My Lived Experience
You can read about my own experience(s) with Coercive Control here and why I came to start this website. Further down the page you can read other accounts of Lived Experience. I specifically chose to use the picture above to underline the fact that you cannot judge what is happening with a person simply by looking at the face they present. This was taken at a time when I really was struggling with life as a result of post-separation control. I'm smiling but my eyes aren't!
Political Campaigning
PLEASE NOTE: this site is completely politically neutral/unbiased.
Domestic Abuse is a cross-party issue
Domestic Abuse is a cross-party issue
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As you can see from the content of this website, women can only be properly protected from abusive partners if the right legislation is in place AND if those laws are properly applied and enforced.
For many women who have managed to break free of a controlling partner, it can be the start of a new phase in their life but can also trigger the start of a search for deeper meaning and purpose. This might be because they need to make sense of why the abuse happened to them. Also a huge proportion of women are suffering from C-PTSD and the other long-term after effects of having being psychologically abused. Many have felt incredibly disempowered and there's a need to feel re-empowered and rebuild trust in life. So, although this is not going to be a path that is suited to everyone, I would like to use this page to ask all women to seriously consider putting their experience to good use and helping to raise awareness about post-separation control and the need for better training and legislation. 
Get Involved
One of the ways that you can do this is by getting involved in politics. Initially there will be no financial reward in it, but the social and personal rewards, as far as making a tangible difference to the lives of others, are huge. It could also eventually lead to a well-paid new career. All you need is a determination to make a difference. Domestic Abuse is a cross-party issue. What this means is that all parties are equally committed to seeing solutions and, on this subject, will put differences aside. So, whether you support the Conservatives or Labour or any of the other parties, do read on... When I first got involved in politics I was astounded. I had always believed that everybody - but especially those who were Councillors or MPs - would have obtained a Politics degree or some other associated academic qualification. I also believed they would have worked their way up through a well-defined heirarchy of positions, eventually being eligible to stand as a candidate to become a Member of Parliament, after many years of involvement. That's not exactly the case. The truth is that you don't need specific qualifications and for many of the MPs and Councillors (and other Public Office positions), politics is not their only career. A great deal of MPs and councillors have other jobs - sometimes several. Being a politician can be a career path for some, but most really do enter into it purely to be of service to the community and public at large. In fact career politicians (those who have never known any other job) are somewhat frowned upon. There is a feeling that those who have been locked in the 'Westminster Bubble' for their entire lives are less likely to have an understanding of how 'the real world' works. No one wants politicans who might be there more for the status and authority that the position bestows, as opposed to it being a true calling to help others, i.e a strong sense of social justice. So the reality of politics is that it is open to everyone, all you need is a desire to get involved and you can very quickly start making a difference in the lives of others. Now, more than at any other time, more women are being asked to step forward and stand for office. All of your lived experience and your employment experience, whatever the field, can be put to good use. You will have many transferable skills. It is perfectly possible to move from having little involvement to standing as a candidate for Parliament, in a very short space of time indeed. I've even known someone do it in just over a year. Democracy The reason for this is that we live in a democracy: political parties are simply highly organised voluntary organisations and their elected representatives are there to look after the interests of the people. Candidates who stand to become Members of Parliament or in local government (Councillors) need to be drawn from a diverse range of backgrounds so that they represent the interests of the people and not just of the elite. Yes, the people who support the process, such as Civil Servants, Policy advisors, Legal teams and other bureaucrats need to have specific qualifications and experience in their field in order to rise through the ranks - and they get paid handsomely for it and play a huge part in the smooth running of the country. However, just as hereditary peers are born not made, politicians are made not born. Have a look at this video to better understand where MPs 'sit' in the overall structure of political life: |
And then listen to Seema Kennedy MP (Conservative) - former Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the former Prime Minister, Theresa May - tell you about her journey into politics.
50:50 Parliament
Whatever party you support, please take a look at this website called 50:50 Parliament, and consider getting involved so that we can get more women elected to political life across the board. If there's an issue you care deeply about like Domestic Abuse, Post-Separation Control, Family Courts, you can make a significant impact. Even if you don't want to stand to be a Councillor or MP there are plenty of other positions where you can help get the policies in place, attend forums, think tanks and APPGs (All Party Parliamentary Groups) and help make a huge difference in the Women's Rights/Abuse arena.
For the Conservative Party (as in some other parties) there is a free, comprehensive training programme and support available (and great social events). Take a look at The Conservative Women's Organisation and Women2Win
Activism/Campaigning
Becoming an MP or Councillor didn't appeal to me but I was keen to make a difference for abused women, so I joined my local Constituency Association and was elected as a Conservative party officer. I also became a CWO committee member and helped organise and host a wide variety of lunchtime and evening events (large and small) with a wide range of politicians/cabinet members as guest speakers. I attended conferences, worked on election and by-election campaigns, election counts, compiled campaign material; flyers, invitations, videos etc, wrote letters and looked after the social media feeds.
During those first few years I met a wide range of Peers, MPs, Ministers,(incl the Prime Minister), Police and Crime Commissioners, Special Advisors (SpAds) and candidates and knocked on hundreds of doors across the country, canvassing and speaking to the public about politics. I figured I needed to know how the system worked from within, in order to be effective in my efforts to raise awareness and reach the right ears.
Whatever party you support, please take a look at this website called 50:50 Parliament, and consider getting involved so that we can get more women elected to political life across the board. If there's an issue you care deeply about like Domestic Abuse, Post-Separation Control, Family Courts, you can make a significant impact. Even if you don't want to stand to be a Councillor or MP there are plenty of other positions where you can help get the policies in place, attend forums, think tanks and APPGs (All Party Parliamentary Groups) and help make a huge difference in the Women's Rights/Abuse arena.
For the Conservative Party (as in some other parties) there is a free, comprehensive training programme and support available (and great social events). Take a look at The Conservative Women's Organisation and Women2Win
Activism/Campaigning
Becoming an MP or Councillor didn't appeal to me but I was keen to make a difference for abused women, so I joined my local Constituency Association and was elected as a Conservative party officer. I also became a CWO committee member and helped organise and host a wide variety of lunchtime and evening events (large and small) with a wide range of politicians/cabinet members as guest speakers. I attended conferences, worked on election and by-election campaigns, election counts, compiled campaign material; flyers, invitations, videos etc, wrote letters and looked after the social media feeds.
During those first few years I met a wide range of Peers, MPs, Ministers,(incl the Prime Minister), Police and Crime Commissioners, Special Advisors (SpAds) and candidates and knocked on hundreds of doors across the country, canvassing and speaking to the public about politics. I figured I needed to know how the system worked from within, in order to be effective in my efforts to raise awareness and reach the right ears.
Five years on, alongside my political work, I also now act as an Ambassador for Women's Aid and an Expert by Experience for the charity Surviving Economic Abuse. Both roles involve attending a variety of conferences, APPGs, forums and seminars and putting forward the (non political*) view of survivors. There's no doubt I can do this more effectively as I know how the system works and what politicians still need to understand.
I also speak out publicly via media interviews and talks to raise awareness of abuse. I'm proud to have played a part in helping to shape the Draft Domestic Abuse Bill and to help raise awareness with the SRA and politicians about abuse - including divorce abuse and the silencing of abuse - perpetrated by legal professionals and other wealthy individuals (this was a demographic previously often ignored). It's highly rewarding work, you meet some fabulous, caring, highly motivated people who are agents of change and I recommend becoming a campaigner to any survivor of abuse.
Please do get involved. Your voice matters. You can make a difference.
*Please note: charities such as Women's Aid and Surviving Economic Abuse are completely non-political, giving time equally to all parties and furthering their mission of keeping women and children safe.
I also speak out publicly via media interviews and talks to raise awareness of abuse. I'm proud to have played a part in helping to shape the Draft Domestic Abuse Bill and to help raise awareness with the SRA and politicians about abuse - including divorce abuse and the silencing of abuse - perpetrated by legal professionals and other wealthy individuals (this was a demographic previously often ignored). It's highly rewarding work, you meet some fabulous, caring, highly motivated people who are agents of change and I recommend becoming a campaigner to any survivor of abuse.
Please do get involved. Your voice matters. You can make a difference.
*Please note: charities such as Women's Aid and Surviving Economic Abuse are completely non-political, giving time equally to all parties and furthering their mission of keeping women and children safe.
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Other Survivor Accounts
I don’t seem like a victim I don’t identify as a victim. I don’t have visible bruises, I don’t hide myself away for fear of attack. However, I have been under siege for four years and I live in a persistent state of anxiety and dread. I’m posting this from my bed because I’ve been physically incapacitated once again following another onslaught. I have to get up soon, get to work in an industry where I’m highly respected and a leader in my field. Today I will discuss new medicines for people with rare diseases and how to communicate complex science to patients who may have just received a devastating diagnosis. I will then come home and have a great evening with my wonderful husband and his children before rolling into a bank holiday weekend which promises to be full of fun, sunshine and probably a bit of happy middle-aged kitchen disco dancing.
This is not, therefore, what people think coercive control looks like.
Because I’ve been frightened and shamed into ‘not telling’ about the domestic violence that is the other permanent part of my life. That’s the leitmotif of the bully; isolate, intimidate and ostracise their prey. And threaten them — you tell the truth about what I do to you and I will cause you more pain next time.
He doesn’t seem like a perpetrator Coercive control is the fine-wine drinking, well-dressed, powerfully networked and markedly wealthier relative of the beer-swilling, fists-flying domestic abuser. But he is just as vicious, just as scary, just as adept at covering up his tracks.
The coercive controller is very clever. Just as a physical bully will know exactly which parts of your body hurt the most when he attacks you, the coercive controller knows how to bruise your brain by attacking the foundations of your life and the people that you care about the most. In my case, my parents, my friends, my husband and my children have been hurt as part of the campaign to keep causing psychological injury to me. Personally attacking me is the smallest part of the process; or perhaps it is just that I have become used to being hurt that I don’t notice it or give it the same significance anymore. Scarred tissue is tougher to damage.
The wounds I wear from coercive control include:
— Telling my children that I am a bad person and can’t be trusted
— Writing lies to court officials accusing me of illnesses I don’t have
— Forcing court officials to take me to court about the care of my children based on lies about my conduct
— Calling my daughter’s medicine delivery company and nurse and having her treatment delivery redirected away from our home
— Writing to my male friends and warning them to stay away from me incase I sought a relationship with them (post me asking for a divorce)
— Violating my bank accounts setting up payments to other organisations that were timed to coincide with paying my mortgage and utilities and meant I would be unable to pay my bills and receive fines and damage my credit rating
— Yelling at my children and calling them stupid because they sent me messages asking for my help
— Making a relative contact the local housing authority to try to enforce an eviction of my elderly parents from living in the annexe of my home
— Reporting my husband to the police for ‘kidnapping’ when he walked my daughter from the school office the the school football pitch
— Systematically checking my children’s phones to make sure they aren’t communicating with me and frightening them so they only contact me when they feel they won’t be overheard
— Forcing me to spend £35,000 in two years to attend 20 court hearings to defend my parenting and secure the continuing care that my children both wanted and deserved
— Telling parents of my children’s school friends lies about me and encouraging them to undermine me and assist with the alienation of the children towards me
— Allowing my daughter to be refused water during meals, to have her hands held as she tries to eat and describing this as ‘necessary training’ when I try to intervene to appeal for her rights to be respected
— Never attending medical appointments for the children but asserting that any adult can administer the injection that my daughter needs daily without her consent and when she has specifically asked for it to only be done by her Mum or her Gran.
These are the broad brush events; there have been insidious everyday acts, the nasty comments made to my children, the snidey aside to acquaintances, the making me beg the court to have my children join me at my Father’s funeral. They happened AFTER my divorce. This is a common pattern; the domestic abuse inflicted by a coercive controller often worsens when you leave. Because they think that the domestic abuse laws not longer apply to them.
This is not a black eye — it is setting fire to someone’s soul, But you can’t see a burnt psyche.
We only seem to see what we want to see. What happens next is what is intriguing. Our kitchen has ‘that detritus pile’ …. the odds and ends of family life that assembles in the corner. There are old newspaper articles, unsigned school forms, theatre fliers, bloody endless football cards. And in the pile is another letter from the police inviting me to access their sources for domestic abuse victims. I’ve already been on the course. I’ve already got a support worker.
But still it continues.
Until we recognise that the wife-beater doesn’t actually wear a ‘wife-beater’ and doesn’t actually lay a hand on his victim and that she likely is an ‘ex-wife’ … then we will never know what coercive control looks like. Until we train our officials to recognise when someone is playing the system to cause another person harm then we will see women continuously being dragged through the family court systems and labelled as histrionic rather than afraid. Until we step up and defend our ‘friends’ who are being slandered, attacked and criticised then we will never have immunity from the belief that a man being bullying is something to be admired as ‘powerful’.
It is happening right now, however, to lots of Mums. To a Mum like me, — who is just trying to be a Happy Divorcee.
CONTRIBUTED BY A GUEST SURVIVOR
This is not, therefore, what people think coercive control looks like.
Because I’ve been frightened and shamed into ‘not telling’ about the domestic violence that is the other permanent part of my life. That’s the leitmotif of the bully; isolate, intimidate and ostracise their prey. And threaten them — you tell the truth about what I do to you and I will cause you more pain next time.
He doesn’t seem like a perpetrator Coercive control is the fine-wine drinking, well-dressed, powerfully networked and markedly wealthier relative of the beer-swilling, fists-flying domestic abuser. But he is just as vicious, just as scary, just as adept at covering up his tracks.
The coercive controller is very clever. Just as a physical bully will know exactly which parts of your body hurt the most when he attacks you, the coercive controller knows how to bruise your brain by attacking the foundations of your life and the people that you care about the most. In my case, my parents, my friends, my husband and my children have been hurt as part of the campaign to keep causing psychological injury to me. Personally attacking me is the smallest part of the process; or perhaps it is just that I have become used to being hurt that I don’t notice it or give it the same significance anymore. Scarred tissue is tougher to damage.
The wounds I wear from coercive control include:
— Telling my children that I am a bad person and can’t be trusted
— Writing lies to court officials accusing me of illnesses I don’t have
— Forcing court officials to take me to court about the care of my children based on lies about my conduct
— Calling my daughter’s medicine delivery company and nurse and having her treatment delivery redirected away from our home
— Writing to my male friends and warning them to stay away from me incase I sought a relationship with them (post me asking for a divorce)
— Violating my bank accounts setting up payments to other organisations that were timed to coincide with paying my mortgage and utilities and meant I would be unable to pay my bills and receive fines and damage my credit rating
— Yelling at my children and calling them stupid because they sent me messages asking for my help
— Making a relative contact the local housing authority to try to enforce an eviction of my elderly parents from living in the annexe of my home
— Reporting my husband to the police for ‘kidnapping’ when he walked my daughter from the school office the the school football pitch
— Systematically checking my children’s phones to make sure they aren’t communicating with me and frightening them so they only contact me when they feel they won’t be overheard
— Forcing me to spend £35,000 in two years to attend 20 court hearings to defend my parenting and secure the continuing care that my children both wanted and deserved
— Telling parents of my children’s school friends lies about me and encouraging them to undermine me and assist with the alienation of the children towards me
— Allowing my daughter to be refused water during meals, to have her hands held as she tries to eat and describing this as ‘necessary training’ when I try to intervene to appeal for her rights to be respected
— Never attending medical appointments for the children but asserting that any adult can administer the injection that my daughter needs daily without her consent and when she has specifically asked for it to only be done by her Mum or her Gran.
These are the broad brush events; there have been insidious everyday acts, the nasty comments made to my children, the snidey aside to acquaintances, the making me beg the court to have my children join me at my Father’s funeral. They happened AFTER my divorce. This is a common pattern; the domestic abuse inflicted by a coercive controller often worsens when you leave. Because they think that the domestic abuse laws not longer apply to them.
This is not a black eye — it is setting fire to someone’s soul, But you can’t see a burnt psyche.
We only seem to see what we want to see. What happens next is what is intriguing. Our kitchen has ‘that detritus pile’ …. the odds and ends of family life that assembles in the corner. There are old newspaper articles, unsigned school forms, theatre fliers, bloody endless football cards. And in the pile is another letter from the police inviting me to access their sources for domestic abuse victims. I’ve already been on the course. I’ve already got a support worker.
But still it continues.
Until we recognise that the wife-beater doesn’t actually wear a ‘wife-beater’ and doesn’t actually lay a hand on his victim and that she likely is an ‘ex-wife’ … then we will never know what coercive control looks like. Until we train our officials to recognise when someone is playing the system to cause another person harm then we will see women continuously being dragged through the family court systems and labelled as histrionic rather than afraid. Until we step up and defend our ‘friends’ who are being slandered, attacked and criticised then we will never have immunity from the belief that a man being bullying is something to be admired as ‘powerful’.
It is happening right now, however, to lots of Mums. To a Mum like me, — who is just trying to be a Happy Divorcee.
CONTRIBUTED BY A GUEST SURVIVOR
Anita's Story
In 2014, Anita Gering went to the British government to seek protection against her abusive and controlling ex-husband, an American airline pilot who was based in Arizona. Over the next year, through her ex-husband's use of the Hague Convention, Anita’s case brought her back to Arizona and resulted in a divorce and custody decision that would dramatically change the course of Anita and her children’s lives. She has not been able to see her children since August 2015 when they were eight and ten years old. Anita doesn’t know when she will be able to see her children again as she has neither the means nor resources to enforce her parenting time with her children and fears that doing so would put them at greater risk of harm by their father. You can listen to Anita talk about her experience as a survivor of domestic violence and coercive control in the following in-depth, one hour, interview from Engendered. LISTEN HERE
Anita went on to become a founding trustee of Global ARRK which is a charity helping to prevent international custody disputes and reduce their devastating impact on children.
Anita went on to become a founding trustee of Global ARRK which is a charity helping to prevent international custody disputes and reduce their devastating impact on children.