What is coercive control?

On 13 March 2024, we held our first inaugural Social Impact Breakfast Series to create a safe space where people could feel open, honest, curious, inspired and ultimately empowered to take action on domestic violence support in the workplace.

As part of our powerhouse panel Q+A (alongside Christine Holgate (Group Chief Executive at Team Global Express), Lisa McAdams (Founder of Safe Space Workplace) and Delia Donovan (CEO of DV NSW) as moderator), we got to pick the brains of Jess Hill, Australian journalist behind ‘See What You Made Me Do’, about what exactly coercive control is.

"FAMILY VIOLENCE IS MUCH WEIRDER THAN WE'VE THOUGHT; THE PERPETRATION OF IT IS VERY STRANGE."

"Coercive control is essentially the umbrella dynamic that contains most of what we know as family violence. I remember when I was putting together The Perpetrator's Handbook – which was the first chapter of my book – and looking at the sorts of behaviours, we're talking about something that is much less akin to an incident of assault as we've often thought about domestic violence, and much closer to the experience of being in a cult. Or being a cult leader, if you're perpetrating that abuse.

The whole process of family and domestic violence is not just about consequential incidents – like, it happened on Wednesday and it happened again on the following Friday. It's an unrelenting system that never switches off. The good times are just as big a part of it as the bad times…if you have good times.

We’re talking about things like isolation, manipulation, gaslighting, surveillance. Creating an atmosphere of omnipotence; such that the victim-survivor never feels like they have any private space to have their own perspective. If they have children, it’s having their parenting constantly undermined, being coerced into much more disciplinary tactics than they would like to use against their children, or having those relationships completely undermined and disrupted.

The big part is the process of thought reform – and that's why I compare it to being in a cult. Coercive control is used in cults. It's used in hostage situations. It's used in sex trafficking. It's used in some prisoner-of-war situations.

The point is, the person using the coercive control is using a whole suite of behaviours – that could be coming out of them quite instinctively, or coming out quite tactically – to change the behavior of the person they're subjecting it to. They change their thought patterns, they foster self-blame – which is what will often keep women there longer. If it's not the fear, it's the feeling they don't deserve to be safe, because the abuse is their fault.

This process of thought reform means that leaving is a very long process. For those supporting the people leaving, be it colleagues, friends, family – it can be very frustrating. You can feel like you‘ve said the same thing 20, 30, 40 times…to the point where you just don't feel like you can say it anymore.”

- JESS HILL