy families can still work with private lawyers, therapists, and judges as they always have. This law is intended to address the problems faced by families that can’t afford therapists and lawyers.

Domestic Violence Agencies are Experiencing Serious Funding Problems

I, V. Jones, the author of this proposal, have also authored a book that I published on Amazon about how I healed my own child sex abuse trauma while winning the child custody battle from hell so thoroughly that the judge ordered my ex-husband to pay 90% of my attorney’s fees.  The book is called Losing My Daughter, Finding Myself: A Memoir and Workbook About Healing Childhood Trauma While Winning a Child Custody Battle. Later, I excerpted the workbook from the longer book and published it separately under the title How to Heal: A Workbook for Survivors by a Survivor Plus Tips for Documenting Abuse. Both books are available on Amazon.com.

Last year, I visited eight domestic violence agencies to give them copies of my first book and talk with them about the issues they are facing.

I learned that the domestic violence agency in Baker City is struggling to keep its doors open and has to rely on the help of a church to support survivors. Domestic violence agencies in Curry and Coos counties have had to merge into a single location in Coos Bay. Agencies in Newport and Florence, Oregon, have similarly had to downsize to just one location in Florence. The agency in the Dalles lost its safe house when the owner sold it. They do not have enough money to buy another.

                                             Domestic Violence Agencies Need More Funding. What Can We Do?

Maybe domestic violence agencies can address the issue of Coercive Control. Can domestic violence social workers take classes to become certified to teach Nonviolent Communication, listening skills, mindfulness, and other mental health skills, and be compensated for doing so? Domestic violence agencies already teach survivors classes on what trauma does to the brain (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and how to heal. Can they be paid to do so for parents, too?

                                                                      How to Heal the Brain From Trauma:

Most legislators have probably heard about mindfulness meditation. When someone meditates mindfully for at least twenty minutes, three days a week, they can, sooner or later, maybe years later, heal from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But there are many documented ways to heal Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Mindfulness can be challenging for some people to practice consistently. How does a single mother put aside twenty minutes to be quiet to meditate mindfully? It’s challenging.

I did something very similar to Mindfulness Meditation that I learned in the Rite of Catholic Initiation—Centering Prayer. Even so, I mostly prayed at night when I went to bed after my children had gone to bed. Hiking in nature and gardening can also heal trauma. Native American dancing can heal trauma when performed as a sacred practice. Native American sweat lodge ceremonies can also heal trauma. 

It is my opinion that we can help more people heal trauma, whether from family violence, war, or some other cause, if we open our society up to understanding that different cultures can heal trauma from various sources in their unique ways.

I am thinking that if a Catholic parent wants to show a judge that she is working on healing trauma in a child custody battle, they should be able to show documentation that they are participating in a centering prayer practice. If a Native American wants to demonstrate that they are working on healing their trauma, they can share documentation that they are participating in their tribe's traditional ceremonies that often play a role in healing trauma, such as sweat lodges or dances.

Maybe society can also help by providing more community gardens and parks with nature trails. These are also good resources for families with children.

What do you all think?

Heartbreaking Stories in Bend and Corvallis, Oregon

After driving around the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway, my son and I stopped by a Mexican restaurant for dinner. We were wearing pink sweatshirts that read, "High Conflict Divorce is Child Abuse."

A man, a woman, and a five or six-year-old girl sat down at the next table, and, after reading our shirts, the man said, "I like your shirts.

He then proceeded to tell us that his wife and stepdaughter had been put through lots of trauma by his wife's first husband. The situation had been so difficult that the little girl's older sister had committed suicide.

The family was on their way to an evening church service and invited us to come along because they found so much healing in their religion.

I respect their choices, but I have a strong science background and don't feel comfortable in fundamentalist or evangelical churches. I fit in better at Catholic or mainline protestant churches, but I understand that this family's church supported them through a difficult situation.

The following Thursday in Corvallis, Oregon, my son and I stood with our sign that reads, "Emotional Abuse (Coercive Control) Damages Children and Loved Ones. We Need Laws to Protect Victims."

A man and a woman who appeared to be his intimate partner soon came out and made a beeline to my son and me. The man was wiping tears from his face as he told us his story. He had lost a court room battle for custody of his son to his ex-wife. Once again, I don't know the details of the case in either how much contact the man had with his son or why his ex-wife won the case. I don't know if he had done something to justify him having less time with his child. I only know his heartbreak, and I think therapy should be a part of the divorce and child custody battle process. If people can't afford good lawyers, they may not know how to best present their cases in court. And, while children need loving relationships with their parents, they also need to be safe from abuse. I feel that a therapist working with this family might have been able to help the situation.

What I Learned From Coercive Control Victims in Eugene, Oregon

My son and I first went to stand in front of the Lane County Courthouse in Eugene, Oregon around lunchtime one day in October with our sign that reads:

Emotional Abuse

(Coercive Control)

Damages Children
And Loved Ones.

We Need Laws

To Protect Victims

I realize many would say the person who uses coercive control on "loved ones" does not love them, but I was trying to write something people would understand that would also fit on a poster.

Please also understand that I am not able to verify any of the stories people told me

We were first approached by a woman accompanied by a friend and her older parents. She was found in contempt of court because she wrote a letter to her daughter, who was living in her father's care. The court had ordered that she have "no contact" with the daughter. Maybe if I knew the details of this case, I would agree with the no-contact order, but I don't know why there was a no-contact order. What I do know is how painful it is to be unable to see or even contact a child. My ex-husband kept me away from my daughter for most of a year and a half. The day I lost my daughter, I went to bed and cried for a week. What had this mother, who came out of the courthouse in Eugene, done that was so wrong that she couldn't even see her daughter in visitation supervised by a therapist?

Next, a woman who was on jury duty told my son and me a horror story. After her 15-year-old son finished taking a shower, but while he was still in his underpants, his father began shouting at him and forced him to go outside in freezing weather and stand while holding onto a pole. Mother and father divorced. She took two children and moved to Oregon. Her ex-husband stayed in the state of Virginia with their other two children.

Then a father and daughter came out. The father had two partially healed black eyes. The daughter appeared to be a young adult. The father's ex-wife had taken their minor children from him, and he is unable to see them. Next, she hired a man to beat him, giving him two black eyes and breaking one eye socket, so that the socket now needs surgical repair. The prosecutor reduced charges against the ex-wife from a felony to 4th degree assault, which is a misdemeanor in the state of Oregon. The man felt that the attack was worthy of a felony. Since I don't know all the facts in this case, it is possible that the man did something that caused him to lose his children. Still, his ex-wife hiring a hit man to give her ex-husband two black eyes does not speak well of her character. Should such a person have exclusive custody of minor children, or should her parenting be observed and supervised by a therapist?

I must again emphasize that I do not know most of the facts in these three cases. What I do know is that I was unfairly kept away from my child, but although I won my legal case to be able to see her so thoroughly that the judge ordered my ex-husband to pay 90 percent of my attorney's fees, the process of going to court to regain contact with my daughter took a year and a half.

The legal system operates slowly, but children grow up quickly. We need legal protocols requiring families to work with specially trained therapists who can advise judges on family mental health and conflict-related issues without requiring parents to spend months or years navigating our court system.

Children need to be safe from abuse, but false accusations of abuse happen much more often in high-conflict child custody situations. Falsely accusing a co-parent of abuse is the easiest way to take a child away from a loving parent. At the same time, children need to be safe from abuse. All therapists are mandatory reporters. Moreover, parents who use coercive control on children and co-parents don't like taking orders from a therapist. They reveal themselves by their behavior.

Coercive Control Law Proposal

Coercive Control is Damaging Emotional Abuse; It Should Be Illegal

by Virginia Jones

See my blog at compassionategathering.blogspot.com

Contact me at compassion500@gmail.com

10/22/25

Virginia’s story and why we need laws outlawing coercive control emotional abuse: 

This document contains two parts. First is the story of what happened in my family. The second part is about the legal remedies my son and I have come up with based on other coercive control law proposals, modified by what worked and did not work in our family. In other words, I won a high-conflict child custody battle so thoroughly that the judge in my family’s case ordered my ex-husband to pay 90 percent of my attorney’s fees, but my children and I had to wait years for the case to wind its way through the legal system. This meant that my children were subject to years of coercive control and emotional abuse. I was, too, but I never had to live with my abusive co-parent and his even more abusive second wife. My children did. I won my courtroom battle because I had previously obtained court orders for our family to work with specialized therapists and did what they told me to do. By doing what the therapists told me to do, I healed decades of chronic depression I suffered as a result of my own severe childhood trauma, including generational child sex abuse. Spending money on therapy is much more beneficial than spending money on lawyers. Moreover, not everyone has the money for either lawyers or therapists. We can still promote family and individual well-being and mental health.

People know that military combat leads to trauma, which we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I am old, so I remember the delayed reckoning with the damage the Vietnam War inflicted on so many young American men, but my parents talked about the shell-shocked soldiers who came back from the front line of World War I and World War II. These men struggled to cope with normal lives after the war and became alcoholics or committed suicide.

Since the reckoning with Vietnam soldiers coming home with PTSD, our society has come to recognize that trauma is also caused by rape and child sex abuse. I know about child sex abuse. When I was four years old, I was sexually abused in a neighbor's basement by two teenage neighbor boys while my mother was so depressed she did not know or care where I was. A few weeks later, she spent a couple of months in a psychiatric hospital. I perceived this loss as her not wanting me as a child. She died of cirrhosis of the liver, emphysema, and congestive heart failure when I was 28. When I was 43, my cousin revealed to me that both our mothers had been sexually abused by our grandfather. 

What I went through is now called generational trauma. I lived the consequences. For decades, I struggled with chronic depression, low self-esteem, and anxiety. Fortunately, I learned how to heal trauma by going through more trauma, but this time with the help of therapists…except they were mostly therapists for my children. I followed the therapist’s advice for me as a mother on how to support my children, and ultimately healed myself. Therapy is valuable because therapists learn how to help people struggling with their mental health. Unfortunately, many people can’t afford the therapy they need. Fortunately, you can follow what therapists would advise you to do, such as meditating mindfully and learning a health communication skill called Nonviolent Communication.

I learned about these skills while going through more trauma—my children and I went through an eight-year-long, high-conflict child custody battle between their father and his second wife against me.

The incident that sparked this battle occurred when my son was 10 years old. My children stayed with their father one week in January 2007, when I was on retreat with The Compassionate Listening Project to learn Compassionate Listening. When I arrived home, my son, who is on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum, told me what happened while I was gone. One day, his stepmother ordered him to look her in the eyes and repeat her criticism of me, his mother, back to her.

“Your mother is nothing but a leech on your father,” she said.

“Stop criticizing my mother,” my son said.

“I have a right to criticize your mother,” she said.

Since asking his stepmother to stop criticizing his mother wasn’t working, my son tried another way to get away from her.

“I’m tired; I need to take a nap,” he said.

“Come sleep on my bed,” said his stepmother, and she made him move to her bed while she continued criticizing me.

Many years later, when my daughter was an adult, she told me about the time her stepmother called her father “stupid” and spent several minutes berating him for missing a turn they needed to take while walking through Montreal, Canada.

Then Stepmom turned to my daughter and said, “Isn’t your father stupid?”

My daughter confided to me that she was afraid her stepmother would start criticizing her if she did not say that her father was stupid, so she said, “Yes, my father is stupid.

If these two incidents were isolated, maybe they would not be so bad, but both my children and I had to endure years of such incidents nearly every week for almost ten years.

Because emotional abuse, now called coercive control, is legal.

My son, who chose to stay with me and was allowed by his therapists to stop visiting his father at age 16, was eventually diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome

My daughter, who chose to live with her father and whom I rarely saw for 18 months until I won a child custody battle to be able to see her, was eventually diagnosed by three different therapists with Borderline Personality Disorder, which is a serious mental health disorder commonly experienced by survivors of long-term child sex abuse. If serious and prolonged emotional abuse can cause the same mental health problems as serious and prolonged child sex abuse, why is it legal?

If you want to know more about my family’s story and how I won my child custody battle so you can win your battle too, you can buy my book, Losing My Daughter, Finding Myself: A Memoir and Workbook About Healing Childhood Trauma While Winning a Child Custody Battle by V. Jones on Amazon.com.

About fifteen years ago, I founded a very small non-profit called Compassionate Gathering to train Catholics to listen compassionately to clergy abuse survivors. That worked very well with the very few Catholics and clergy abuse survivors who participated. Soon, ordinary child sex abuse survivors came to me for help. Among these survivors, I met three women who lost their children to the men who abused them. They did not have my resources for therapy and lawyers. I know that these women were not alone, so I have been traveling around Oregon giving Domestic Violence agencies copies of my book, as well as visiting county fairs and farmers’ markets while wearing a t-shirt that reads Emotional Abuse (coercive control) is Very Damaging. 

During these travels, I asked the domestic violence agencies how many of their clients were involved in high-conflict child custody battles. The Executive Director of The Safe Project in Coos Bay told me she encountered such survivors at least once a week. In Florence, Oregon, at the Siuslaw Outreach Services, the advocates who worked directly with domestic violence survivors told me they encountered survivors struggling with child custody battles more than once a week. In Lake County, Oregon, the domestic violence agency advocates told me they see such cases only about once a month, but they serve a much smaller population. I have also learned that many agencies have been experiencing funding cuts, and some have closed permanently, including those in Curry County and Newport, Oregon.

I have some ideas to address both coercive control and family violence. My son, who works in horticulture but is interested in the legal issues related to child abuse and child custody, is working with me. We want to propose two laws to the Oregon State Legislature

Proposed Legal Definitions of Coercive Control:

Based on House Bill 3186 submitted by State Representative Courtney Neron in 2021, and the South Carolina Senate Bill 588, also named the Mica Miller Law, for the wife of a South Carolina Pastor who was subject to extremely controlling behavior by her husband and who died in April 2024 under suspicious circumstances.

A person exerting coercive control over another engages in a pattern of behaviors, including threatening, humiliating, criticizing, and intimidating actions, designed to exploit another person, including:

1. Isolating the other person (which includes spouses, former spouses, romantic partners,     care recipients, and children) from friends and family;
2. Controlling how much money is accessible to another person and how it is spent;
3. Excessively, harshly, or unreasonably criticizing a family member or care recipient.
4. Excessively, harshly, or unreasonably criticizing a family member to another family member or friend..
5. Monitoring the other person’s activities, communications, and movements.
6. Name-calling, degradation, and frequently demeaning the other person.
7. Forcing a child or adult to repeat exaggerated or untrue criticisms of another family member.
8. Repeatedly and frequently criticizing a co-parent or other family member to a child or other family member or friend.
9. Threatening to harm or kill another person.
10. (10)Damaging another person’s property.
11. (11)Threatening to publish information or make false reports to a law enforcement agency regarding the other person.
12. (12)Forcing a person to take part in criminal activity or child abuse.
13. (13)Depriving a child or adult of medical care.
14. (14)Depriving a child or an adult of sleep.
15. (15)Evidence that may be used includes, but is not limited to, text messages, emails, photographs, 911 tapes, bodycam footage, diaries, and bank records.
16. (16)Evidence may include testimony from family members and friends, but also testimony from therapists
17. (17)In the case of child custody issues, testimony from Court-ordered Parenting Time Coordinators and Family Systems Therapists is preferred to testimony from other therapists.
18. (18)In child custody cases, judges should automatically appoint Family Systems Therapists and Parenting Time Coordinators when one or both parents submit a request to court officials.
19. (19)Coercive Control can be punished similarly to a Class E Felony in South Carolina Law, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years of imprisonment.
20. (20)Coercive Control can also be addressed through civil lawsuits.
21. (21)This proposal adds elements for persons subject to parenting plans, such as divorced or never-married parents not living together. These elements are in addition to other elements describing coercive behavior and include activities that interfere with the other parent’s parenting time. Examples of behaviors that interfere with the other parent’s parenting time include arriving two hours late to pick up children for non-emergent or trivial circumstances, holding children inside a home for more than thirty minutes when another parent arrives to pick up children, requesting parenting time changes less than seven days in advance in non-emergent situations, and denying a parent a change in parenting schedule made at least 30 days in advance to take a vacation with children or requesting a vacation with the children, but not actually taking the children on a vacation.

You get the idea

Solutions:

1st Remedy: Lawsuits to Compensate Survivors of Coercive Control

Allow survivors of coercive control abuse experiencing serious mental health issues, and with good documentation, to sue their perpetrators for financial compensation, the way child sex abuse survivors are able to do. This includes any survivor of coercive control, family, or intimate partner violence, not just those who have gone through child custody battles. Then tax both the attorney’s fees and the financial settlements 5%. Use this money to help domestic violence agencies stay open.  Favor the rural counties with fewer resources.

2nd Remedy: Teach children, romantic partners, and family members communication skills, including Nonviolent Communication, Mindfulness, or similar skills, as well as listening skills, to help people know how to communicate in a way that promotes family and interpersonal well-being.

First Provision: Prevent Coercive Control/ Emotional Abuse

Our society is already immersed in coercive communications. Go to a political rally and you are likely to hear lots of criticism of a politician’s opponents. To some extent, this is understandable, but for a society and a family to work, there has to be the ability to hear each other and communicate in a way that helps people work together.

Teach Nonviolent Communication, listening skills, and self-calming skills such as mindfulness or nonreligious yoga in every year in school, beginning in kindergarten. A religious school can teach a spiritual practice that has been scientifically validated to heal trauma, rather than mindfulness, such as Centering Prayer or Native American practices, including traditional dancing and sweat lodges. Please note that teaching children these skills doubles as an anti-bullying program.

The goal of this provision is to give people skills so they will not traumatize their romantic partners or children. These skills will also help people perform better in the work world and in school.

Second Provision—Reinforcing skills in families to prevent coercive control/emotional abuse: 

All new parents, whether married or unmarried, to take more classes or workshops on Nonviolent communication, listening skills, and a scientifically validated practice to heal trauma

.

Third Provision: Reinforcing skills in separating and divorcing families to prevent coercive control/emotional abuse: 

All separating or divorcing parents are required to take more classes or workshops on Nonviolent communication, listening skills, and a scientifically validated practice to heal trauma.

Fourth Provision: Documenting coercive control/emotional abuse:

All separating or divorcing parents will be automatically required to communicate by parenting app or email to provide evidence of coercive control or emotional abuse that is readily observable by governmental or non-profit employees who work with child abuse and domestic violence victims.

Fifth Provision: Examples of Coercive Control

Not allowing a child, parent, other family member, or romantic partner to have contact with their parents, children, other family members, and friends.

Forcing a child, parent, other family member, or romantic partner to criticize someone they love, like, or respect, such as a child, parent, sibling, romantic partner, teacher, friend, or health care personnel

Forcing a child, parent, other family member, or romantic partner to cut off contact with someone they love, like, or respect, such as a parent, sibling, teacher, friend, neighbor, or healthcare personnel.

Isolating a child

Excessive or prolonged criticism or denigration of a child, romantic partner, or friend

Excessive or prolonged criticism or denigration of other family members, romantic partners.

Forcing a teenage girl, parent, other family member, or romantic partner to attend family events when she has menstrual cramps.

Forcing a teenage girl to bleed out when she has her period by not allowing her to have access to a bathroom and menstrual products.

Not allowing a child, parent, other family member, or romantic partner to sleep when they are tired.

Not allowing a child to sleep.

Not allowing a parent or grandparent to sleep.

Not allowing a romantic partner to sleep.

Prolonged and frequent yelling at a child, parent, romantic partner, or friend (More than a minute or two. We are human. On occasion, we slip up and do the wrong thing. Is this a rare slip-up, or is this behavior common or even frequent?

I need help because I am biased by my experiences. Please list examples of coercive control here.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Third Remedy: What to do when coercive control is reported in a family, especially separated and divorced family situations.

The court/county government must take action on these issues automatically, like it would with a case of child sex or physical abuse, or the physical abuse of a domestic or romantic partner. Requiring parents to battle out a problem in court is slow and expensive.  Moreover, money is spent on lawyers that would be better spent on therapists and learning therapeutic self-care, communication, and relationship skills.

Can reports be made to both governmental and non-profit agencies that work with domestic violence and child abuse survivors, who then report to a judge?

1st Report: If a parent, step-parent, or romantic partner of a parent forces a child to criticize another family member or do or say something inappropriate, or otherwise emotionally abuses or coercively controls a family member or friend, this can be reported to governmental or non-profit child abuse or domestic violence agencies.

1. Take workshops on at least one self-calming skill, including mindfulness, yoga, centering, or contemplative prayer. The agencies can be paid to teach these skills, although people can also choose an approved program from their religion of choice, whether it is a sacred Native American practice, Buddhist Meditation, Hindu yoga, or Christian Centering Prayer.
2. Take a workshop on Nonviolent Communication that may be provided by a school, domestic violence, or child abuse non-profit, or governmental agency.
3. Take a workshop on how to listen.
4. Parents will automatically be required to communicate through the parent app or email. These emails or app messages can be governmental or child abuse professions

Second Report in divorced or separated families: Family members and romantic partners should be required to attend family systems therapy with their children or other family members. The therapist will report to a court official, governmental, or non-profit agency what they observe.

Family systems therapy strongly supports family connections, but a parent or partner who is manipulative will eventually reveal themselves. My experience is that I differentiated myself from my ex-husband and his second wife by faithfully attending therapy, following the therapist’s advice, and being respectful of their knowledge and experience when I disagreed with them.

Third Report in divorced or separated families: If emotional abuse (coercive control) remains a problem in a family or domestic partner relationship involving coercive control of children and partners, the parent who engages most frequently will lose parenting time with children. Child support will be adjusted accordingly. Changes in parenting time may be from 50/50 shared parenting to every other weekend or three overnights and days every other week for the parent most responsible for problems. Child support will be adjusted accordingly.

Fourth Report in divorced or separated families: if emotional abuse (coercive control) remains a problem in a family or domestic partner relationship involving coercive control of children and partners, the parent who engages most frequently will lose parenting time with children. Child support will be adjusted accordingly. Changes in parenting time may be to two days every other week for the parent most responsible for problems. Child support will be adjusted accordingly.

Fifth Report in divorced or separated families: If coercive control continues, the abusive parent may have one day (no nights) of parenting time every other week.) Child support will be adjusted accordingly.

Sixth Report in divorced or separated families: The abusive parent will not see children outside of family systems therapy. Child support will be adjusted accordingly