Lawmakers Should Not Be Fooled by Deceptive Claims of ‘Coercive Control’ Advocates

PRESS RELEASE

Rebecca Stewart: 513-479-3335

Lawmakers Should Not Be Fooled by Deceptive Claims of ‘Coercive Control’ Advocates

WASHINGTON / April 27, 2021 – The Coalition to End Domestic Violence is warning lawmakers of the misleading and false claims being made by advocates of so-called “coercive control” laws. Coercive control policies expand the definition of “domestic violence” to include non-violent actions such as psychological, emotional, and financial abuse.

These broad definitions would turn virtually every American into a victim. Such vague meanings would encompass “lover’s quarrels (verbal abuse), threats of leaving the relationship (psychological), and imposing a budget (economic),” commentator Wendy McElroy reveals (1).

Three states are currently considering coercive control bills: New York (S 5306), South Carolina (HB 5271), and Maryland (HB 1352). (2) Coercive control bills already have been enacted in California (3) and Hawaii (4).

“Coercive control” laws have three major drawbacks:

False Allegations: Claims of verbal, psychological, or economic abuse are so vague that accused persons have no viable defense against a false allegation. This would exacerbate partner conflict and worsen family instability. Eight percent of Americans now report being falsely accused of abuse (5).
Increase in Demands for Services: Turning every American into a victim would open the door to expanded requests for financial assistance from victim service agencies. Persons experiencing coercive control could soon quit their jobs, costing states billions in unemployment benefits (6).
Reduced Police Protections for Victims of Violence: Expansive definitions would cause the number of calls for police assistance to spike. This in turn would dissipate the availability of criminal justice services for the victims of actual violence.

Coercive control activists maintain that domestic violence victimizes women more often than men (7). This statement is incorrect. According to the Centers for Disease Control, each year there are 4.2 million male victims and 3.5 female victims of physical domestic violence (8).

Proponents of coercive control policies often make statements such as, “A high percentage of people who engage in coercive control will eventually resort to physical violence.” (9) Such claims are not supported by science (10).

At the federal level, the House-passed Violence Against Women Act, H.R. 1620, aims to broaden the definition to domestic violence to include “a pattern of behavior involving the use of physical, sexual, verbal, psychological, economic, or technological abuse” (11). But the Congressional Research Service has warned, ”a violent act is qualitatively different from other forms of abuse such as economic abuse, and legal definitions should reflect that distinction…. Justice Scalia argued that ‘[w]hen everything is domestic violence, nothing is.’” (12)

Law professor Leigh Goodmark has predicted that “prosecutions of women would skyrocket” as a result of coercive control laws (13).

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