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- Published: 30 July 2024
By Heather Campbell Pope
Seventeen years ago, Evan Stark published his influential book on intimate partner abuse, urging lawmakers to criminalize coercive control, a devastating pattern of violence, intimidation, isolation and control that destroys a victim’s autonomy, self-esteem and sense of safety.
In Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life, the American sociologist and forensic social worker persuasively argues that while physical assault is an essential tactic of controlling partners, a standalone coercive control offence is needed because most of the harms they perpetrate are “invisible to the law.”
By shifting the criminal justice system’s focus away from single violent incidents, a coercive control lens recognizes the cumulative and magnified effects of a perpetrator’s sustained and malevolent microregulation of their victim’s daily life, something prosecutors in domestic abuse cases struggle to achieve by packaging assault charges with a “potpourri” of other offences like harassment and intimidation, argues Stark, who died this March at age 82.
Stark’s theory of coercive control emphasises that the behaviour is highly gendered, used almost exclusively by men to dominate their female partners. Since coercive control is a known precursor to intimate partner femicide, recognizing a standalone offence has the potential to work as an early intervention tool. The hope is that prosecuting a coercive controller may help prevent the abuse from escalating to fatal violence against female partners and children.
Implored by grave cases of domestic violence, Canadian lawmakers are mercifully close to making coercive control a standalone crime. On June 12, 2024, days before the House of Commons adjourned for the summer, MPs unanimously passed Bill C-332, which would make coercive control by intimate partners a separate offence under the Criminal Code.
Tabled by Victoria NDP MP Laurel Collins in May 2023, the bill is now with the Senate, where it has reached second reading and will be debated when Parliament resumes in the fall.
In general terms, Bill C-332 describes coercive control as a pattern of conduct that intends to cause an intimate partner to believe their safety is at risk. The Criminal Code defines intimate partners as current or former spouses, common law partners or dating partners.
Bill C-332 covers patterns of behaviours involving conduct like threatening violence against an intimate partner, their child or pet; coercing an intimate partner to engage in sexual activity; monitoring an intimate partner’s social interactions; controlling an intimate partner’s finances, religious beliefs, language, medication and access to health care; and threatening suicide.
The offence would be hybrid, meaning prosecutors would consider factors like the seriousness of the alleged conduct to decide whether to proceed summarily or by indictment. If prosecuted by indictment, a convicted controlling partner would face up to 10 years in prison.
Bill C-332 is a laudable, cross-party effort to address domestic violence; however, as I argue in my recent Canadian Affairs op-ed, the proposed law does nothing to tackle coercive control by adult children, a pervasive form of elder abuse that violates older victims’ safety, autonomy and dignity, and can descend into severe malnourishment, deplorable sanitary conditions and death.
The bill is also out of step with the federal government’s commitment to establish new offences and penalties related to elder abuse, as stated in the justice minister’s mandate letter, which has been in place since 2021.
At first reading, Bill C-332 had a broad scope of perpetrators; it applied to relatives who live with the victim, like adult children who reside with their aging parent, a common scenario in elder abuse cases. This mirrored two earlier attempts to criminalize coercive control by Saanich-Sooke NDP MP Randall Garrison, first in October 2020 when he introduced Bill C-247 and then in November 2021 when he re-introduced it as Bill C-202. While neither of these bills reached second reading, they both included cohabitating relatives in the scope of perpetrators.
Disappointingly, however, the House of Commons passed an amended version of Bill C-332, essentially adopting Stark’s conception of coercive control by limiting its application to intimate partner relationships, where he said there is a unique dynamic and intensiveness that is not found elsewhere.
There is no question that intimate partner abuse involves ghastly crimes. But excluding other kinds of coercive control victims from the purview of Bill C-332 brings us dangerously close to competitive victimhood, a morally fraught exercise of establishing which victim group suffers the most. Eliciting sympathy becomes a story of extremes; those who are actual or perceived victims of less severe forms of evil are left behind, denied legal protection.
To ease this problem, a liberally worded offence can deal with degrees of viciousness at the hybrid election and sentencing stages, punishing a range of reprehensible conduct.
A narrow offence also fuels the unspoken perception that including elder abuse perpetrators would dilute the seriousness of the offence, making it less than a true crime.
Troublingly, the ageism that animates such a view is what underlies much elder abuse. “Mom will be dead soon anyway,” a controlling daughter might tell herself as she drains a joint account, cuts off the cable and cancels home care services. “I’ll throw you off the balcony if I have to pay rent!” a greedy son might yell at his father whose dementia symptoms make him particularly vulnerable to abuse.
To be sure, there is no consensus about whether criminalizing coercive control is the right approach. Some women’s and elder justice advocates rightly worry about using the criminal justice system, as it can detrimentally affect victims. To mitigate these risks, the new law must—at a minimum—be accompanied by enhanced police and prosecutorial training, funding and public awareness about coercive control and familial abuse.
There’s also resistance from some criminal law practitioners, who argue that the offending behaviour is already captured by offences like intimidation, uttering threats, unlawful confinement and theft, though as Stark argues, “these crimes take on new significance when woven into the larger pattern of entrapment.”
A handful of jurisdictions have already criminalized coercive control, with some recognizing a wider scope of perpetrator-victim relationships. For instance, England and Wales, which were first to create the offence in 2015, criminalize coercive control by family members, and in 2023, legislators removed the cohabitation requirement, casting an even wider net of perpetrators that recognizes controlling relatives don’t always live with their victims.
“The criminalisation of coercive control is an important step forward in securing older people’s right to access criminal justice,” said the Older People’s Commissioner for Wales, an independent watchdog for elder rights.
In the U.S., Hawaii became the first state to criminalize coercive control, passing legislation in 2020 that made coercive control over a family or household member a petty misdemeanour, punishable up to 30 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.
On the other hand, Scotland’s law incorporates coercive and controlling behaviour into its domestic abuse offence, restricting it to partners and ex-partners.
In Australia, there is no consistent approach. Encouragingly, Queensland’s forthcoming law will criminalize coercive control in domestic relationships, defined broadly as intimate personal relationships, family relationships and informal care relationships. The law is expected to take effect in 2025 and will carry a maximum penalty of 14 years in jail.
New South Wales criminalized coercive control as of July 1, 2024, but like Canada’s proposed offence, the Australian state takes a narrow approach, limiting the law’s application to intimate partners. Reassuringly, however, the attorney general indicated that the government might consider expanding the scope in the future.
Canada has the chance to get it right the first time.
This September, when parliamentarians return to Ottawa, they should amend Bill C-332 to legislate a wider scope of perpetrator-victim relationships. Like most things, a coercive control offence would be an imperfect and partial response to elder abuse. But it has the potential to protect some older victims from further harm in a way that holds perpetrators accountable.
Heather Campbell Pope, LLB, LLM, is founder of Dementia Justice Canada. You can find more of her opinion essays on Substack.
