Some states are banking on the idea that you can stop domestic violence even before it leads to blows. The controversial, fledgling approach to domestic violence prosecution wants to make family psychological intimidation illegal.
Such laws are coming under the national spotlight after a Louisiana man fatally shot his seven children and their cousin on April 19. He's just one of the nation’s millions of family and domestic violence abusers, a crisis affecting an estimated 10 million victims every year, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Nearly a dozen U.S. states now have or are now pushing for laws that define domestic violence more fully and take into account notions of power and control long held in domestic violence circles. So-called "coercive control laws" target offenders who intentionally aim to control partners or family members through fear, intimidation, surveillance, gaslighting and other non-physically abusive behavior.
Coercive control refers to a pattern of acts and behaviors used by an abuser to limit another person’s freedom and control their life. Such mental abuse, lawmakers argue, becomes the seedling for physical or sexual violence.
“It incapacitates people from taking care of themselves and entraps them so they can’t protect their kids,” said Joan Meier, founding director of the National Family Violence Law Center and a professor of clinical law at George Washington University. “It’s an inextricable net that closes in on them so they can’t move in any direction without some fallout from the abuser.”
