Embolden commends the State Government for the introduction of a Bill to criminalise coercive control. Coercive control is often a significant part of a person’s experience of domestic and family violence (DFV) and the criminalisation of these behaviours is fundamentally important in bridging the current gap between the criminal law and victim-survivors’ lived experience.
While Embolden supports several aspects of the Bill, we hold significant concerns that some elements of the Bill risk criminalising behaviours that are not coercive control as it is understood within DFV literature and practice and indeed, as it is most frequently perpetrated and experienced in relationships in which gender-based violence is occurring.