Queensland is leading Australia through a cultural and legal transformation to criminalise coercive control, a pattern of behaviours that is highly correlated with the risk of domestic harm and homicide.
The state’s premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, announced this week that the government will train frontline responders, including police and emergency services, to be ready for proposed law changes in 2023.
The transformation in Queensland policy and legislation has been extraordinarily fast.
It is just over two years since Hannah Clarke and her three young children were murdered on a public footpath in a horrific car fire that had been planned and executed by the estranged husband and father of the family. Hannah’s parents, Sue and Lloyd Clarke, this week welcomed the changes that they called for in the Guardian in November 2020.
In Britain, the journey to criminalise coercive control took 15 years, from 2000 to 2015 when criminologists, psychologists, researchers and policy makers discovered the strong connection between coercive control and intimate partner homicides.
Homicide detectives and criminologists identified a group of behaviours displayed by almost all the killers in the weeks, months and years before every intimate partner murder.
Research findings reveal that far from being random or unpredictable, intimate partner homicides are now recognised as the most predictable type of murder and are therefore the most preventable.
In 2015, the UK parliament made coercive and controlling behaviours a crime in an effort to protect the lives of victims and their children.
The Home Office gave police and prosecutors in Britain a checklist of the specific behaviours that were criminalised to make clear what behaviours were recognised as crimes.
The list is not exhaustive but it provides clear guidance about the most common types of behaviour that are harmful and that can lead to a risk of homicide.
Most victims are not aware they are being coercively controlled because, especially at first, the behaviour is presented as caring, protective and loving, and often does not include physical injury.
The behaviours are all employed strategically by offenders to reduce the victim’s individual freedom, deprive them of basic needs, demean them, surveil their movements and associates, threaten harm and cause actual harm.
Coercive behaviours may appear benign to friends and even police, but the victim will understand the subliminal message. For example, Hannah Clarke’s killer indicated he was about to murder her when he wrote a text message a few days before the murders that said: “I’m finishing your game, I don’t want to play anymore.”
The exact definition of coercive control in Queensland law is yet to be determined and will need to take into account cultural differences between here and the UK. But the list of behaviours identified by the UK Home Office is:
isolating a person from their friends and family;
depriving them of their basic needs;
monitoring their time;
monitoring a person via online communication tools or using spyware;
taking control over aspects of their everyday life, such as where they can go, who they can see, what they can wear and when they can sleep;
depriving them of access to support services, such as specialist support or medical services;
repeatedly putting them down by statements such as telling them they are worthless;
enforcing rules and activities that humiliate, degrade or dehumanise the victim;
forcing the victim to take part in criminal activity such as shoplifting, neglect or abuse of children to encourage self-blame and prevent disclosure to authorities;
financial abuse including control of finances, such as only allowing a person a punitive allowance;
threats to hurt or kill;
threats to a child;
threats to reveal or publish private information (eg threatening to “out” someone);
assault;
criminal damage (such as destruction of household goods);
rape;
preventing a person from having access to transport or from working.
The dozens of victims of coercive control who I have interviewed in the past two years have been shocked to realise that they were not alone in experiencing the same group of harmful behaviours.
Almost all these victims experienced almost all of the above behaviours, indicating they were suffering a very high level of coercion and control.
Police action is necessary to protect them from harm.
The 8 stages that precede domestic murder
Coercive controlling behaviours are one of eight clearly defined steps preceding intimate partner homicides, as defined by criminologist Prof Jane Monckton-Smith.
Monckton-Smith analysed 372 murders and found that very rarely do perpetrators kill their partner in a first relationship.
But the perpetrator had often coercively controlled a previous partner and threatened to harm or kill them.
Control and coercion in a previous relationship is recognised as stage one of the eight stages leading to intimate partner homicide.
Upon leaving the first relationship, the perpetrator begins stage two, forming a new relationship with a predetermined strategy: they initiate a relationship that becomes serious very quickly, demanding a demonstration of commitment and then becoming possessive or jealous.
In the third stage, the perpetrator begins exerting control soon after securing the new partner’s commitment.
It is in the breakdown of this relationship, stage four, that the perpetrator either lets the partner leave or “changes the project” and decides to kill.
Any victim who identifies the first four stages, from the whirlwind beginning of the relationship to the breakdown, needs effective police protection, because up to a third of murders are carried out in a short period of time, from a few hours to a few days of the victim withdrawing commitment or leaving the relationship.
Stage five is an escalation of abuse, control or stalking after the relationship ends; stage six is the realisation by the perpetrator that the relationship loss is permanent.
If the perpetrator makes a decision to kill, stage seven is the planning and preparation for carrying out a murder attempt.
Stage eight is the attempted murder.
Victims of coercive control who realise they are victims require medical and psychological care.
If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault or family violence, call 1800-RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit www.1800RESPECT.org.au
Amanda Gearing has a PhD in global investigative journalism and completed a national survey on coercive control in Australia in 2021.
