We were in the smoking area, a place where strangers pull out their secrets and present them to the group, to an echo of, ‘Babe, I’ve been there.’
It was a ‘girls’ afternoon’ that was rapidly turning into a girls’ evening, as I got to know this group of women, pulled into their inner circle by a good friend of mine. We were talking about men and dating: the conversation veered from gossip to trauma, and back again, at breakneck speed. ‘Every single one of us has beenhit by a man,’ my friend said, almost casually, gesturing at her friends, all six of them. The ones who had heard simply nodded, sighed, cursed men and crossed their fingers for a ‘good one’ to come along. Then the conversation changed track and we simply moved on. This hard fact of the reality of these women’s lives was normalised and then lost within the sweet puff of candy-scented vape smoke.
We are in the middle of a ‘national emergency’ of violence against women and girls (VAWG) in the UK, according to the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the College of Policing. VAWG is an umbrella term encompassing various forms of abuse and violence affecting women and girls. However, many in the sector prefer MVAWG, the ‘m’ outlining, in very clear terms that, the majority of the time, this is violence perpetrated by men.
Domestic abuse is – and has been for some time – on the rise, in new generations as well as old. In the year ending March 2024, more than 1.6 million women between the ages of 16 and 59 were victims of domestic abuse. Of these, those aged 16 to 24 made up the highest proportion of victims. And, at the heart of every domestic abuse case? Coercive control.
Coercive control is a persistent pattern of behaviours used by an abuser to dominate another person, erode their autonomy and sense of self, and harm them. And it is abuse, even if it is not accompanied by physical violence. A survivor I spoke to once told me that experiencing coercive control was like being slowly picked apart. ‘You were once a whole person and now you’re just all these tiny pieces,’ she said. ‘But it can be hard to identify when the first bit of you was broken, to identify that and show it to anyone, never mind the police. Most people only understand harm if you’re knocked over, all at once. Not in this slow, deliberate and brutal way.’
But those statistics I mentioned earlier? When it comes to domestic abuse, they don’t come close to representing the full scale of this epidemic. These crimes are under-reported and hidden from public view, with so many afraid – for a huge number of complex and entirely understandable reasons – to put their hands up and say, ‘That happened to me,’ or ‘That is still happening to me.’ And when it comes to coercive control, it can be even trickier to name what a person is experiencing, when their abuser is twisting and manipulating their reality, and eroding their confidence until it’s completely gone.
The women I met that day, and those I’ve met over my career reporting on this topic, often recount how the manipulation and control went on for years before they were hit, with some never experiencing physical violence at all. It was also often the mental scars that had the most lasting impact on their lives, long after the relationship ended. But, still, it’s the physical violence that people understand, that many (but by no means all) feel able to verbalise and share.
A decade ago, this country was passing a law that was meant to change all of this, to widen public understanding of the deep harm coercive control can do to a person. In 2015, England and Wales recognised coercive control as a criminal offence, with Scotland and Ireland following three years later. This was pioneering – we were the first in the world to do so. But still we find ourselves in this crisis. So what impact did that law actually have? And how can we move on from here and protect this new generation of victims?
Trapped by the system
‘I’m not a survivor, I’m a victim,’ says Annie*. I’m speaking to her over video call, but her camera is off to protect her identity. I can hear her soft Welsh accent and the exhaustion in her voice. ‘I’m still a victim at this moment in time because it has not gone to trial. When it’s gone to trial, I’ll be a survivor. I won’t be trapped any more.’
Annie has been waiting five years for her case to be brought to court, after her ex sexually assaulted her on the day she planned to leave him. He’d been controlling her for years and ruptured her mental health to such a degree that she had suicide notes ready and waiting for each of her children. When she reported it, there wasn’t enough evidence for coercive control and domestic abuse charges, but they did have enough for sexual assault. It took her more than seven hours to give her statement.
‘I had left it a few months to report, [as] it’s one of those cases where I didn’t say “No.” I didn’t stop him. Mainly because his arm was around my throat. I thought, “I’m going to die if I scream.” The officer was wonderful. She said, “I’m glad you came to us, we have a case and you shouldn’t have been treated this way.”’
That was in spring 2020 and her case has been postponed twice already this year. In total, it has been rescheduled three times, including a day before her court date. ‘I had never been on antidepressants before in my life, but I’m on them now,’ she says, when I ask how the waiting has affected her. ‘I can’t move on with my life. It just plays over and over in my mind as I try to go to sleep. There have been times where I’ve thought, “I wish I didn’t go to the police.”’ After her trial was delayed for the second time, Annie says she almost withdrew. ‘I thought, “I can’t take this any more,” but then I thought, “No, I’m going to make as much fuss as possible, because I want change for other people. I want to stop him from doing this to someone else in the future.”’ As we know, many perpetrators do not stop with one victim. They keep going, leaving a trail of trauma behind them.
The significant backlog of cases in the system means that many victims, such as Annie, are being forced to wait many years to get justice. This not only puts their lives on hold, but also opens up the window where they are vulnerable to threats or intimidation from the perpetrator or the perpetrator’s friends.
In an analysis of crime data taken between April 2021 and March 2025 from the Metropolitan Police, Crown Prosecution Service and Home Office, it was found that 40% (109,833) of all victims withdrew from the justice process before a charging decision was made; that figure rose to 59% in domestic abuse cases and 74% for rape allegations associated with domestic abuse. The seemingly endless wait, dealing with different police and law professionals, has highlighted to Annie how little those who work in the field know of coercive control and its effect. ‘[They] don’t understand the impact it has; I blamed myself for everything,’ she says. ‘You can go on and on about the mental health side of [the abuse] [to the police] but it doesn’t seem to seep in. I was a wreck. I didn’t want to go out for months. It crucifies you.’
While Annie has had some good experiences within the system, on the whole she has found the way her case has been dealt with ‘absolutely insulting’. For example, there was the manner in which she found out her case had been moved to a new officer. ‘He phoned me at 9pm to tell me. At first, I thought it was my ex – he used to play pranks like that on me and has hacked my social media accounts in the past.’ She says the entire process, from the abuse to the legal proceedings, has left her feeling ‘worthless’.
It was counselling from Women’s Aid that helped Annie understand the impact of what has happened to her, as she musters the strength to keep going. Her trial is now scheduled for December and she remains hopeful, but unsure whether her abuser will be convicted: ‘After what he did, he deserves it.’ This is where the law is at its most powerful, in bringing victims some peace. But there are so many hurdles to reach this point, there’s so much that needs to change, so how can it be done?
The long-lasting repercussions
When David Challen was growing up, his house felt ‘hot, as if there was a fire inside’. For more than 40 years, his dad, Richard, terrorised his mother, Sally. He bullied and humiliated her, isolated her from friends and family, controlled her finances and who she socialised with, while restricting her movements. When she challenged him, he’d turn it back on her and make her feel that she couldn’t trust her own mind.
Richard’s abuse was palpable in the atmosphere, but those who visited or who spoke to his wife – including her GP, her colleagues and her therapist – didn’t have the language to identify what was going on, or the tools to put the proverbial fire out before it engulfed the entire home.
In August 2010, Sally killed her husband. She was jailed for life for his murder a year later, four years before coercive control became a criminal offence. Challen spent years campaigning on behalf of his mother. In 2019, Sally’s conviction was quashed, a landmark decision that helped to widen our understanding of coercive control and just how severe this form of psychological manipulation can be.
‘The coercive control law helped to shift the way we talk. It moved it from being domestic violence to domestic abuse,’ explains Ellen Miller, CEO of SafeLives, a UK-wide domestic abuse charity that works with organisations across the UK to transform their response to domestic abuse cases. ‘There’s this assumption that the key thing is always a level of physical violence, when that negates the experience of so many people.’
Today, Challen’s work largely involves trying to change the public’s perception of coercive control and he’s recently released a book, Unthinkable, recounting his mother’s experience and exploring the ways in which his father’s abuse affected him. ‘I ask the question, “Would anything be different now?” And I’m not 100% confident it would be. This is a national emergency that’s not given any urgency.’
He points to a BBC investigation that found social workers lack training in how to spot and tackle coercive control, despite some of them saying that 90% of their caseloads are linked to it. He also pointed out how Kiena Dawes contacted the police at least five times about the abuse she experienced from her former partner, Ryan Wellings. The officers failed to recognise the signs of the coercive control and domestic abuse she was experiencing and Kiena took her own life in July 2022. She was 23 years old. In her suicide note, found on her phone, she had typed ‘I was murdered.’ Her phone also contained notes outlining two and a half years of physical and emotional abuse; these were read out in court. Wellings was cleared of her manslaughter but found guilty of assaulting her, and of controlling and coercive behaviour. Only one person, Nicholas Allen, has ever been jailed for manslaughter over the death of a partner who took their own life after prolonged domestic abuse. In 2017, he was jailed for 10 years for the death of Justene Reece.
‘I feel disappointed when I think about the law and its ability to end domestic abuse,’ says Miller. ‘There’s such a gap between what could be done and how things are actually done.’
Suicide as a result of the psychological damage inflicted on a person experiencing domestic abuse is only just beginning to be recognised and talked about. This is despite years of campaigners trying to sound the alarm, asking for professionals to connect the dots between domestic abuse and mental health. Figures released in March this year revealed that more people in the UK are dying by suicide following domestic abuse than are being killed by a current or former partner. It is estimated that three women a week die by suicide as a result of domestic abuse. On average one woman is killed by an abusive partner or ex every five days in England and Wales.
‘You can change as much legislation as you want, but this [issue] is societal,’ says Challen. ‘The way we’re going to battle this is by having a better professional and societal curiosity and awareness of coercive control. Judges routinely struggle to understand it and we see basic myths surrounding domestic abuse playing out in courts.’
SafeLives has helped more than 70,000 police officers and police service staff across the UK to improve their understanding of domestic abuse and, while not mandated, the programme has seen wide voluntary uptake, with only one force in England and Wales yet to receive the training. This is vital, as a paper published this year that examined the lessons learned from the criminalisation of coercive and controlling behaviour found that translating the law into criminal justice has been challenging, with only a small increase in the number of police officers recognising and recording coercive control.
The paper showed that, for a variety of reasons, the police struggled to use the coercive control law. One officer who took part in the study said, ‘You barely get any coercive control jobs, because there is hardly none [sic] of it out there,’ echoing the (false) narrative that abuse only ‘counts’ in the presence of physical violence. ‘When you’re responding, you’re not thinking, “This could be coercive control,”’ said another officer. ‘You tend to think, “Have they been hit?” or “Have they been stabbed?” But you could go in and think, “Are they being controlled?”’
Others spoke of how the nature of the crime made it harder to prosecute. ‘It’s easy to rebut,’ one officer said. ‘If you accuse someone of putting a tracker on a vehicle, for example, all they have to say is, “I was concerned for her safety.” If it was financial, “I have control of her money because she’s no good with money, I have her best interests at heart.” How do we prove otherwise? We don’t know their intention. With an assault, it’s easy to evidence. But how do you evidence what’s going on inside someone’s head?’
Abusers are masters of manipulation and police officers are not immune to it. This is why more prolonged mandatory training is needed, not just for police but all professionals who could come into contact with survivors or (if they have them) their children. ‘If someone had just asked me,’ says Challen of his childhood, ‘if they’d just said, “How are things at home?” I could have explained, the signs could have been caught earlier.’
You can’t see the scars inflicted on a mind, but you can recognise cues in body language. ‘You could tell from the way that I walked into rooms, the way I held myself that something wasn’t right,’ says Annie. ‘Those who can help need to be able to recognise the signs.’
Beyond red flags
The police receive a domestic abuse call every 30 seconds. That’s about 24 calls in the time it’s taken you to read this article: 2,800 calls per day. The sheer scale of this crisis can be hard to comprehend, at least for those of us who don’t have it waiting for us, behind our front door, or at the hands of someone we love.
The law is vital in helping to reinforce the idea that coercive control is not lesser abuse, that it can be all-consuming and lethal. But it needs to be utilised properly, reflect survivors’ experience and hold abusers to account for the devastating harm they cause. Any approach also needs to consider intersectionality, and how experiences differ depending on class and cultural background. It’s also not enough, alone, to solve the problem. Even now, just 6% of (police-recorded) domestic abuse cases result in conviction; and after reporting a crime, 59% of women were unsure, or unwilling to report again.
This is an issue that needs government action, on better implementation of the law, better training for police forces and funding for the organisations working in the field. Hopefully, this is coming – the government is due to publish its new strategy as part of its commitment to halve VAWG in the next decade. And while we can’t influence this, we can keep our eyes and ears open to the reality that is all around us.
We might end up on juries one day, but we might also be there when our friend flinches at the sound of her partner’s voice, or their partner calls them consistently when they’re out having fun. We might – as I did – find ourselves in a smoking area with survivors and need the language to speak about it – something I felt able to do. ‘We already, in so many ways, do have the language and ability to recognise coercive control,’ says Challen. ‘We’ll call it a “red flag” or “toxic behaviour” but we need to have the confidence to recognise when it’s domestic abuse, when it’s coercive control. The only way to keep doing that is to share stories, to better understand how this looks and plays out.’ We need to learn how to spot and extinguish the spark before the fire has wreaked its destruction.
Refuge’s National Domestic Abuse Helpline 0808 2000 247, is available 24 hours a day 7 days a week for free, confidential specialist support. You can also visit click here to request a safe time to be contacted or to access live chat (live chat available 3pm-10pm, Monday to Friday).
For confidential support or advice about coercive control, you can also contact Woman’s Aid using their live chat feature or call 0808 2000 247.
Catriona Innes is Commissioning Director at Cosmopolitan, you can follow her on Substack and on Instagram.
Catriona Innes is Cosmopolitan UK’s multiple award-winning Commissioning Editor, who has won BSME awards both for her longform investigative journalism as well as for leading the Cosmopolitan features department. Alongside commissioning and editing the features section, both online and in print, Catriona regularly writes her own hard-hitting investigations spending months researching some of the most pressing issues affecting young women today.
She has spent time undercover with specialist police forces, domestic abuse social workers and even Playboy Bunnies to create articles that take readers to the heart of the story. Catriona is also a published author, poet and volunteers with a number of organisations that directly help the homeless community of London. She’s often found challenging her weak ankles in towering heels through the streets of Soho. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.
