Chapter 2: What is Coercive Control and Is It Abuse?

 

 This is from my book, How to Heal: A Workbook for Survivors by a Survivor Plus Tips for Documenting Abuse by V. Jones, available on https://www.amazon.ca/How-Heal-Workbook-Survivors-Documenting/dp/B0GMQBP8R8.

Please note that my ideas are based in part on the advice given to me by therapists as well as my own experiences. Some of the conventional wisdom about high-conflict child custody battles is not so much wrong as incomplete. Extreme conflict during divorce and child custody battles like I went through is uncommon, but it is more common when child sex abuse and domestic violence are involved. The current legal system is inadequate for this problem and often makes it worse. I disagree with both protective mothers and father's rights/parental alienation advocates. The focus of high-conflict divorce needs to be on mental health support for children and parents and examining which parent works harder on their mental health and supporting their children's mental health, not for two or three months or even years, but until all children are over 18 years of age. 

What Happened to My Children After My Divorce

One Saturday in February 2007, on a weekend our children were visiting my ex-husband, he went to the office to finish paperwork and left our children in the care of his then-girlfriend. My ex-husband later married her, so I refer to her as Stepmom in this book. While my daughter played happily with Stepmom’s daughter in another room, Stepmom cornered

my son and ordered him to look her in the eye and repeat her criticisms of me back to her.

My son, who had been through the Steps to Respect anti-bullying program in school, took the first step and “recognized” that Stepmom was bullying him. He then took the next step and “refused” to be bullied.


“Stop criticizing my mother,” he said.

“I have the right to criticize your mother,” Stepmom said.


My son then tried to refuse her bullying another way.


“I am tired; I want to take a nap,” he said.


“Take a nap on my bed,” Stepmom ordered, and she made him move to her room and lie down on her bed.


Then Stepmom said, “Nobody likes your mother at church because she doesn’t have a job.”


My son knew this wasn’t true because he was present when I was thrown out of our Catholic parish for handing out newspaper articles about clergy abuse. He understood that some parishioners were angry at me for speaking out about the issue. My son also knew he had been the target of the attention of a priest with a history of abusing boys and that the priest had been protected for more than two decades by the leadership of his religious order. So my son knew why I was speaking out about clergy abuse. My son also knew why I didn’t have a job. I had spent years homeschooling him. He had Asperger’s Syndrome and was unable to adjust to daycare, preschool, and kindergarten.


Stepmom knew all of this, too, but she wasn’t done criticizing me.


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


Nine years later, my daughter, who was then 17, visited Montreal with her father and Stepmom. They walked around the city for a day, and Stepmom placed my ex-husband in charge of navigation. He is very intelligent, but navigation is not one of his skills. He missed a turn they were supposed to take. They walked in the wrong direction for a while before they realized they were on the wrong track. Then they turned around and retraced their footsteps to find the turn they were supposed to take.


Later, when my daughter recounted the incident to me, she said that Stepmom berated her father for half an hour, calling him stupid for missing the turn.


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

My daughter said, “Yes,” because she knew that Stepmom would spend the next half hour criticizing her if she didn't.


Part of me felt sad for my ex-husband that he felt he had to stay with a woman who emotionally abused him. The other part of me was furious with him for staying with Stepmom and collaborating with her emotional abuse of our children. Moreover, Stepmom did not do this to my children once. She did it to everyone in the family, including my ex-husband,

over and over and over again. She also goaded him into battling me to take custody of our children from me.


My son, who chose to live with me, developed Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which is a lifelong disorder that causes him ongoing problems with nausea. My daughter chose to live with her father, after which I had little contact with her for about 18 months…until I won the child custody case my ex-husband filed against me. Unfortunately, she developed Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), which is common among survivors of prolonged child sex abuse.


What would you call what my ex-husband and his second wife did to my children?


Was it emotional abuse? Was it coercive control family violence? Was it both?


Whatever you call what they did, the consequences were serious.


Although I made many mistakes while my children were growing up, I made the right choices often enough that I won the custody battle so thoroughly that the judge ordered my ex-husband to pay 90% of my attorney’s fees.


The right choices I made included obtaining a court-ordered Parenting Time Coordinator to work with my ex-husband and me, and therapists to work with our children. The Coordinator was a forensic psychologist, and the therapists were either psychologists or Licensed Clinical Social Workers. I did not have the money to pay for my own therapist, but I usually followed the Coordinator’s and therapists’ advice, so they were willing to testify on my behalf in court, which is how I won the custody battle. These therapists told me how to be a better mother and co-parent, and what they said also helped me heal. After I won the custody battle to be able to see my daughter, I realized that my lifelong struggle with depression was over.


Therapists can give you valuable guidance on how to heal after trauma, but you can accomplish a lot of healing on your own. That is what this book is about—what you need to do to heal, but you have to do the exercises over and over until you master the skills they teach.


This book is also about two other things: coercive control and how to document abuse for potential court cases. Coercive control is always present during child sexual and physical abuse, rape, and domestic violence, but it is also very damaging on its own. We failed to recognize the detrimental, criminal nature of physical and sexual abuse for many

generations. Even more time has passed before our society began to realize that coercive control is every bit as damaging as these other forms of abuse. We need laws that both recognize coercive control as genuine abuse, but which also give survivors resources to heal.


Examples of Coercive Control

• Isolating you from friends and family

• Depriving you of basic needs, such as food

• Monitoring your time

• Monitoring you via online communication tools or spyware

• Taking control over aspects of your everyday life, including where you can go, who you can see and talk to, what you can

wear, and when you can sleep

• Depriving you of access to support services, such as medical services

• Repeatedly criticizing or putting you down, such as telling you that you are a lousy parent or a worthless human being

• Humiliating, degrading, or dehumanizing you

• Controlling your finances

• Making threats or intimidating you


Exercise 3—Are You a Survivor of Coercive Control?

____Yes____No.


Exercise 4—Describe Your Experiences With Coercive Control

Attach additional pages as needed or buy a journal and record your experiences there.


____________________________________________________________________________


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