John Meehan, a charming doctor, knew just how to treat Debra Newell. The relationship moved fast. They secretly married within two months. Debra was in love with John.
But her daughters weren’t. Debra’s daughters started investigating, and discovered that John Meehan had a dark past. Debra wouldn’t believe it at first – but she was in love with a conman.
Millions of people heard Debra’s story in the podcast “Dirty John,” released by the Los Angeles Times and the podcast network Wondery in October 2017.
What Debra likely experienced with John has a name.
“The phenomenon is something called coercive control, which is a form of psychological control,” reporter Christopher Goffard told Dateline NBC. “One domestic partner exercises over another where the control is not necessarily by virtue of violence-- but relies on manipulation, gaslighting, things like that.”
The term coercive control, which is widely recognized in some European countries, has begun to trickle into the American vernacular, largely as the result of work by Evan Stark, Ph.D, MSW, and Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University. He is the author of Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life.
“Coercion is fear, and control is deprivation. And it’s the combination of fear and deprivation that entraps someone so they are unable to effectively resist and leave,” Dr. Stark told Dateline NBC.
SIGNS OF COERCIVE CONTROL
Lisa Fontes, Ph.D, of the University of Massachusetts Amherst knows this all too well. She says she spent four years in the grips of that same paralysis, in a relationship characterized by coercive control.
“During the relationship he was monitoring my every move,” Dr. Fontes said. “He had a key stroke logger installed on my computer, which of course I didn’t know about, and it felt like he could read my mind.”
For Dr. Fontes, labeling her own experience as coercive control only came once she was out of the relationship. Dr. Fontes, who has spent more than two decadesstudying the cultural issues involved in child maltreatment and violence against women, began reading Dr. Stark’s research. When she came across the topic of coercive control, she felt it matched her experiences and started her own research. That research later became her book. In the process of writing, she looked into different stalking technologies.
As Dr. Fontes researched the new technologies, she realized one of the clocks with built-in hidden cameras was the very clock she had in her room.
“I went up there and I’m looking at it and I’m like, ‘I don’t see a camera,’” Dr. Fontes said. “But I finally found it. There was a camera in this clock that he had installed in my bedroom.”
Dr. Fontes, who authored Invisible Chains: Overcoming Coercive Control in Your Intimate Relations in 2015, says coercive control is “some combination of isolation, manipulation, intimidation, sexual coercion and sometimes physical violence.”
“A lot of times these relationships start very, very intensely. And that’s one of the red flags,” Dr. Fontes told Dateline NBC. “People barely know each other, and then one partner -- usually the guy -- you know, ‘I want to spend all my time with you. I want to spend all my time alone with you. Let’s move in together. Let’s get a bank account together.’”
LEGISLATING ABUSE
“In most English-speaking countries -- not in the United States -- coercive control is recognized as a very serious criminal offense,” said Dr. Evan Stark, who has spent much of his life exploring the topic of Coercive Control and helped found one of the first battered-women shelters in New England.
In 2015, the United Kingdom passed the “Serious Crime Act” which, according to the government’s website, “creates a new offence of controlling or coercive behavior in intimate or familial relationships.” In other words, the law makes it so that repeated controlling behavior carries with it the possibility of prison time.
France also passed a law in 2010 deeming psychological abuse a “criminal offense.”
Dr. Stark says the United States has focused heavily on the legislation of violence in relationships, but has often neglected the psychological elements of abuse. The subtle nuances of relationships in which the physical violence is often infrequent or nonexistent pose a tricky scenario when it comes to the law.
