Survivors of coercive control are being unfairly criminalised in England and punished by a justice system that should be protecting them, research has found.
A report from the Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ) drew on the experiences of seven women who were criminalised because of their abusive partners. They include a police officer who was convicted of misconduct in public office and lost her job after her controlling ex-boyfriend, also a police officer, coerced her into giving him her password into the police computer system, and a woman who was prosecuted for theft and fraud after her abusive and controlling partner used her bank account and phone number to sell stolen caravans.
Cara* was arrested alongside her abuser after police raided their house searching for drugs, and found a large amount of cannabis, which belonged to her then-partner. She left the relationship after the police raid, but was forced to come face-to-face with him in court.
“It’s taken every ounce of strength that I had to actually leave him,” she said. “And then a few months later, in the new year, I got a charge sheet through the post.
“One of the reasons why they’d had access to the house was because he had assaulted me, and they’d come in and they’d seen that there was all sorts of other criminal activity going on in there,” she added.
“And then I had gone and left and got a restraining order, and that counted for nothing. I was just so completely in shock, my stomach felt like it fell out of my body.
“For the next six months, I was fraught with worry. I was struggling to sleep, I was struggling to work, I was struggling to eat. I was absolute skin and bone, I lost so much weight because all I could think about was the fact that I was going to prison, for something I hadn’t done because of the fact that I’d just been involved with this man.”
It was only at her third court hearing, at a crown court, where she was forced to sit beside her abuser in the dock, that the case against Cara was dropped. “It was so frightening, I was absolutely terrified,” she said. “There was nothing between us, nothing to stop him from getting to me.
“I had to just be really strong and sit there and look directly at the judge and just not move my gaze,” she added. “And I could hear him at the side of me, making digs, saying, ‘You’ll have to get back with me, or we’ll both go down together.’”
Jane*, a former lawyer, was reported to the police by her ex-partner after she started to get notifications through on a banking app from an account he had set up after their relationship ended. She disclosed this to him via a solicitor, and he reported her to the police.
She had reported him to the police for coercive control in the past, but still, the criminal prosecution against Jane was taken forward, until it reached the crown court, where it was eventually dropped after the CPS decided it was not in the public interest.
“It absolutely has made me, as an ex-lawyer, totally ashamed of our system, every system, civil, family, criminal, CPS,” Jane said. “I’m angry, because I just think, ‘how can a system that you trust [do this]?’
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“I blindly trusted in the police. I trusted them and they failed and they failed and they failed time, time, time again – and utter ridiculous failures.”
CWJ has made 11 recommendations for reform, including the introduction of an effective defence for victims of coercive control who are pressured into offending. It has also called for the introduction of a joint police and CPS protocol for gathering, passing on, and taking account of evidence of coercive control where someone suspected of an offence may also be a victim.
“At a time when our criminal justice system is under great strain and many victims are unprotected and do not get justice, it is shocking that limited resources are used to prosecute such victims,” Harriet Wistrich, solicitor and CEO of CWJ, said.
“A more informed and intelligent approach is urgently needed to ensure criminal justice action targets those that actually present a danger.”
* Names have been changed