Transforming the understandings of domestic violence through coercive control in France

Abstract

This article examines the transformation of the understanding and response to domestic violence in France, drawing on two influential research fields: (1) social psychology's social representations and social change theory, and (2) coercive control, a conceptualization of domestic violence as captivity, rather than assault. Experimental and legal evidence illustrates how conceptualizing domestic violence as coercive control impacts its social and legal understanding in France. Coercive control describes an ongoing pattern of gender-based domination that entraps women in personal lives. It recognizes the multidimensional nature, dynamics, and impacts of domestic violence as gender-based control over women's rights and resources. It reframes domestic violence as a liberty crime, making concrete a social representation of domestic violence as a breach of women's human rights, inseparable from its consequences on their children, in line with the women's human rights perspective championed by the United Nations and binding legal instruments, such as the Council of Europe Istanbul Convention.

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Discover Global Society
Research
Transforming theunderstandings ofdomestic violence
throughcoercive control inFrance
AndreeaGruev‑Vintila1 · AnnaRurka1
Received: 30 May 2024 / Accepted: 23 October 2024
© The Author(s) 2024 OPEN
Abstract
This articleexamines the transformation of the understanding and responseto domestic violence in France, drawing on
twoinuential research elds: (1) social psychology’s social representations and social change theory, and (2) coercive
control, a conceptualization ofdomestic violenceas captivity, rather than assault. Experimental and legal evidence illus-
trates how conceptualizing domestic violence as coercive control impacts its social and legal understanding in France.
Coercive control describes anongoing patternof gender-based domination that entraps women in personal lives. It
recognizes themultidimensional nature, dynamics, and impacts of domesticviolence as gender-based control over
women’s rights and resources. It reframes domesticviolence as a liberty crime, making concrete a social representation
of domestic violence as a breachof women’shuman rights, inseparable from its consequences on their children, in line
with the women’s human rightsperspective championed by the United Nations and binding legal instruments, such as
the Council of Europe Istanbul Convention.
Keywords Coercive control· Domestic violence· Social representations· Women’s human rights· Children’s rights
1 Introduction
“There is nothing so practical as a good theory”
This articleexamines the transformation of the understanding and responseto domestic violence focussing on the
French context, drawing on two research elds: (1) social psychology’s social representations and social change theory,
and (2) coercive control, a conceptualization ofdomestic violenceas captivity, rather than assault. It addresses the
change brought by the concept of coercive control in the understanding and legal practices about domestic violence, a
phenomenon which disproportionately aects women and inseparably their children, focussing on the French context,
where domestic violence has been considered as a “priority policy” in the last decade, in response to the 239 089 victims,
205 248 of whom are women [1]. In line with Kurt Lewin’s quote “There is nothing so practical as a good theory” (19511)
[2–5]underscoring the importance of robust theoretical frameworks in advancing practical solutions to complex social
problems, Stark’s conceptualisation of coercive control [6] has gained traction in academic and policy discussions about
of domestic violence, bringing a turn in the social representations, legal frameworks and practice. The understanding of
domestic violence as coercive control over women’s resources and rights across their social space is emerging in France
among magistrates, academics, political and public voices, and the media, aiming towards more justice by translating
* Andreea Gruev-Vintila, aernstvi@parisnanterre.fr | 1Parisian Research Center forSocial Psychology LAPPS, Family Education andSocial
Interventions, Research Centre forEducation andTraining EFIS-CREF, Université Paris Nanterre, Nanterre, France.
1 Lewin’s quote (1951) may be found as “there is nothing as practical as a good theory” (Lewin,1943,1944,1945).

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coercive control into French law to make the law work for women [7], considering Le Magueresse’s observation that
‘resorting to criminal law, even with its aws, alters the power dynamics between women and men’ [8] (p. 123).
This emerging understanding challenges the traditional conceptualization of domestic violence, with its inherent refer-
ence to private space, whichcontributed to a fragmented understanding and anarticial separation of theprivate and
public spheres. This fragmentation has long obscured the continuum of violence against women [9] and has encouraged
the false belief that this form of violence—the most prevalent form of violence against women—is a private matter, unlike
other forms of violence such as terrorism, which are readily recognized as public concerns. This mischaracterization has
also led to the dangerous assumption that domestic violence is limited to certain family members—mostly women -,
overlooking its impact on others, especially children. This has several detrimental eects. First, it minimizes the severity
of personal and societal impact of domestic violence. Second, it hinders the recognition of the interconnectedness and
cumulative nature of various perpetrators’behaviours that form survivors’ experiences of domestic violence, both adults
and children. Finally, it impedes the development of comprehensive strategies to address domestic violence holistically.
To address these issues, it is decisive to reconceptualize and respond to domestic violence in a way that resonates
with the survivors’ reality of experiences of domestic violence, closer to captivity rather than mere aggression, a real-
ity described as coercive control. This shift in perspective is essential for overcoming the failure of traditional responses
(addressed hereunder), for challenging the traditional social representations and improving legal as well as policy frame-
works to protect victims and hold perpetrators accountable; and for fostering a more supportive and adapted response
to survivors’ needs.
2 Responding topublic andprivate terrorism inFrance andthequestion ofthecollective
interpretations
In France, the number of women and children killed in the context of domestic violence (and some men) exceeds every
year the number of victims killed by terrorist attacks of 2015, which caused 4 million French people to take to the streets
in response to the Charlie Hebdo attack in January 2015 [10]. However, the striking contrast between the surge of solidar-
ity in response to terrorist attacks and the lack of societal mobilisation in response to violence against women may be
surprising. If we stick to the numbers alone, this contrast in mobilisation produces an observation: the “objective” grav-
ity of violence, as it may appear through the number of victims, is not what triggers societal mobilisation, nor societal
solidarity with the victims, nor moral condemnation/social control of the perpetrators.
This observation draws attention to the collective interpretations as resource of social mobilisation [10]. More precisely,
it questions the social representations of violence against women/domestic violence as a source of societal indierence.
To put it more clearly, it questions their misrepresentation, which consistently triggers trivialization rather than social
amplication of risk, unlike terrorism, for example. This is a decisive question because such attenuatingmisrepresenta-
tion of violenceis not random: rst, it is specic to violence against women/domestic violence, unlike other forms of
violence—for example, terrorism, characterized by social amplication of risk [10–12]. Second, it is asymmetric, as if it
were pulled in one direction only by a gendered "magnetic eld", often driven by victim blaming (mostly women) rather
than perpetrator accountability (mostly men); relevance of gender stereotypes and gender privilege with no equivalent
in structuring the interpretations of other forms of violence; causal attribution centered on individual psychology rather
than structural gender inequality [13]; all of which are aspects only relevant for the understanding of violence against
women/domestic violence, unlike other forms of violence, such as terrorism, war, political totalitarianism, etc.
In France, as in many other countries, traditional social representations have long driven public policy and responses
to domestic violence, typically framing it as a form of aggression, which encourages rst and foremost to search for
evidence of physical evidence and excludes the children when they are not direct targets. Indeed, although in the last
15years concepts such as “psychological violence” (2010), “marital harassment” (2010), “subjugation” (emprise, 2020),
etc., have entered the public space and even the law, they proved however ineective to curb the phenomenon (for a
detailed discussion, [14]). Such traditional perspective fails to capture the complexity and the insidious reality of domestic
violence as it is experienced by survivors, which often extends beyond physical aggression and includes situations that
survivors describe as captivity rather than mere aggression.
In 2019, considering the magnitude of the phenomenon and the coming Baseline evaluationreport bythe
independent experts responsible formonitoring the implementation by the parties of the Council of Europe Con-
vention on preventing Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and
domestic violence (Istanbul Convention), the French Government launched an unprecedented series of round tables

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aiming to bring together the concerned associations, field actors, victims’ families and all administrations, called
“Grenelle on domestic violence”. It resulted in several measures to combat domestic violence. The proposed measures
aimed to promote the awareness and reporting of cases of violence, the protection of victims, and to improve the
prosecution of perpetrators. The ideas that domestic violence disproportionately affects women, that it can end
in femicide, child homicide, or induced suicide, and that the perpetrators’ behaviour inseparably impacts children
progressively reached how the French society understands domestic violence, and how such social thinking drives
the response to this phenomenon.
However, unsurprisingly, in the 5years following #MeToo and the French Grenelle, except for marginal variations,
the phenomenon remained stable with almost a quarter of a million victims yearly counted by law enforcement. In
2022, the French Ministry of the Interior counted 118 women, 29 men and 12 children killed in a domestic violence
context. The numbers are constant and even more alarming adding the number of women who attempted or com-
mitted suicide due to “domestic harassment” (759 in 2022, [1]).
In contrast, the French National High Council of Equality found that the conviction rate of domestic violence per-
petrators amounted to “true a system of impunity” [15]. The contrast between the low conviction rate and the high
number of domestic murders and victims in France reflect a lack of accountability of perpetrators. The lack of social
control and legal sanctions encourages aggravation and recidivism, leading to a revolving door in French courts and
prisons. The gap between the current legal response to domestic violence and the reality experienced by victims can
also undermine trust in the justice system, which is foundational to democracy. This failure, which occurs despite the
best recent efforts, highlights the link between the traditional understanding and prosecution of domestic violence
and their focus on acts that are insufficient indicators of the phenomenon’s prevalent and most dangerous forms.
3 Rethinking domestic violence inlight ofcoercive control
The French situation is not a special case. In 2014, when the British Home Secretary discovered that neither the
domestic murder rate nor reports of intimate partner violence to the police had decreased despite the UK spending
more on tackling domestic violence than on national defence, she called for a completely new approach, introduc-
ing “coercive control” to replacing all 14 definitions of domestic violence used by UK health and social care services.
Similarly, in 2018 the Scottish Parliament unanimously passed the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act, a coercive crime
with the same maximum sentence of 14years in prison as murder.
In the same vein, over the past decade, lawmakers, judges, governments, and service providers in many countries
have recognised the failure of this traditional approach to combat domestic violence and have adopted a new model
of “coercive control” to frame domestic violence as a crime against rights and resources, rather than an aggression. In
2021, the European Court of Human Rights ordered to “immediately” revise the legal definition of domestic violence
to cover “manifestations of controlling and coercive behaviour”. In France, the Chandler-Vérien French parliamentary
mission on domestic violence, drawing on interviews with hundreds of experts, victims, service providers and aca-
demics -an “active minority” on this topic in the larger society context- stressed the urgency of a legal translation of
coercive control in France and called for it to be a priority focus of future information campaigns and professional
training.
Coercive control reframes domesticviolence as anongoing behavioural patternof domination thatentraps
womenand children, rather than isolated incidents of physical violence. Il unveils domesticviolence as a breachof
women’s human rights, inseparable from its impact on their children [6, 14, 16, 17]. It has been called a “crime of
freedom” because it creates a sense of captivity similar to being held hostage. It violates many rights, including the
right to autonomy, dignity, and self-determination, and even more so when the victim has a disability, is a migrant,
or has children with the perpetrator [18]. This pattern of abuse and exploitation can continue undetected for years
unless the perpetrator’s various actions are presented as a single malicious act and stopped.
The coercive control approach challenges the traditional representation of domestic violence as merely episodic
and physical, instead presenting it as an ongoing entrapment that survivors experience from perpetrators, charac-
terized by isolation from social support and resources, intimidation, everyday micro-regulation and control over
personal autonomy.

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4 Overcoming thetraditional prototype ofdomestic violence as“street violence”
The prevailing approaches to domestic violence draw on a historically inherited [19] prototype of violence as “street
violence” (physical violence, interactional, situational, between two adults, etc.), which led to the initial criminalizing of
physical domestic violence alone, to an understanding of domestic violence as a private matter, to trivializing the dev-
astating and often lethal experiences of women and children victims,2 and ultimately to enabling the abovementioned
“true system of impunity” for domestic abusers [15, p. 7], most of whom are men. Feminist movements and scholars
acted as “active minorities” [20], challenging such dominant representations and advanced alternative representations
of domestic violence as coercive control of women. Their work acknowledged that domestic violence disproportion-
ately aects women and violates women’s human rights. This aspect became central in dening domestic violence in
international instruments such as UN resolutions [21, 22], the Istanbul Convention, the European Court of Human Rights
jurisprudence, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, a recent European directive, and increasingly in national legislation.
Stark’s conceptualization of coercive control as a liberty crime made the abstract human rights principle [23] concrete,
propelling a socially meaningful and legally operational understanding of domestic violence as a violation of women’s
human rights [14, 24].
This understanding supports the view that coercive control as a pattern, or course of conduct, should be the primary
focus of state intervention in abuse cases rather than incidents of “domestic violence”, including arresting and prosecut-
ing perpetrators, as well as protecting, supporting and empowering services for victims and children. This shift in the
response paradigm alerts to the need to consider the intersection between violence against women and children’s rights,
as well as to guarantee both women’s rights, such as safety, self-determination, and dignity [18], and their children’s
rights [25].
5 Transforming understandings ofandresponses todomestic violence: insights
fromMoscovici’s theory ofsocial representations andtheory ofsocial change
Social psychology, and especially Serge Moscovici’s theories of social representations [26] and social change [20], oer
a valuable framework for understanding and addressing the complex issue of domestic violence.
The theory of social representations [26–28] examines how knowledge about complex phenomena—such as domestic
violence—is collectively constructed, negotiated, shared and transformed within society, shaping collective meanings,
attitudes, and practices. The theory of social change highlights the role and inuences of active minorities in challenging
dominant representations and catalysing societal transformations.
Social representations are collectively elaborated systems of values, ideas, and practices that provide a shared frame-
work for interpreting and making sense of multifaceted social phenomena, such as domestic violence, and of scientic
concepts—such as coercive control—in ways that are compatible with its historic norms—in this case male entitlement
to women’s (and children’s) obedience to the rules men set in the household and indeed in the larger social space. For
example, theory of social representations considers which of the multiple aspects of domestic violence are relevant rather
than others—e.g., aspects of captivity, or aspects of assault. It explains that their relative relevance in making sense draws
on the social utility of historic truth, rather than on scientic truth [29].
6 Using afeminist lens tounderstand violence
Traditional social representations of violence against women are of course rooted in history [30], a history in which insti-
tutions and jurisprudence have been shaped by those in power, predominantly men. This has obscured the domestic
violence survivors’ suering for millennia—predominantly women and inseparably children -, silencing their voices and
discrediting their truth, often transforming the nature of violence against them into a psychological or pathological
issue [13, 31].
Understanding violence as a continuum and adopting a gender-sensitive—therefore political—lens is a structural
change in the apprehension of domestic violence. This is not merely to suggest that, rather than “domestic” violence,
2 In 2003, Herman noted that victims of crime who le civil or criminal complaints are subject to the rules and procedures of complex legal
systems, where their mental health and safety may be of marginal concern, and where the potential for retraumatisation may be high [93].

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the object that we need to apprehend is male violence against women, although it often is. It is that violence is driven in
a central way by the social and structural dimensions of gender. This means gender plays an important role in who per-
petrates the violence, who is targeted, how and why. In this process, third parties’ action (or inaction) has a decisive role.
7 Social representations asguides foraction
There is consensus on representations as “guides for action” [32]: they prescribe and justify the practical apprehension
of their object—in this case, domestic violence. Representations guide our actions by selecting “relevant” criteria that
“require action” and giving them a priority order, and also by determining to which class of “events” we respond: For
instance, understanding domestic violence as “high conict”, a sub-class of marital conict draws on a social representa-
tion that guides third parties’ action in one direction –towards non-intervention in private life: a by-stander eect [33],
which is signicantly dierent than understanding it as a sub-class of social violence, which guides their action towards
social and legal victim protection and perpetrator sanctioning.
The importance of social representations as guides for action has implications for public policies and collective behav-
ior interventions (awareness campaigns, media reporting, etc.): actions that miss the central elements of relevant social
representations are likely to meet strong resistance, failure, or exhaustion (cf. early French AIDS campaigns [34, 35]).
Social representations are a condition for social practice, while social practice transforms social representations; “social
representations guide action, but the action that conrms them; on the other hand, only the action that challenges them
can eventually transform them” [34, p. 20]. This implies that expanding the traditional (mis)representations of domestic
violence by adding “new” forms of violence, or new oences to the existing legal frameworks, but without changing
the current failing paradigm, may marginally help responding to a few particular cases, but is most likely to perpetuate
traditional—failing—apprehensions. In contrast, a paradigm shift—here: coercive control—that irreversibly changes
the practical apprehension of domestic violence (for example: legal change), has the potential to lead to an evolution
of its social representations (if, of course, conditions are perceived as irreversible).
Studies in social representations consistently show that a persistentandirreversible change in social practice maytrig-
ger representational change [36, 37]. For example, changes in hunting practices due to ecological concerns led hunters to
transform their social representation of hunting [38]. Similarly, a Gypsy community’s shift from nomadism to sedentariza-
tion changed their representation of identity [39]. These studies demonstrate that changes in practical apprehension of
social objects lead to "rethinking" them, allowing social representations to evolve.
Moscovici’s theory of social change complements his theory of social representations. It elucidates the processes
through which alternative representations—here, domesticviolence as captivity/coercive control—can challenge and
transform dominant representations. It highlights the role of active minorities in introducing novel perspectives, pro-
gressively fostering doubt (cognitive polyphasia), and, under certain conditions, catalysing societal transformations. It
explains how active minorities bring forward alternative aspects—domestic violence as captivity rather than assault—
and how those alternative aspects become socially and cognitively relevant for their recognition as red ags in social
understanding.
The convergence of social representations and social change theories sheds light on the transformation of social
representations [40, 41]. On the one hand, the theory of social representations highlights how the traditional social (mis)
representations of domestic violence as a private matter and assault have historically impeded eective responses by
obscuring its systemic, social nature and perpetuating victim-blaming attitudes. On the other hand, Moscovici’s theory
of social change lens sheds light on how, in recent decades, a paradigm shift gains traction, driven by the convergence of
feminist movements, pioneering scholarship, and the emergence of alternative representations of domestic violence as
captivity/coercive control rather than assault. This alternative representation challenges traditional views by highlighting
it as a discrimination against women, whom it aects disproportionately; hence, a violation of women’s human rights,
hence a matter of public/state interest.
This points to gender as a structuring factor of “thinking societies” [42] from their very beginning [43]: “Marriage, the
exogamic distribution of a society’s members, does not presuppose any statutory discrimination between women and men.
However, it is women who are distributed by men and among men” [44, p. 263]. Gender inequality is not only a root of
violence against women/domestic violence as the UN and the Istanbul Convention note, but also a root of its historical
misrepresentation (and of its legal translation/criminalization), drawing on a (masculine) narrative of “assault”: assault
(“street violence”), rather than women’s experiences of domestic violence as “captivity”, has been the anchoring prototype
of violence because assault (“street violence”) targets men as privileged sensemakers and historic lawmakers. In contrast,

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coercive control anchors the social representations of domestic violence in women’s (and their children’s) experiences of
captivity, a liberty crime and a violation of women’s human rights (inseparable from their children’s).
8 Challenging dominant representations ofdomestic violence: emergence ofcoercive
control asastructuring concept
The dominant social representations of “violence” have drawn on a prototype of violence in the public space (“street
violence”) perhapsbecause its main targets were those historically entitled tobe visible (to matter) in the public space:
men [45]. Those traditionally dominant representations portrayed domestic violence as a private (rather than public)
matter rooted in individual pathologies, obscuring its systemic and structural underpinnings in gender inequality [31].
For example, the French Civil Code of 1804 stated that the husband owed protection to his wife [and] the wife obedience
to her husband; a paternal “right of correction” granted men the right to use physical violence against children, hand in
hand with a “marital right of correction” should children or wives “disobey. Similarly, marital rape was not criminalized
until 2006, and psychological abuse/marital harassment was not criminalized until 2010.
These historically dominant representations have trivialized women’s and children’s experiences of domestic violence.
They have maintained a social norm of their due obedience to a prototypically male “head of the family”. Such shared
representations of duty, obedience, and entitlement have been perpetuating victim-blaming attitudes within couples and
families, often drawing on a stereotype of women as manipulative [46]: “she” provokes “him”, “she” is making false abuse
allegations to destroy “him”. They minimized the severity of domestic violence by making it an individual woman’s issue
(“she” has a problem), rather than a matter of structural inequality and a question of women at risk of male violence [47].
Above all, they impeded eective societal responses because, in Doise’s terms [48], they conceptualized and addressed
domestic violence from an intra- or interindividual level of analysis (“she”; sometimes “he”), rather than a positional or
societal level that considers structural inequality, especially gender inequality, and its intersections with other forms of
inequality such as disability, migration, and racialization [14].
Tajfel [49] noted that individuals need not justify inequality if oppressive, exploitative, cruel, unjust or generally ‘inhu-
mane’ acts are committed against other individuals who are framed as being outside the realm of interpersonal conduct
principles (“dehumanization”; for women victims of domestic violence [18]. This process of dehumanization is particularly
relevant in the context of coercive control, where perpetrators often view their victims as instruments at the service
of their privilege or objects to be controlled rather than as full human beings deserving of respect and autonomy. In
domestic violence situations, this dehumanization can manifest as the abuser treating their partner as property, deny-
ing their basic rights, and justifying their abusive behaviour by framing the victim as less human than the perpetrator or
undeserving of humane treatment.
Indeed, when women/children gained more rights and physical violence became less acceptable in recent decades,
violent men accommodated their entitlement strategies to new norms, using more subtle yet equally destructive strate-
gies to grant their access to the resources brought in [50]. Many of these men use little or no physical violence, taking
control of resources and privileges in the family space “simply” by microregulating the victims’ lives through control
and coercion to obtain a specic behaviour from them, often using personal threats, sometimes only credible and
understandable to the victims alone, which makes them “invisible” to others. These behaviours restrict women’s space
for action and resistance [51, 52] and simultaneously discourage women’s allies or bystanders from taking action, which
helps perpetrators maintain their own impunity. Laws and professional practice often lag behind such nonphysical
mutations. This is why society needs to revise its social and legal representations/oences to recognize men’s ongoing
coercive, controlling behaviours whose cumulative eects deprive women of their rights, such as liberty, safety, self-
determination, dignity, and health.
9 Conceptualising coercive control
Coercive control reframes domestic violence as an ongoing pattern of domination that entraps women and children
[6] through multidimensional tactics such as physical/sexual violence, intimidation, isolation, exploitation, and control,
drawing on gender inequalities and men’s privilege.
Feminist scholars’ work with women survivors led to conceptualizing domestic violence as coercive control [53, p. 15;
54–57]. Judith Herman’s work on trauma in captivity (complex PTSD) and Stark’s conceptualisation of coercive control

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drive an understanding of male domestic violence against women and children not as arising from personal pathology or
from marital/parental conict but as a form of social violence, which almost always draws on increased access to resources
and means to control, constrain, and minimise the target [14], to capture the unpaid portion of a partner’s labour includ-
ing her relationships with children and the value of her labour over and above the necessities of the household and her
capacities to imagine and freely develop her selfhood [58].
Working with his partner Anne Flitcraft, a physician, Evan Stark, a social worker and sociologist, encountered women
victims of domestic violence at the hospital where Flitcraft worked. They found that “battering by men” is the most
signicant cause of injury to women in our society. It is also a major cause of child abuse, murder, substance abuse and
female suicide attempts.
Signicantly, Stark and Flitcraft also found that the traditional resources to which women turned for help (healthcare
facilities, police, justice system) reinforce the medical, psychiatric and behavioural problems presented by battered
women because male strategies of coercion, isolation and control converge with the discriminatory structure of these
resource settings [47].
Empirical evidence shows the devastating, multidimensional, cumulative long-term impacts of this pattern of behav-
iour on entrapping victims; victims’ physical, psychological, and social health [14, 57, 59, 60] children and mother–child
relationships [17], and the violation of human rights [14, 24].
10 Coercive control criminalized astheheart ofdomestic violence
Evan Stark’s book Coercive Control. How Men Entrap Women in Personal Lives was instrumental in propelling an operational
understanding of domestic violence as a pattern of behaviours that deprives women of their rights. The primary harm
inicted is “political, not physical”, reecting “the deprivation of rights and resources that are critical to personhood and
citizenship” [6, p. 5]. Stark’s work revolutionized the understanding of domestic violence as captivity rather than assault
and transformed its criminalization as well as its consideration in family law and child protection in an increasing number
of countries.
In the recent years, an increasing number of countries have created criminalized coercive control. This trend reects a
growing understanding of domestic violence as a pattern of behaviour rather than isolated incidents. England and Wales
were among the rst to criminalize coercive control in 2015 through Sect.76 of the Serious Crime Act, amendedby the
Domestic Abuse Act 2021. Scotland followed in 2018 with the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act, described as the “Gold
Standard” in domestic violence legislation [61–63].
11 Domestic abuse (Scotland) act: a“gold standard” indomestic violence legislation
Scotland introduced a crime of “domestic abuse” built around elements of coercive control, which carries a 14year prison
sentence, the same as murder, reecting the range of behaviors it encompasses, from daily acts of psychological control
to severe violence or sexual assaults. The Scottish law is noteworthy for several reasons. Firstly, it is specic to domestic
abuse and was developed based on women’s experiences of living within a system of daily restrictions periodically rein-
forced by threats and acts of physical and sexual violence. Secondly, recognizing that control patterns are predominantly
perpetrated by men against female partners or ex-partners, the Scottish law is resolutely feminist. It recognizes the sig-
nicant harm caused to victims (and their children) by the continuous deprivation of their fundamental human rights
within an intimate relationship. A key feature of the Scottish law is its focus on the perpetrator’s behavior rather than the
victim’s reaction, unlike in England and Wales—as well as France [14]—where evidence of harm caused is still required.
The Scottish paradigm conceptualizes domestic abuse as a pattern of deliberate actions aimed at depriving the
victim of freedom and creating dependency, allowing for the punishment of the entire course of conduct rather
than specific incidents of physical violence. Other jurisdictions have followed. The Republic of Ireland introduced the
Domestic Violence Act 2018, which includes coercive control as an offense. Northern Ireland criminalized coercive
control in 2021 through the Domestic Abuse and Civil Proceedings Act (Northern Ireland) 2021. Gibraltar enacted
the Domestic Abuse Act 2023 2023, which includes provisions on coercive control. In Australia, New South Wales
introduced coercive control legislation through the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Coercive Control) Act 2022
with the criminal offence coming into effect in 2024. Queensland followed in 2024 with the Criminal Code (Coercive
Control and Affirmative Consent) and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2024 with the coercive control offence

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commencing on 26 May 2025. Danemark (2019) and Belgium (2023) laws also included coercive control. Canada
incorporated coercive control into the Divorce law (2021) and recently through MP Laurel Collins’ proposed bill to
criminalize coercive control at the federal level. These legislative developments are a significant shift in how domestic
abuse is understood and addressed in criminal and family law.
12 Coercive control: notjust amatter ofnational policy, butahuman rights imperative
recognized attheEuropean level
The increasingcriminalization coercive control reects a growing recognition of the need to address the root causes of
domestic abuse and protect victims’ fundamental rights.
The 2021 Tunikova v. Russia case before the European Court of Human Rights marked a signicant milestone in the
recognition of coercive control at the international level. In this landmark decision, the ECHR explicitly recommended
that member states should include coercive control in their legal denitions of domestic violence. The ECHR’s recom-
mendation to criminalize coercive control aligns with growing international recognition of this form of abuse. It provides
a strong legal basis for countries, including France, to update their legislation to better protect victims of domestic vio-
lence. This case is particularly relevant for France, as it supports the arguments made for the legal recognition of coercive
control [64]. It demonstrates that addressing coercive control is not just a matter of national policy, but a human rights
imperative recognized at the European level. Directive (EU) 2024/1385 of the European Parliament and the Council of 14
May 2024 on combating violence against women and domestic violence, reect an increasing recognition of domestic
violence as coercive control.
The conceptualisation of domestic violence as a violation of women’s human rights has been championed by inter-
governmental bodies such as the United Nations, the Council of Europe as well as the European Union and other instru-
ments such as the Interamerican Convention of Belém do Pará. This perspective recognizes domestic violence as a form of
discrimination and a breach of fundamental rights, including the right to life, security, dignity, and freedom from torture
and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The UN Secretary-General’s Study on Violence Against Women states that
“Violence against women is a manifestation of the historically unequal power relations between men and women, which have
led to domination over and discrimination against women by men and to the prevention of women’s full advancement.” [22,
p.37].
The Istanbul Convention, legally binding France since 2015, recognizes violence against women as a human rights
violation and form of gender discrimination, mandating reforms protecting victims’ fundamental rights [65]. Just as the
UN instruments, the Istanbul Convention underscores violence against women as a systemic human rights issue rooted
in gender inequalities, not in individual incidents, highlighting states’ obligations to prevent such discrimination through
systemic reforms safeguarding women’s self-determination and dignity.
The European Directive 2024/1385 to eectively ght violence against women and domestic violence was published
on May 24th, 2024. States should comply by June 2027. An EU Directive is a legislative act that sets out a goal that all EU
member states must achieve through their own national laws, allowing each country some exibility in how they imple-
ment it to meet the directive’s objectives. Directive 2024/1385 denes violence against women and domestic violence
as a violation of rights: human dignity, life, integrity, prohibition on inhuman treatment, privacy, liberty, security, data
protection, nondiscrimination based on sex, and children’s rights per the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It
mentions that domestic violence “can take various forms, including physical, sexual, psychological and economic forms (…)
and often includes coercive control”.
Coercive control is a criminal oence in many countries, with Scotland being the gold standard, although even there,
the law still must explicitly consider children as adjoined victims [62].
France is increasingly considering its criminalization; for now, only psychological violence and marital harassment
(2010) may be prosecuted. In 2023, the Chandler & Vérien Parliament report recommended the “legal translation” of
coercive control as a priority [66]. In 2022, coercive control was mentioned in a child protection research report [67]. In
2023, albeit without naming it, the Minister for Civil Service and Social Transformation’s guide for employers on marital
and family violence recognized its consequences for women’s work and career opportunities. In 2024, the Poitiers Court
of Appeal issued a criminal jurisprudence on coercive control (infra).

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13 The intersection ofviolence againstwomen andchildren’s rights: coercive control
entraps children asadjoined victims
Evan Stark’s book Children of Coercive Control [68] shows that the coercive control of women by men is the primary cause/
context of violence against children and child homicides outside of war zones. This often occurs after a separation, in the
context of legal proceedings relating to the child’s custody and parental rights or during the abusive parent’s visitation
rights, when the abuser seeks to punish his partner by strategically sabotaging her relationship with the children [17,
69] or by harming/killing the children.
Understanding domestic violence as coercive control broadened the legal understanding of its nature, scope, and
intent, as well as the extent to which children become “secondary victims”, even when they are not direct targets of
physical assault. Stark used the term “secondary victims” to describe children not because their abuse is less signicant
than their mothers’ abuse but because they are irrelevant to the abusive parent. The risk for children is only decipherable
through coercive control over their mother [68]. In these cases, the coercive controller entraps children, violating their
rights too, often weaponizing parental rights such as child contact [70] to extend coercive control post-separation,
frequently using legal abuse [71, 72] and the lack of specialist professionalsupport [73, 74]. In contested custody cases
involving coercive control, children’s voices are often suppressed, undermining their participation rights [75]. Callaghan
etal. [76] show the array of means put in place by children to manage the constraints imposed by such fathers/stepfathers
daily. Recognizing children as covictims of coercive control is crucial for upholding their human rights.
Therefore, while it is important to recognise that most victims of domestic violence are women, it is equally impor-
tant to recognise that many of these women have children3: in France, 82% of women victims are mothers [77], which
means that children are involved in 4 out 5 cases of domestic violence. In 2019, at least 398, 310 children were involved
as covictims [15]. However, there were only 1,480 convictions about domestic violence that considered the presence of
a child to be an aggravating circumstance, and judges suspended/withdrew the perpetrators’ parental authority over
the children in only 58 cases—i.e., 0.00014%.
The Istanbul Convention recognises the severe impacts that witnessing violence against mothers can have on chil-
dren. In some cases, violence is directed toward both women and children. In other cases, children are not targeted
themselves but witness violence against their mothers. Either way, they suer and need to be protected as well as their
mothers. The Istanbul Convention includes both scenarios and therefore has several provisions that address both chil-
dren as direct victims of physical, sexual, or psychological violence and children who “witness” domestic violence (Article
3c). It requires States to consider domestic violence in relation to decisions regarding the children’s custody to ensure
protection, support services, and legal representation (Articles 26, 31). Children’s rights must be integrated into policies
addressing violence against women. Their best interests and their need for safety are paramount in custody/visitation
cases involving violence (Article 31).
The Istanbul Convention underscores the need for age-sensitive responses for children.
• It calls for the empowerment of child victims and respecting for their evolving capacities.
• It requires states to ensure that protection and support services are available for child witnesses and take measures
to support and assist child victims in their physical and psychological recovery (Article 26).
• It mandates that children’s rights be integrated into policies addressing violence against women, recognizing the
continuum of violence children experience from prenatal exposure to direct victimization (Article 31.1).
• In custody and visitation cases involving violence, the Convention states that the exercise of any visitation or custody
rights should not jeopardize the rights and safety of the victim or children (Article 31.2). The best interests of the child
must be the primary consideration.
• It calls for empowerment and support for child victims by respecting their evolving capacities and ensuring their
right to be heard, that they receive age-appropriate information, and they have their views given due weight (Article
26.1).
• It highlights the need for age-sensitive responses and support services tailored to the specic needs of child victims
(Article 26.2), to be provided by professionals who are suciently equipped regarding gender-based violence (Article
14, Pillar 1 Prevention).
3 https:// rm. coe. int/ child ren- rights- and- the- istan bul- conve ntion web- a5/ 16809 25830

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The binding EU law Directive 2024/1385 marks a decisive step in recognizing children witnessing domestic violence as
victims themselves. It adopts a comprehensive approach highlighting their vulnerability and devastating psychological,
emotional and potential physical/mental health eects, with short- and long-term developmental consequences. It states
the need for child-sensitive responses. It acknowledges the need for thorough individualized assessments accounting
for perpetrators’ coercive control tactics beyond physical violence, including the potential risk that children are used to
exercise control over the victim and the use of companion animals to put pressure on the victim.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) highlights that parties should take all appropriate legislative,
administrative, social, and educational measures to provide the necessary support for children victims of violence and
for those who care for those children. This principle should lead to the creation of specialized child protection services
to support and accompany children covictims of domestic violence. This would respond to the alert issued by the Group
of experts responsible for monitoring the implementation of the Istanbul Convention about institutional systems in
Europe lacking both the capacity and the expertise to provide specialized and multisectoral services to these children
[78, p. 44–45]. The long-term goal is to support their physical, emotional and social development, considering that
these children are a specic category of children at risk. This support is essential for breaking and preventing the cycle
of violence/revictimisation that may be repeated in their adult lives. To achieve this, the creation of a specialized ser-
vice that is structurally integrated into the public policy sectors would be a major step forward and a response aligned
with the recent EU Recommendation on developing and strengthening integrated child protection systems in the best
interests of the child (2024). This Recommendation is a comprehensive guideline for member states to develop and
strengthen integrated approaches that prioritize children’s best interests, emphasizing prevention, early intervention,
and cross-sector collaboration in addressing various forms of violence against children—hence including those exposed
to domestic violence and coercive control.
14 Rethinking domestic violence inFrance: empirical illustrations ofsocial andlegal
understanding driven bytheconcept ofcoercive control
It is often said that the concept of coercive control has revolutionized the understanding of and indeed the legal response
to domestic violence, including change in legislation and prosecution in an increasing number of countries. Is this
empirically true in France? Two illustrations reveal how the conceptual incorporation of coercive control reshapes social
representations of domestic violence and legal practice.
15 Empirical illustration I “in vitro”: Auslander’s experimental study.
Auslander’s study [31]4 oers an empirical illustration of how the coercive control framework drives the social cognitive
processes involved in understanding domestic violence.
To understand how future legal professionals interpret violence against women and test the eects of the coercive
control framework, Auslander conducted an experimental study from September 2017 to April 2018 with law students
(83% women, mean age 22) from the University Paris Nanterre, recruited via Facebook. Participants completed an
online questionnaire following ethical guidelines (Association of Internet Researchers). Auslander chose future legal
professionals because the justice system represents the highest degree of social control over violence, both realistically
through the recognition and criminalization of violence and symbolically through condemning (or condoning) perpetra-
tors’ behaviour. Participants read a vignette presented as an Agence France Presse (AFP) news dispatch describing the
conjugal homicide of a 39year-old woman named Julie. The description contained two versions, constructed based on
media recommendations to frame violence against women as a societal issue rather than a private incident, elaborated
by French feminist journalists. The rst version framed the femicide as an incident “provoked” by the victim’s “personal-
ity”. The second version used elements of the husband’s coercive control over the wife. The “incident” framing mirrored
the typical French media coverage at the time of the data collection, drawing from the (in)famous homicide of Alexia
Fouillot by her husband, a case in which the defendant and his lawyer used the “crime of passion” narrative. The “coercive
control” framing highlighted systemic domestic violence as inequality and societal problem.
4 Data collected by L. Albuquerque, 2017–2018 during her Master degree research in social psychology under the supervision of A. Gruev-
Vintila and A. Lantian, at Université Paris Nanterre.

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The results showed that framing the conjugal homicide as incident vs. coercive control mobilized dierent social
representations. When presented as an incident, it appeared as a mere killing, from which “violence” itself was absent as
a social representational element. In contrast, the coercive control framing revealed a social representation as femicide.
This shows that the two framings mobilized divergent representations— symmetrizing partners—in the “incident”
condition, versus highlighting the power imbalance and unilateral perpetrator violence against the victim—in the “coer-
cive control” condition.
Those exposed to the private incident framing perceived it signicantlymore as resulting from a conict between
equals (F(3,198) = 3.94, p < 0.05). Conversely, the coercive control framing led to understandingit signicantlymore as
violence where one person (perpetrator) had power over the other (victim) (F(3,198) = 19.03, p < 0.001).
The framing also signicantly impacted perceptions of the male perpetrator’s responsibility. Presenting the wife’s homi-
cide as an incident produced an inversion where he was seen more as the victim of the woman he killed (F (3,198) = 5.54,
p < 0.05). Conversely, framing it as coercive control increased his responsibility, though not completely.
Auslander’s study provided empirical evidence that aligns with social representations theory, showing how dominant
representations as “incident” guide interpretations of domestic violence and how alternative “coercive control” represen-
tations somewhat rectify such misrepresentation, victim blaming and oender victimisation. Framing domestic violence
as an “incident” unfortunately facilitates a misleading perception of symmetry between the perpetrator and the victim,
reversing responsibility and highlighting the importance of properly framing it by underscoring the elements of coercive
control against the victim.
16 Empirical illustration II “in vivo”: howtheFrench specicity intherecognition ofcoercive
control led toalandmark criminal ruling
The anchoring of scientic concepts in societies is an established research object within the conceptual framework of
social representations. Perhaps the specicity of anchoring coercive control in France is the institutional courage [79] of
a small number of magistrates who worked with scientists to incorporate coercive control in legal doctrine and practice.
This was achieved through joint cumulative work to grasp coercive control in doctrine [80–83] and propel the coercive
control framework as a core organizing principle of integrated policies [66] and specialized domestic violence courts [84].
Its anchoring may be retraced to the pioneering cross-disciplinary work between scientists and lawyers, such as Karen
Sadlier, a clinical psychologist and researcher specializing in complex posttraumatic stress in children; children’s judge
Edouard Durand; and the propulsion of the coercive control framework by academics [14, 64, 80, 85] working with the
civil society and magistrates.
In this context, the translation of coercive control into a criminal court ruling took place in France even before its
criminalization. In a groundbreaking move, the Poitiers Court of Appeal applied the framework of coercive control to all
domestic violence cases in a November 2023 hearing. The Court’s heads First President Justice Joly-Coz and Attorney
General Eric Corbaux jointly stated their determination to “mark a milestone in the judicial recognition of coercive control”
[86]. The court pronounced a series of ve historic rulings drawing on French and international research on coercive
control as gender based social violence, challenging narrow denitions of domestic violence as isolated incidents, rec-
ognizing it as a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviours, and focusing on oenders’ coercive control as human
rights violations. These decisions, along with thirty other criminal and civil rulings, fueled legal reform considerations, the
Court of Cassation’s Observatory of Judicial Litigation forming a special taskforce to examine the potential incorporation
of coercive control into French law for more justice.
The Poitiers rulings recognized the multidimensional impacts of coercive control on the victims’ health/living condi-
tions and well-being, facilitating the establishment of evidence that had been dismissed in the lower court, overturning
one oender’s release from charges by the lower court and aggravating the sentences in the other four cases.
The Poitiers rulings also addressed parental authority, recalling the criminal judge’s obligation to rule on this. Faced
with the father’s coercive control of the mother, the two rulings in which young children were involved ordered the total
withdrawal of the oender’s “parental authority” over the children, motivated by the court’s “doubts about the father’s
ability to full his educational role, (…) his role in teaching (…) fundamental values such as rejecting violence against others,
refraining (…) from negative comments about the mother, which prevent any coherent educational project. This attitude
sabotages the mother–child bond, as much as the quality father–child bond necessary for a young child’s (X years old) har-
monious development” (P case). “When characterized in a child’s presence, coercive control is likely to foster the transgression
of parental authority” [87, p.10]. The landmark Poitiers rulings provide a practical illustration of how the coercive control

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lens transforms the legal understanding and response to domestic violence using a global approach that includes harm
to both the adult and the child victims [88–92].
17 Conclusion: implications forsocial andlegal responses
Coercive control is a paramount concept in understanding and responding to domestic violence as a violation of women’s
human rights and children’s rights. It covers acourseofconduct that has devastating consequencesfor women’s and
children’s health, safety, autonomy, and human dignity. Its conceptualization by Stark [6] has profoundly transformed
the social and legal understanding of domestic violence as a “liberty crime” rather than a physical or even psychologi-
cal assault. It highlighted thestructural inequalities enablingmen to entrap women in personal lives through isolation,
microregulation, deprivation of resources, personalized credible threats, child and mother sabotage, etc. It advocates
for systemic reformsto protect victims, their health, safety, and human rights,and to hold perpetrators accountable.
Serge Moscovici’s seminal theories of social representations and social change provide a powerful framework for
understanding and addressing the complex issue of domestic violence. By elucidating the processes through which sci-
entic, social, and legal knowledge about domestic violence is constructed, negotiated, and transformed within society,
these theories oer valuable insights for challenging harmful misrepresentations, promoting alternative representations,
and fostering a paradigm shift towards a comprehensive understanding of domestic violence as a form of captivity and
a human rights violation.
Two empirical illustrations provided invitro and invivo evidence of how coercive control reshapes the understandings
of domestic violence. As the recognition of coercive control continues to gain traction in France, these empirical illustra-
tions serve as catalysts for transforming social and legal responses, ensuring that adult and child victims’ experiences are
validated, their rights are protected, and their paths to healing and empowerment are better supported.
Using the theories of social representations and social change to develop interventions drawing on the coercive
control framework provides a robust theoretical foundation for practical solutions for promoting eective prevention,
protection, prosecution and integrated policy responses—which are the four pillars of the Istanbul Convention.
By understanding the processes of social representation formation and transformation, practitioners and policymak-
ers can design strategies to challenge harmful representations and promote a holistictrauma-informed, victim-centred,
gender-based approach to domestic violence in public policy andawareness campaigns, educational initiatives, commu-
nity-based programs, and legal reforms, protecting the rights, health and well-being of adult victims and their children.
As Lewin’s quotation suggests, these “good theories” have proven invaluable in informing practical interventions—in
this case, vital responses that prioritize victims’ safety, self-determination and empowerment, perpetrator accountability,
and the promotion of gender equality, health and human rights in society.
Acknowledgements The authors thank Prof. Lilian Negura for his suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript.
Author contributions A.G.V. wrote the main manuscript text and and A.R. contributed to the intersection of violence against women and
children’s rights. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
Funding EPNR UPN, EPNR 2024.
Data availability The data are available from the authors upon reasonable request.
Declarations
Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which
permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to
the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modied the licensed material. You
do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party
material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If
material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds
the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http:// crea t iveco
mmons. org/ licen ses/ by- nc- nd/4. 0/.

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