Investigative journalist Jess Hill interviewed dozens of abused women, domestic abuse sector workers, male perpetrators, children’s advocates and system experts over five years in order to write her award-winning book, See What You Made Me Do. Here she answers some questions about issues arising from the murders in Brisbane of Hannah Clarke and her three children Aaliyah, 6, Laianah, 4 and Trey, 3.
Hannah Clarke’s family described her husband Rowan Baxter as controlling, coercive and obsessive. His abuse appears to have followed a familiar script known as coercive control. Can you explain this?
Coercive control is a very particular kind of domestic abuse. It’s not a “reaction” to stress, nor is it triggered by alcohol or drugs. It’s an ongoing system of control, in which the abusive partner seeks to override their partner’s autonomy and destroy their sense of self. The end game – whether the perpetrator knowingly sets out to achieve it – is to make their partner entirely subordinate; a “willing slave”. To do this, they isolate, micro-manage, humiliate, degrade, surveil, gaslight and create an environment of confusion, contradiction and extreme threat. The feeling victims have, as the British survivor-advocate Min Grob tweeted the other day, is that the rug has been pulled from under your feet. “You become disoriented, hyper vigilant, confused and most likely sleep-deprived. You are walking on eggshells. Afraid you’re going mad. Afraid to make them mad. Afraid. All the time. Sometimes not even knowing why you’re in fear but the panic is there. Always.” This abuse can also be incredibly hard for the victim to detect, because it happens slowly, bit by bit. It’s the total mental dislocation of coercive control – which Amnesty International has classified as torture – that is the hardest thing to recover from.
Coercive controllers may use extreme physical or sexual violence; or, as was reportedly the case with Rowan Baxter, no physical violence at all. For more than 40 years, women and children have been saying that except for extreme violence, the coercive control is the worst part. In fact, one of the most common refrains from victims of coercive control is “I wish he’d just hit me”.
If domestic abuse cases almost always follow the same script, as you write in your book, why is it so hard to stop them?
So many reasons, but in cases of coercive control, I think it boils down to this. Many women don’t know they are experiencing abuse until they are already in situations that are incredibly dangerous – partly because coercive control is so poorly understood, but also because the perpetrator makes it invisible. By the time victims realise the danger they’re in, many believe no system will ever be powerful enough to keep them safe. If they do report to police – if something reportable actually occurs – they are making a terrifying gamble. Will they get an officer who’s sympathetic and proactive? Will reporting their partner make him more dangerous? What if child protection gets involved? What if he contests for custody? There are absolutely no guarantees that they (or their children) will be protected. Their suspicion that the system is not powerful enough to protect them is too often correct. The justice system is not only full of holes; too often it actively colludes with the perpetrator (especially the family law system). So they stay, even after they want to leave, and know it’s dangerous. They stay because it may be even more dangerous to leave. Until the justice system properly assesses and responds to risk, and as long as women are made to be responsible for their own safety, we will continue to see an intractable domestic homicide rate.
How do some men come to feel so entitled to their power over women?
Thousands of years of patriarchy has laid pretty good groundwork for this – and it’s not so long since a wife was considered her husband’s property, and had no legal rights whatsoever. It was only in the 1980s that new laws against marital rape recognised that men didn’t have the right to demand sex with their wives anytime they wanted; prior to that, consent was considered to have been given on the wedding day and never revoked. Today, we still live in a society that entrenches women’s subordination at every level – from the home, to the boardroom, to our parliament. Even in the courtroom, as we see so often. As the Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman writes: “The legal system is designed to protect men from the superior power of the state but not to protect women or children from the superior power of men.” I’m sure any survivor reading this will know exactly what she’s talking about.
Men don’t abuse women because society tells them it’s OK. Men abuse women because society tells them they are entitled to be in control. In fact, society says that if they are not in control, they won’t succeed – they won’t get the girl, they won’t get the money, and they will be vulnerable to the violence and control of other men. It says that if they fail to assert themselves like “real men”, they will end up poor and alone.
But we don’t just see men being entitled to power over their partners; some women identify with this, too. That’s because “having power over” is valued within patriarchy – much more for men than it is for women – but nevertheless, it is regarded generally as a sign of strength to claim power over others. To add more complication, in many perpetrators who have had trauma or attachment disruption in their childhoods, you get another layer of entitlement: as one perpetrator told me “I never had any control over anything as a child, and I vowed that I would never let that happen to me again. I would always be in control.”
Trauma-based entitlement is very common in people who are abusive – the notion that “I had to go through so much, so fuck you, you just have to deal with whatever I do to you.” When that entitlement is thwarted, there is this notion of being defied, of being humiliated – of being shamed. This is what has been called “humiliated fury” – when insecurity, toxic shame and entitlement combine. That is a very dangerous emotional state.
Do behaviour change programs for men work?
Opinions – and studies - on this are mixed. Here in Australia, group therapeutic programs generally run for a few months, once a week. A recent study by Monash University found that 65% of men report that they are “violence free” or almost violence free two years after the program ended; that is a very encouraging result. There are a couple of residential therapeutic programs, like Breathing Space in Western Australia and Room4Change in Canberra, that I think are also really promising – they give men a place to live, so women and children don’t have to leave, and they follow up intensive individual and group work with months of ongoing outreach support. Indigenous men’s programs throughout the country are also some of the best I’ve seen, in terms of reconnecting men to what is meaningful.
But the model I keep coming back to is one that actually takes seriously the deep work that is required to shift men out of long-habituated behaviour. It’s a Scottish program called the Caledonian model, and it runs for two years. It combines two approaches to offending that are typically at odds with each other – the psychopathology model, which looks at what drives a specific person to abuse, and the feminist model, which looks at how men are socialised under patriarchy, and how gender inequality underpins their abusive behaviour.
To do this it gives abusers six months of one-on-one counselling to begin with, and puts them in touch with specialists who can deal with any other presenting issues: addiction, mental illness, childhood trauma, etc. After that they go into a group program with other men, where they confront issues around gendered expectations, socialisation, what actually constitutes abuse and so on. Then they go back into one-on-one counselling. Throughout that time, caseworkers are also working directly with their partners or ex-partners, and their children. It’s a fantastic model.
How can you help a friend if you think they are being coercively controlled?
When you first hear those red flags – isolation, micro-management, rule-setting, financial control – you need to respond carefully. Listen without judgement. Criticise their partner’s behaviour, but don’t condemn their partner – that may only make them defensive. Comment on the changes you’ve notice in them personally, and why you’re worried about it. Most importantly, don’t give up. The perpetrator wants their partner to be isolated – don’t enable them. Stay in contact, if you can. Remember always that your friend is the expert in their own experience, and they don’t need you to take over. Let them know that if they are thinking of leaving, they should get in touch with a domestic violence caseworker, so they can develop a safety plan. Lastly, don’t make your friendship conditional on your friend leaving – they may take months or years to leave, or they may never leave. Just let them know you will be there for them, no matter what.
The federal government says it is open to new ideas for reducing violence. Can you suggest any?
We need practical action, at the coalface, that encourages – and supports – women to seek help, keeps them and their children safe, and removes the loopholes of impunity for perpetrators.
If the government wants new ideas, here are some bold new strategies – proven to reduce domestic abuse here and internationally – that we should be seriously considering.
First, the introduction of police stations for women, which are solely dedicated to policing family violence (and provide a one-stop shop for women and children, including therapeutic, legal and financial help), have been proven to reduce domestic homicide in countries across South America, and crucially, they get women reporting earlier. Greens co-deputy Larissa Waters is calling for a trial of these women’s police stations.
Second we should look very seriously at criminalising coercive control, as has been promised by the Queensland opposition leader, Deb Frecklington, and urged by New South Wales MP Anna Watson. Criminalising coercive control is not just about locking people up. It’s about changing the paradigm on domestic abuse and requiring police to investigate and report on the entire arc of a relationship, instead of isolated incidents. Globally speaking, Scotland is seen as the world leader, as all of the harms of domestic abuse are included under the one charge.
Third, I’m also a big advocate of localised strategies, like focused deterrence and justice reinvestment, that develop close and constant collaboration between the community sector – domestic abuse, substance abuse, homelessness and so on – and the justice system. These strategies break down silos between sector groups that often work at odds with each other, they close loopholes in the justice system, and they deliver a strong message to perpetrators that unless they accept the help that is on offer, and make the rational choice to stop their offending, they will feel the full force of the law.
Last, fix the family law system. The Australian Law Reform Commission has delivered a set of reforms that will make children safe. Implement them.
What could we do today - right now - to urgently improve this situation and prevent more murders like this?
The good news is we know that change is possible.
Here are some critical changes the federal parliament could introduce now. To begin with, straightaway announce enough secure funding for the women’s refuge sector to ensure no woman or child is denied vital protection. Allocate proper funding for affordable and transitional housing so they can move into homes they can afford. Reverse funding cuts to community legal aid – we just saw $130,000 in funding removed from Victoria Legal Aid, which has cancelled the Court Network of volunteers who help family violence victims at the family law courts; community legal aid is already woefully underfunded. There is so much good work already being done – if the federal government truly cared about women and children’s safety, they’d stop making the women’s sector beg and scrape for basic funding.
In Australia, if you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, domestic or family violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800RESPECT.org.au. In the UK, visit the National Domestic Abuse Helpline website here or call 0808 2000 247. In the US visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline website here, or call 1-800-799-7233.