Controlling or Coercive Behaviour

SCOPE OF THIS CHAPTER

This chapter is about controlling or coercive behaviour.

Controlling or coercive behaviour is an intentional pattern of behaviour used by one adult (the perpetrator) for the purpose of exercising power and control over another (the victim). Where certain criteria are met, controlling and coercive behaviour is a criminal offence.

The chapter includes information either taken directly or adapted from the Home Office guidance Controlling or coercive behaviour: statutory guidance framework.

This chapter contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government License v.3.0.

RELATED CHAPTERS

Domestic Abuse (including MARAC)

Honour Based Abuse

Forced Marriage

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)

Mate Crime

Financial Abuse

Cuckooing (Forced Home Invasion)

1. Controlling or Coercive Behaviours

Controlling or coercive behaviours are often a combination of different types of abuse. For example, physical, psychological, sexual or financial abuse.

For information about the different categories of abuse, and how they may be experienced, see: The Care Act 2014, Categories of Abuse and Neglect.   

Taken from the statutory guidance, the following are some examples of controlling or coercive behaviours and how they may be experienced by a victim. These examples are not exhaustive.

Controlling behaviours

Behaviour Examples
Controlling or monitoring the victim’s daily activities and behaviour. Making the victim account for their time, dictating what they can wear, what and when they can eat, when and where they may sleep, who they meet or talk to, where they may work, restricting access to training/development etc.
Using digital systems, such as smart devices or social media, to coerce, control, upset and monitor the victim. Restricting and checking the victims phone use, needing to know passwords for accounts, using location tracking on devices, posting of a possibly triggering image.
Controlling and monitoring the victim’s access to their post.  
Acts of coercion or force to persuade the victim to do something that they are unwilling to do.  
Economic abuse. Coerced debt, controlling the victim’s spending/ bank accounts/ investments/ mortgages/ benefit payments.
Using a victim’s workplace to control them. Denying the victim access to work, dictating where they work, turning up at work.
Making and enforcing rules and regulations that the victim is expected to follow and using punishments to make them comply. Making accusations or humiliating the victim in public or private for deviating from the rules.
Coercing the victim into carrying out criminal behaviour. Selling drugs or carrying weapons.
Following the victim and/or appearing unexpectedly. At the victim’s place of work or at places where they are meeting friends.
Reproductive coercion. Restricting a victim’s access to birth control, refusing to use a birth control method, forced pregnancy.

Forcing a victim to get an abortion, to undergo in vitro fertilisation (IVF) or other procedure, or denying access to such a procedure.
Using substances such as alcohol or drugs to control a victim through dependency or controlling their access to substances.  
Using child arrangements and child maintenance to control the victim.  

Restrictive behaviours

Behaviour Examples
Withholding and/or destroying the victim’s immigration documents. Passports and visas.
Preventing normal leisure activities. Volunteering, joining local clubs and groups, sports teams, civil/charitable activity, etc.
Preventing the victim from learning a language. Learning a new language, improving their existing language skills, such as English if this is not their first language, or making friends outside of their ethnic/ or cultural background.
Refusing to interpret (including British Sign Language, BSL, for deaf victims) on behalf of the victim.  
Hindering access to communication. Refusing to make information accessible, denying access to communication support tools, augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), and/or professionals who support communication.
Restricting or preventing access to health or social care. Restricting or preventing access to appointments, including refusing to allow the victim to attend appointments alone (especially relevant for victims with disabilities or long-term health conditions).
Preventing or access to medication. Preventing the victim from taking medication, accessing medical equipment, or over-medicating them.
Isolating the victim from family, friends, colleagues and professionals who may be trying to support them. Intercepting messages or phone calls.

Threatening behaviours

Behaviour Examples
Threats of being placed in an institution against the victim’s will. Into a care home, supported living facility, mental health facility, etc. (particularly for disabled or elderly victims).
Threats to expose/exposure of sensitive information. Sexual activity, private sexual photos or films, sexual orientation and/or transgender identity.
Making false allegations, including via photos or the internet. To family members, friends, work colleagues or community.

To statutory services e.g. Police, Children’s Services, Jobcentre, Child Maintenance Services.
Using children. Threatening to take children away, threatening to harm children.
Using pets. Harming, or threatening to harm or give away pets.
Intimidation and threats of disclosure of health status or an impairment. To family, friends, work colleagues and the wider community, particularly where this may carry a stigma in the community.
Threats to harm the victim’s family and friends.  
Threats to report a victim to immigration enforcement and/or the police or threaten to remove them to their country of origin.  
Intimidation or threats to go to the police to report alleged offending.   

Technology facilitated abuse

Technology facilitated abuse is an increasingly prevalent form of controlling or coercive behaviour. It enables the abuse to take place both in person and from a distance and can provide the perpetrator with significant anonymity.

2. Controlling or Coercive Behaviour as a Criminal Offence

Under Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015, controlling or coercive behaviour is a criminal offence when the following criteria are met:

  • The victim and perpetrator are personally connected at the time the behaviour takes place;
  • The behaviour has had a serious effect on the victim;
  • The behaviour takes place repeatedly or continuously; and
  • The perpetrator must have known that their behaviour would have a serious effect on the victim, or the behaviour must have been such that he or she “ought to have known” it would have had that effect.

Further guidance on the criteria is provided below.

Personally connected

The perpetrator and victim and ‘personally connected’ if:

  • They are, or have been, married to each other;
  • They are, or have been, civil partners of each other;
  • They have agreed to marry one another (whether or not the agreement has been terminated);
  • They have entered into a civil partnership agreement (whether or not the agreement has been terminated);
  • They are, or have been in an intimate personal relationship with each other;
  • They each have, or there has been a time when they each have had, a parental relationship in relation to the same child;
  • They are relatives.
Need to know

The legal definition of ‘personally connected’ means that some cases of coercive or controlling behaviour will never meet the threshold of a criminal offence. For example, in a case of mate crime or cuckooing where the perpetrator and victim are not related and have never been in a relationship. That does not mean that coercive or controlling behaviour is not occurring within the context of the abuse, or that other criminal acts are not taking place.

Serious effect

The behaviour is deemed to have had a ‘serious effect’ if:

  • It causes the victim to fear, on two or more occasions, that violence will be used against them; or
  • It causes the victim serious alarm or distress which has a substantial adverse effect on their usual day-to-day activities.

Taken from the statutory guidance, examples of serious effects for the victim may include, but are not limited to:

  • Stopping or changing the way they socialises;
  • Physical or mental health deterioration;
  • A change in routine at home including those associated with mealtimes or household work;
  • Putting in place measures at home to safeguard themselves or their children;
  • Changes to work patterns, employment status or routes to work;
  • Being monitored by and needing to report back to the perpetrator;
  • Having their financial independence restricted e.g. the perpetrator denying access to money, preventing the victim from working, sabotaging employment or welfare benefits, denying access to joint bank accounts, or coerced debt;
  • Being deprived access to medication, phone and internet usage;
  • Feeling unable to have family or friends visit;
  • Feeling unable to take part in activities which they previously enjoyed;
  • Becoming socially isolated;
  • Being told what they can and cannot wear;
  • Emotional and psychological harms including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder;
  • Being punished or having to follow rules;
  • Living in fear of punishment of any kind.

Repeated or continuous

Repeatedly: On two or more occasions.

Continuously: On an ongoing basis.

Behaviour displayed on only one occasion would not amount to repeated or continuous behaviour.

3. The Safeguarding Response

The response to concerns about coercive or controlling behaviour should be multi-agency and in line with the statutory guidance framework.

See: Controlling or coercive behaviour: statutory guidance framework.

It should form part of the overall safeguarding response to the circumstances and context in which the behaviour is taking place (e.g. domestic abuse, mate crime, cuckooing, financial abuse etc.).

The response should be mindful of the following:

  1. The experience of controlling or coercive behaviour can be quick or intense, or it may develop and build gradually over time;
  2. Different controlling or coercive behaviours can occur simultaneously and have a cumulative impact on the victim;
  3. Victims of controlling or coercive behaviour may not be aware of, ready to acknowledge, or able to communicate that the abuse they are currently experiencing, or have previously experienced, is part of a pattern of controlling or coercive behaviour;
  4. In many cases, victims may only come to terms with the impact of the behaviour or understand that it has occurred at a later stage;
  5. Controlling or coercive behaviour is a risk factor in domestic homicides, and a precursor for suicides;
  6. ‘Coercive control creates invisible chains and a sense of fear that pervades all elements of a victim’s life. It works to limit their human rights by depriving them of their liberty and reducing their ability for action’ (Controlling or coercive behaviour: statutory guidance framework).

Once the controlling or coercive relationship has ended:

  1. The behaviours can continue for a long time and often intensify, leading to increased risk to the victim;
  2. The tactics employed by perpetrators when relationships end are designed to undermine the victim’s capacity to transition into a safe and settled life;
  3. Post-separation behaviours can pervade all aspects of a victim’s life including their family relationships, employment and economic stability;
  4. Post-separation abuse can often include forms of abuse that do not require physical proximity, such as economic abuse and technology-facilitated abuse.