What Is Coercive Control?

Coercive control is a strategic pattern of behavior that an abusive partner uses to dominate and entrap another person. The term was developed by sociologist Evan Stark to describe what many survivors know to be true: the most devastating aspects of an abusive relationship are often not the individual incidents of violence, but the ongoing erosion of freedom, autonomy, and identity.

"The victim becomes captive in an unreal world created by the abuser, entrapped in a world of confusion, contradiction and fear" (Stark, 2007). 

Unlike physical violence, coercive control does not require a single dramatic event. It is built gradually — through rules, surveillance, isolation, and the slow dismantling of a person's sense of self and capacity to act independently.

What It Looks Like (a few examples)

Isolation

Systematically limiting a person's contact with friends, family, and support networks. This may happen overtly ("You're not allowed to see them") or subtly — manufacturing conflict, expressing jealousy, or making social contact so difficult that the survivor withdraws voluntarily.

Monitoring and surveillance

Tracking location, reading messages, demanding access to accounts, requiring check-ins, or showing up unannounced. Technology has significantly expanded the tools available for this form of control.

Micromanagement of daily life

Dictating what a person wears, eats, how they spend their time, when they sleep, how they interact with others. Control at this level is designed to produce dependency.

Threats

Threatening physical harm, threats to take children, threats to report immigration status, threats of public humiliation, or threats of self-harm used to prevent the survivor from leaving.

Degradation

Consistent criticism, humiliation, name-calling, and belittling that erodes self-worth and makes leaving feel impossible or undeserved.

Why It Is Difficult to Identify

Coercive control is often invisible to people outside the relationship — and sometimes to the person experiencing it. Abusive partners are skilled at framing control as care: jealousy as love, surveillance as protection, rules as concern.

In many cultural contexts, certain controlling behaviors are normalized — particularly around gender roles, a partner's mobility, or financial access. This normalization does not make those behaviors less harmful. It makes them harder to name.

Recognition in Law

In December 2015, England and Wales became the first countries to criminalize coercive control as a distinct offense under the Serious Crime Act — an outcome Stark's 2007 book directly influenced. Scotland followed with its own law in 2018. In the United States, legal recognition remains limited: as of 2025, only a handful of states have any law specifically addressing coercive control, and it is not a standalone criminal offense at the federal level.

If you or someone you know is experiencing intimate partner violence, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-799-7233 or thehotline.org.

This post is part of the Shared Language Series — a set of definitions and frameworks that inform the research and artistic development behind It's Private.

References

Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford University Press.https://global.oup.com/academic/product/coercive-control-9780197639986

Stark, E., & Hester, M. (2019). Coercive control: Update and review. Violence Against Women, 25(1), 81–104.https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077801218816191

Women's Aid. (2025). Coercive control. https://womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/coercive-control/

Domestic Violence Services Network. (2025). First in the world: A decade of coercive control criminalization in Britain.https://www.dvsn.org/britain-coercive-control-law/

Patterns of abuse among South Asian women experiencing domestic violence in the US. (2021). PMC.https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8048142/

Home Office (2023). Controlling or Coercive Behaviour Statutory Guidance Framework. UK Government. 5 April 2023