Domestic Abuse is often misunderstood as a series of isolated incidents. In reality, it is frequently a pattern of power, control and intimidation that can reshape a victim’s entire daily life. Under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 in England and Wales, abuse includes not only physical and sexual abuse, but also controlling or coercive behaviour, economic abuse, and psychological or emotional abuse (HM Government, 2021). That broader definition matters because many victims are harmed less by one dramatic event than by an ongoing campaign of domination.
A central feature of Domestic Abuse is coercive control. This can involve monitoring a partner’s movements, restricting access to money, isolating them from friends, humiliating them, or making them live by rules backed by fear. Over time, coercive control can erode a victim’s autonomy, confidence and capacity to make free choices (Stark, 2012; Wiener, 2022). In some cases, it also pushes victims into situations where they are later treated as offenders rather than victim-survivors. Understanding that risk is essential if legal and support systems are to respond fairly.
1.0 What Domestic Abuse Really Means
The legal definition of Domestic Abuse now reflects what many specialists have argued for years: abuse is not only about injury, but also about entrapment. The law recognises that abusive behaviour may be a single incident or a wider course of conduct, and that it can include economic and emotional harm as well as violence (HM Government, 2021). This is an important shift because many victims live in conditions where every ordinary decision has been taken over by another person.
For example, a victim may be told what to wear, when to sleep, who to speak to, and how to spend money. Their messages may be checked, their wages taken, or their visits to family criticised until they stop going. None of these acts alone always looks dramatic from the outside. Together, however, they can form the architecture of Domestic Abuse.
Scholars such as Burman and Brooks-Hay (2018) and Buzawa, Buzawa and Stark (2015) have shown that law and policy increasingly try to capture this wider reality. The challenge is ensuring that criminal justice systems do not only recognise coercive control in theory, but also understand it in practice.
2.0 How Coercive Control Shapes Domestic Abuse
Coercive control is best understood as a strategy of domination. Rather than relying only on visible violence, the perpetrator uses repeated behaviour to reduce the victim’s room for action. Stark (2012) argues that coercive control is a liberty crime because it strips away independence and personhood. Victims may still appear to be functioning, but their choices have been narrowed by fear, surveillance, deprivation and dependency.
This matters because the impact on autonomy can be profound. A victim may stop working because their partner sabotages transport or childcare. They may avoid friends because every outing leads to accusations. They may hand over passwords or bank cards not because they freely agree, but because resistance carries consequences. In that sense, Domestic Abuse can become a form of captivity in ordinary life.
The Crown Prosecution Service guidance makes this very clear. It lists behaviours such as isolating a person from support, monitoring them through digital tools, controlling bank accounts, enforcing humiliating rules, and even forcing the victim to take part in criminal activity (Crown Prosecution Service, n.d.). That last point is especially important, because it links coercive control directly to criminalisation.
3.0 How Domestic Abuse Can Lead to Victim Criminalisation
One of the most troubling features of Domestic Abuse is that victim-survivors may be punished by the very systems that should protect them. This can happen in several ways.
First, coercive control may force a victim into offending. A perpetrator might pressure a partner into shoplifting, taking on debt, hiding money, transporting goods, or neglecting responsibilities under threat or manipulation. The CPS explicitly recognises that controlling behaviour may include forcing a victim to commit crimes in order to increase self-blame and prevent disclosure (Crown Prosecution Service, n.d.). Tolmie et al. (2023) argue that when victims are compelled into offending, criminal law does not always respond with sufficient fairness or context.
Secondly, Domestic Abuse can lead to misidentification. When police arrive after an argument and see only the final moments, they may misread a victim’s resistance, fear or anger as offending behaviour. A victim-survivor who lashes out after prolonged abuse, damages property while trying to escape, or appears inconsistent in interview may be viewed as the primary aggressor. Tolmie (2018) warns that criminalisation can work badly where the wider pattern of coercive control is ignored. Reeves, Fitz-Gibbon and Meyer (2025) similarly show how credibility assessments can fail victim-survivors when systems do not properly understand coercive control.
Thirdly, perpetrators sometimes use the law itself as a tool of abuse. False allegations, repeated applications, manipulated evidence and selective recordings can all become part of the pattern. In these situations, Domestic Abuse is not only a private harm; it becomes a way of steering the victim into legal jeopardy.
4.0 Protecting Victims from Criminalisation in Domestic Abuse Cases
If Domestic Abuse is to be addressed justly, victim protection must go beyond recognising coercive control as a criminal offence. It must also prevent systems from punishing those who are trapped by it.
4.1 Legal Reform
Legal reform should focus on context, not only events. Decision-makers need clearer routes to recognise when offending has occurred within a coercive and controlling relationship. That includes stronger use of defences where coercion is present, better guidance on evidencing patterns of abuse, and more careful treatment of cases involving victim-survivors forced into criminal acts. Wiener (2022) and Wangmann (2020) both show that criminalising coercive control is only part of the answer; the surrounding legal framework must also respond to the realities of entrapment.
A more context-sensitive approach would help ensure that Domestic Abuse is assessed as a pattern of power rather than as disconnected incidents.
4.2 Better Training Across Police, Prosecution and Courts
Training is another essential safeguard. Professionals need to understand how coercive control works, how victims may present, and why their behaviour may not fit simplistic expectations. Research by Brennan et al. (2021) found that force-wide training improved police responses to coercive control offences. That suggests training can make a measurable difference.
Good training should include identifying economic abuse, digital monitoring, trauma responses, retaliatory behaviour, and the risk of misidentifying the victim. It should also teach practitioners to ask: who holds the power in this relationship, and what pattern sits behind this incident? Without that question, Domestic Abuse can be reduced to surface appearances.
4.3 Integrated Support Systems
Victims are less likely to be criminalised when they have access to joined-up support. Legal advice, housing help, debt support, mental health care, immigration advice and specialist domestic abuse advocacy all reduce the chance that a victim remains trapped and blamed. Buzawa, Buzawa and Stark (2015) emphasise the importance of integrating criminal justice with human services. The CPS also stresses early contact with specialist support, including independent domestic abuse advocates, because safety planning and case building are stronger when support is in place from the outset (Crown Prosecution Service, n.d.).
In practice, that means Domestic Abuse should not be treated as a single-agency problem. A victim facing coerced debt, threatened homelessness and criminal allegations needs a coordinated response, not a fragmented one.
Domestic Abuse is not simply about what a perpetrator does in one moment. It is often about how control is built, maintained and used to strip away a victim’s freedom. Coercive control can damage autonomy so deeply that victims struggle to act independently, seek help, or even avoid criminalisation. When systems ignore that context, victim-survivors may be punished for acts shaped by fear, dependency and survival.
A better response to Domestic Abuse therefore requires more than criminal offences on paper. It requires legal reform that recognises coercive context, better training for frontline professionals, and integrated support systems that treat victim-survivors as people in need of protection rather than suspicion. Only then can responses to coercive control become genuinely just.
References
Brennan, I., Myhill, A., Tagliaferri, G. and Tapley, J. (2021) ‘Policing a new domestic abuse crime: Effects of force-wide training on arrests for coercive control’, Policing and Society. Available at: https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/files/25868195/Policing_a_new_domestic_abuse_crime_Effects_of_force_wide_training_on_arrests_for_coercive_control_POST_PRINT.pdf.
Burman, M. and Brooks-Hay, O. (2018) ‘Aligning policy and law? The creation of a domestic abuse offence incorporating coercive control’, Criminology & Criminal Justice. Available at: https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/154030/13/154030.pdf.
Buzawa, E.S., Buzawa, C.G. and Stark, E.D. (2015) Responding to Domestic Violence: The Integration of Criminal Justice and Human Services. Available at: https://books.google.com/books?id=gcmlCgAAQBAJ.
Crown Prosecution Service (n.d.) Controlling or Coercive Behaviour in an Intimate or Family Relationship. Available at: https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/controlling-or-coercive-behaviour-intimate-or-family-relationship.
HM Government (2021) Domestic Abuse Act 2021, section 1. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2021/17/section/1.
Reeves, E., Fitz-Gibbon, K. and Meyer, S. (2025) ‘Incredible women: Legal systems abuse, coercive control, and the credibility of victim-survivors’, Violence Against Women. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/10778012231220370.
Stark, E. (2012) ‘Looking beyond domestic violence: Policing coercive control’, Journal of Police Crisis Negotiations. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Evan-Stark/publication/271937985_Looking_Beyond_Domestic_Violence_Policing_Coercive_Control/links/5e57f516a6fdccbeba077fd4/Looking-Beyond-Domestic-Violence-Policing-Coercive-Control.
Tolmie, J.R. (2018) ‘Coercive control: To criminalize or not to criminalize?’, Criminology & Criminal Justice. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Julia-Tolmie/publication/321771254_Coercive_control_To_criminalize_or_not_to_criminalize/links/5ecdf7d9299bf1c67d20388d/Coercive-control-To-criminalize-or-not-to-criminalize.pdf.
Tolmie, J., Norton, C., Wilson, D. and Smith, R. (2023) ‘Victim-Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence Who are Forced to Participate in Crimes: Are They Treated Fairly in the Criminal Law?’. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=4943594.
Wangmann, J. (2020) ‘Coercive control as the context for intimate partner violence: The challenge for the legal system’, in Criminalising Coercive Control: Family Violence and the Criminal Law. Available at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-15-0653-6_11.
Wiener, C. (2022) Coercive Control and the Criminal Law. Available at: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780429201844/coercive-control-criminal-law-cassandra-wiener.
