50 signatures reached
To: Ministry of Justice - Dominic Raab
Coercive Control to be considered in Divorce Financials ie FDR
Women are greatly affected by relationships with coercive control and abuse. She often has to leave with nothing, or if she can remain in the family home she will have experienced trauma physically and emotionally, loss of income, damage to property, great emotional impact, loss of jobs, loss of friends and family and support system. There is also a lot of emotional impact which will affect her going forward.
None of this is taken into consideration when dividing the marrital assets on divorce. The court mostly aims to divide 50/50, but there needs to be more consideration to the women's loss of income, loss of belongings, having to leave the family home due to the abuse. There is also impact to the children.
To not take into consideration abuse on the women's outcomes financially and her ability to support herself going forward is surely a human rights issue.
Why is this important?
Women are the predominant victims of coercive control, affecting 1.6million in 2019. These figures have greatly increased in 2022.
Coercive control is often a hidden abuse, where there involves a lot of gaslighting, lies, behind the scene manipulating and sabotage. The damaging element is that it takes a long time to know what is going on, and also it affects every part of the victim's life and also it is hard to be believed. Often a victim is very isolated and having to suffer on their own. This has far reaching and permanent damage.
Coercive control is a crime but it is hard for a victim to bring that perpetrator to court for the crime. Equally the courts are not arresting many perpetrators of coercive control.
So again the victim is in a trap.
If the perpetrator is not going to be arrested then surely they should have some punishment for their crime and that would be in the form of a fine or compensation to the victim.
