Seeing the signs

Coercive control is a course of conduct aimed at controlling and dominating another, most often perpetrated by men against women. It can include physical, sexual, emotional and / or psychological abuse, stalking, deprivation of resources, and technology-assisted abuse, among other tactics aimed at depriving victims of their autonomy. Evan Stark has been widely credited with bringing attention to coercive control, but he was hardly the first to identify these patterns or to theorise them through the lenses of male power and gender inequality. This article situates theories and debates about coercive control within a larger transnational history of expanding definitions and understandings of domestic and family violence, particularly intimate partner violence. Australia is offered as a case study of coercive control's trajectory, from the 1970s to the present when the murder of Hannah Clarke and her three young children by their estranged husband and father in early 2020 intensified public awareness, culminating in the criminalisation of coercive control in some jurisdictions. In historicising coercive control from the Australian perspective, this article contributes to ongoing transnational debates about how to address it, while aiming to challenge a dominant narrative about coercive control which culminates in criminalisation

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• A Journey of Necessity

  Open Access•Jeannine M Suurmond•Journal of Religion and Health•2026

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