• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • Find a Lawyer
    • All Clallam Co. Lawyers
    • Accident/Personal Injury
    • Business, Corporation, Partnership
    • Criminal
    • Divorce & Family
    • Elder Law
    • Mediation
    • Other
    • Real Estate
    • Wills, Estate Planning, Probate
  • Bar News
    • Family Law
    • CLE
    • Pro Bono Events
    • DV Blog
  • Pro Bono
    • Pro Bono Events
    • Courthouse Facilitator
    • Domestic Violence Service Providers
    • Project Homeless Connect
    • Low Bono
  • Parenting
  • Services and Experts
  • Contact

Clallam County Bar

Clallam County lawyers & legal news

Angeles Mediation

Avoid Court. Reduce costs. Quick results.

The alternative to going to court

Angeles Mediation

  • Zoom
  • Courts
  • Docket search (Odyssey)
  • Weekly calendars
  • WA court forms

Coercive control and emotional abuse illegal in U.K., France, Ireland –and Clallam?

January 2, 2019

Ireland joined the United Kingdom and France extending the definition of domestic violence to include emotional abuse and coercive control. The definitions in these countries expand the basis for a protection order and criminalize coercive control. Washington State law is not quite as clear, but for non-criminal cases is consistent with these European jurisdictions. Understanding coercive control, or more importantly what drives the controlling behavior, and applying protections by judicial officers in rural communities is not easy.

On January 1, 2019, Ireland enacted the Domestic Violence Act 2018, http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2018/act/6/enacted/en/html.

Quick escape to Google.com

Part 2 of the act enumerates a list of factors courts “shall have regard to”. Beyond the usual factors, such as fear for personal safety, history of violence, access to weapons, and substance abuse, they include:

  • “any evidence of deterioration in the physical, psychological or emotional welfare of the applicant or a dependent person which is caused directly by fear of the behaviour of the respondent;”
  • “whether the applicant is economically dependent on the respondent;”
  • “the applicant’s perception of the risk to his or her own safety or welfare due to the behaviour of the respondent;”
  • “any recent separation between the applicant and the respondent;”
  • “any destruction or damage caused by the respondent to” the petitioner’s personal property or residence;”

The French Parliament “adopted Law 2010-769, of July 9, 2010, on Violence Against Women, Violence Between Spouses, and the Effects of These Types of Violence on Children * * * [which] contains several criminal provisions aimed at reinforcing the fight against familial violence, including psychological violence.” http://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/france-law-on-violence-against-women/.

In England, the offence of controlling or coercive behavior is defined in Section 76(1) of the Serious Crime Act 2015:

“A person (A) commits an offence if–
(a) A repeatedly or continuously engages in behaviour towards another person (B) that is controlling or coercive,
(b) at the time of the behaviour, A and B are personally connected,
(c) the behaviour has a serious effect on B, and
(d) A knows or ought to know that the behaivour will have a serious effect on B.”

Although not a law, a cross-government definition of domestic violence and abuse is provided in a Statutory Guidance Framework for Controlling or Coercive Behaviour in an Intimate or Family Relationship, by the Home Office:

“Controlling behaviour is: a range of acts designed to make a person subordinate and/or dependent by isolating them from sources of support, exploiting their resources and capacties for personal gain, depriving them of the means needed for independence, resistance and escape and regulating their everyday behaviour.

“Coercive behaviour is: a continuing act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim.”

Quick escape to Google.com

In 2014, the European Union Agency for Fundamental rights (FRA) conducted a survey of violence against women by interviewing 42,000 women in EU member countries. Consistent with studies in other countries, violence against women is common.

“What emerges is a picture of extensive abuse that affects many women’s lives, but is systematically underreported to the authorities.”


FRA survey, at page 3.

“One in three women (32%) has experienced psychologically abusive behaviour by an intimate partner either by her current partner or previous partner. This includes behaviour such as belittling or humiliating the respondent in public or private; forbidding her to leave the house or locking her up; making her watch pornographic material against your wishes; scaring or intimidating her on purpose; and threatening her with violence were threatening to hurt someone else the respondent cares about.”

“Overall, 43% of women have experienced some form of psychological violence by an intimate partner, which includes other forms of abuse alongside psychologically abusive behavior. This may include psychologically abusive behavior and other forms of psychological violence such as controlling behavior (for example trying to keep the respondent from seeing her friends or visiting her family or relatives), economic violence (such as forbidding a woman to work outside the home) and blackmail.”

FRA survey at 71, from Main Findings of Psychological Partner Violence
Quick escape to Google.com

The FRA survey broke down the results by country.

“In [the FRA] survey on violence against women, almost a third of Irish women (31%) said they had experienced psychological abuse by a partner. A further 23% of respondents said they had experienced controlling behavior, 24% said they had experienced abusive behavior, and 12% said they had experienced stalking (including online stalking).”

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/02/health/ireland-coercive-control-domestic-abuse-intl/index.html

In Washington State (and presumably all U.S. states) coercive control behaviors are not a crime. However, the law, and the Washington Courts’ Domestic Violence Bench Guide for Judicial Officers (revised 2015), make it clear that protection orders can and should be issued based on this type of behavior. The Bench Guide defines domestic violence conduct in terms of both purely legal and also behavioral conduct. Behavioral domestic violence is defined as involving a pattern of assaultive and coercive behaviors including physical, sexual, and psychological attacks, as well as economic coercion. Bench Guide at 2-4.

“Using both the Washington behavioral and legal definitions of DV is critical for making the complex decisions facing judicial officers hearing these cases in criminal, family law, juvenile, dependency, or protection order courts.” Bench Guide at 2-5.

In rural Clallam County, it’s a mixed bag as far as judges being able to see coercive behaviors and being able or willing to do something about them. Judge Brent Basden, with a decade of experience in the family and dependency courts, has developed a keen sense for consistently sorting out false from true claims and being able to respectfully impose reasonable boundaries, structure and compassionate consequences in most cases. Judge Erik Rohrer has demonstrated difficulty seeing coercive behavior, doing anything about it, and in at least one case getting it backward by supporting coercive behavior and punishing the victim. Judge Brian Coughenour has demonstrated a reasonable ability to see coercive behavior, but not an ability to do anything about it, as demonstrated in a recent 4-day divorce trial. In that case, Judge Coughenour ruled the father had engaged in a pattern of domestic violence. Indeed the mother and her witnesses had proven substantial evidence of having suffered a decade of virtually all forms of physical abuse and coercively controlling behavior directed at her, in front of the children, and/or to the children. She testified that she continued to fear her husband and requested a protection order. However, Judge Coughenour declined to issue any protection order and granted the untreated father a substantial amount of parenting time.

Quick escape to Google.com

Coercive control is a relatively new concept for the legal community, and it can be difficult for people to recognize. Most people, judges or not, need some education to learn how and what coercive control is, how it differs from traditional notions of domestic violence, how common the behavior patterns are, what are the associated personality and behavior patterns, what the patterns look like in practice, what the legal system can do to minimize the behaviors and protect victims, and importantly, its devastating long term psychological and somatic effects on victims and children.

By Mark Baumann, J.D.
Port Angeles, Washington

Please note: this article represents the opinion of Mark Baumann only. Please contact the editor if you would like to submit your own opinion article.

Filed Under: Bar News, Domestic Violence, Family Law, High Conflict

Primary Sidebar

Quick escape to Google.com


Zoom into Court

DV information

  • DV Blog
  • Domestic Violence Service Providers
  • Prosecutors and Public Defenders
  • Family Law lawyers
  • Criminal lawyers

DV Resources

  • Harborview sexual assault center
  • Healthy Families PA
  • Lower Elwha
  • Mariposa House
  • Northwest Justice Project
  • Peninsula Behavioral Health

DV Blog

Hope Card: easy carry protection order information

Low Bono mediation 2023: Family Law Project

Judges domestic violence manual available online

Clallam Resilience Project: Transforming substance abuse stigma

The forgotten heroes: Family and friends who call DV helplines

More Posts from this Category

Footer

A sustainable site

CCB.com is a 1-tree sustainable website. https://www.websitecarbon.com/

Please note, ClallamCountyBar.com (CCB.com) is not a referral service, it is a simple listing of lawyers who practice in Clallam County. CCB.com does not recommend or rate or warn about any individual attorneys listed on this site. Information about attorney misconduct can be found at the Washington State Bar Association, www.wsba.org.

If you are a legal or other professional offering services to the legal community in Clallam County and you are not listed on CCB.com, please send us your contact information.

Copyright © 2025 Mark Baumann