Domestic Abuse and Coercive Control: A Guide for Families on Legal Protection and Support

Domestic abuse is still too often imagined as a single, dramatic image: a bruise, a broken door, a 999 call in the middle of the night. The reality, particularly among the professional and middle-class families I act for, is usually quieter and more insidious than that. It is coercive control, a sustained pattern of behaviour designed to dominate, isolate and frighten a partner or ex-partner. It can involve financial restriction, monitoring of phones and email, threats over children, and the slow erosion of someone's confidence in their own judgement. And, contrary to the assumption many people still make, it affects men as often as it does women, even if the shape it takes and the barriers to speaking about it are sometimes different.

What Coercive Control Actually Looks Like:

Coercive control was recognised as a specific criminal offence in England and Wales under section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015. It does not require a single violent incident. Instead, the law recognises a repeated or continuous pattern of behaviour by someone the victim is personally connected to that has a serious effect on them, causing them to fear violence on at least two occasions, or causing serious alarm or distress that has a substantial adverse effect on their day-to-day activities.

In practice, in the cases I see, this includes:

• Controlling access to money: allowances, hidden accounts, restricting a partner's ability to work or study.
• Monitoring devices, location, or communications, or dictating who a partner can see. It can sometimes include extended friends and family being made to feel unwelcome when visiting.
• Threats to withhold time or interactions with children, or to make false allegations, as leverage in an argument or separation, sometimes the threats include taking the children away.
• Humiliation, gaslighting, and undermining someone's sense of reality or self-worth over a long period.
• Threats of self-harm or false counter-allegations used specifically to prevent a partner from leaving or reporting abuse.

None of this depends on the sex of either party. I have acted for wives controlled financially by wealthy husbands, and I have acted for husbands whose access to their own children was used as a weapon, or who were too embarrassed, or too worried about being disbelieved, to raise what was happening to them sooner. Both parties frequently under-report, partly from a reasonable fear that a court, the police, or even their own friends and family will not take it seriously. That imbalance is changing, but slowly, and it is something I actively watch for, regardless of who is sitting in front of me.

What the Family Court Can Do

The family courts have several tools designed specifically to protect someone from an abusive partner or ex-partner, separate from (and often faster than) the criminal process.

Non-molestation orders

A non-molestation order prohibits an abusive partner from using or threatening violence, intimidating, harassing, or pestering the applicant or a relevant child. It can be obtained without notice to the other party in urgent cases, meaning an order can be in place within days, sometimes hours, of instructing a solicitor. Breach of a non-molestation order is a criminal offence carrying up to five years' imprisonment, which gives it real teeth. The enforcement of it simply passes to the local police station and if it is breached. The perpetrator will be immediately arrested and go through the criminal justice system.

Occupation orders

Where safety requires, an occupation order can regulate who lives in the family home and can exclude an abusive partner from the property or a defined area around it, regardless of whose name is on the deeds or mortgage. These are more complex to obtain than non-molestation orders and involve a balancing exercise by the court, but they are an essential tool where remaining under the same roof is not safe.

Children Act Proceedings

Where there are children, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 formally removed the presumption that contact with both parents is automatically in a child's best interests where domestic abuse is alleged, and courts are now required to consider the impact of abuse (including coercive control) on both the victim and the children when making child arrangements orders. Special measures, such as separate waiting areas, video-link evidence, and prohibiting an abuser from cross-examining their victim in person, are also now standard features of family proceedings involving domestic abuse.

What the Police Can Do

Family court protection and criminal justice sit alongside each other, and a well-run case will usually consider both routes together rather than as alternatives.

• A report to the police can lead to a Domestic Violence Protection Notice (DVPN) and Order (DVPO), giving immediate short-term protection, while a longer-term response is arranged.
• Coercive control itself, and associated offences such as harassment, stalking, and assault, can be prosecuted criminally, with a conviction carrying a custodial sentence.
• Evidence gathered for a criminal investigation (messages, financial records, witness statements) will often support a parallel family court application, and vice versa.

Many clients are reluctant to involve the police at all, particularly where they fear escalation, reputational consequences, or simply do not recognise what has been happening to them as something the law has a name for. Part of my role is helping people understand, without judgement, whether and when that route is right for their situation.

How I Can Help

Cases involving coercive control require a particular kind of care. The evidence is rarely a single dramatic event; it is a pattern that must be pieced together from years of messages, financial records, and a client's own account, often given hesitantly and only once real trust has been established. My approach is to:

• Listen first, without assumptions about who is capable of being a victim or a perpetrator, and take the same care with a father's account as a mother's.
• Move quickly where safety requires it. Non-molestation and occupation order applications can, and often must, be prepared within days.
• Work alongside the criminal process where appropriate, liaising with the police and, where needed, an Independent Domestic Violence Advisor (IDVA), without duplicating effort or causing a client to have to repeat their account unnecessarily.
• Build the evidential picture properly for children proceedings, so that a history of coercive control is put before the court in a way that is heard and understood, not dismissed as "just conflict."
• Keep sight of the practical and financial consequences alongside the safety issues. Housing, finances, and the children's day-to-day stability rarely wait for the legal process to catch up.

If any part of this reflects a situation you, or someone close to you, may be in, the most useful first step is usually a confidential conversation, not a decision. I meet clients in-person at our offices in London (or virtually) and can arrange to speak on a basis that fits around work, childcare, or simply what feels safe.

If you are looking for experienced, pragmatic and cost-effective advice on a family law matter please contact Aziz Malik: azizmalik@bexleybeaumont.com  |  07966 375115