A pattern of control can be a criminal offence with no violence in it at all. That has been the law in England and Wales since 2015, and comparable offences now exist in Scotland, Ireland, Australia and elsewhere. [serious-crime-act-2015]
That is the single most useful fact here, because the commonest reason people do not name what is happening to them is that nobody has ever hit them. The harm is real either way, whatever your own country has legislated, and our trauma hub covers what tends to follow it.
The rest of this section describes the England and Wales offence specifically, since it was the first of its kind and the four-part test it applies is a clear way to see the shape of the pattern. Where you live the wording will differ, so treat it as a description of the behaviour rather than as advice about your own legal position.
What the law actually requires
Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 carries a maximum of five years. Prosecutors have to establish four things. [serious-crime-act-2015] [home-office-2023-ccb-guidance]
- Personally connected. Intimate partners, former partners, or family members.
- Repeated or continuous. A pattern, not an incident. This is the part conventional offences could not reach.
- A serious effect on the victim.
- The person knew, or ought to have known, their behaviour would have that effect.
The third element is where the detail matters, because there are two ways to meet it.
Either the behaviour caused you to fear violence would be used against you on at least two occasions.
Or it caused you serious alarm or distress with a substantial adverse effect on your usual day-to-day activities.
The second route needs no violence and no threat of violence. Changing how you work, giving up seeing people, altering your routine to avoid a reaction, or physical and mental health consequences can all satisfy it.
Why an incident-based law could not cope
The reason this offence had to be written is that the harm here is cumulative and each part of it, isolated, looks minor.
Being asked where you are is not a crime. Being asked every time, and having to prove it, and the reaction when the answer is slow, is a different thing that no single ask describes.
That is also why it is so hard to name from inside. There is rarely a moment that is obviously unacceptable, and each step arrives with an explanation that is often flattering: he wants to know because he worries, she handles the money because I am hopeless with it, they do not like that friend because that friend is not good for me.
What identifies it is the direction of travel, and that is precisely the view you cannot get while it is happening.
The recognisable forms
- Isolation. Friendships and family contact thinning, usually with a reason attached to each one.
- Money. Controlling income or spending, having to account for purchases, debt taken out in your name.
- Monitoring. Location, phone, messages, social media. Frequently framed as trust or safety.
- Rules. About clothes, food, sleep, housework, who you speak to, when you may leave.
- Degradation. Repeated criticism, humiliation in front of others, being told you are stupid or unstable.
- Threats. Against you, children, pets, or to disclose something about you.
- Rewriting reality. Denying things that happened, so you begin to doubt your own account.
- Children. Used as leverage, or as a channel for messages.
A schematic of the gap the 2015 offence was written to close, as described in the legislation and statutory guidance cited. Not measured data.
The two right-hand bars are the whole reason the offence exists, and they are also the two things people assume disqualify them from reporting.
Is this the pattern?
Tick anything true. This is a reflection prompt rather than a test, and it produces no diagnosis or legal advice. If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services.
0 of 8 ticked
The fifth item is the one that most often appears first and is easiest to dismiss, because managing somebody else reaction feels like being considerate. The seventh maps directly onto what the law calls substantial adverse effect on day-to-day activities. You do not need to be certain, or to want to involve the police, to phone a helpline and describe it.
One of these on its own can have an ordinary explanation. What matters is whether the list has been getting longer over months and years, since this pattern is defined by accumulation rather than by any single act.
Nothing here matched. If the difficulty is over-responsibility in a relationship rather than control, our guide to codependency covers that pattern and why the label carries more than it can hold.
No screener on this site assesses abuse, deliberately. A questionnaire is the wrong instrument, and a score would be a poor basis for a decision this consequential. The hub lists what we do cover.
What it does afterwards
The effects outlast the relationship, and people are often unprepared for that.
Living under sustained monitoring and unpredictability produces exactly what you would expect: hypervigilance, difficulty making decisions after years of having them made, a persistent sense that you are about to be in trouble, and considerable difficulty trusting your own account of events after it has been repeatedly contradicted.
Where post-traumatic symptoms follow, trauma-focused psychological therapy is the recommended treatment. [nice-ng116-coercive] Our guide to trauma bonding covers why leaving is so much harder than it looks from outside, and does talking about trauma help covers what treatment actually involves.
What helps
Tell one person, in specific terms. Not “things are difficult” but the actual rules, the actual monitoring. Being able to say it out loud once tends to change what you can see.
Keep a record somewhere they cannot reach. Dates and specifics. Useful legally, and useful for the private argument about whether you are exaggerating.
Use a device they do not control. If monitoring is happening, searching for this article on a shared or tracked device is not safe. A library computer or a friend’s phone is.
Speak to a specialist service before deciding anything. They will not push you to leave or to report. Leaving is also the point of highest risk, which is exactly why planning it with somebody who does this professionally matters.
Do not wait to be certain. You do not need to have decided it is a crime, or to want a prosecution, to describe what is happening to a helpline.
When to get help
In immediate danger, contact your local emergency services. Many countries offer a silent-call or text route for when speaking aloud is not safe. Look up how yours works now rather than in the moment, because the details differ by country and are not something to work out under pressure.
Most countries have a domestic abuse helpline, and several have separate ones for men and for LGBT+ people, which is worth knowing because the general line is not always the best fit. Two practical details to check before you need them: whether the line runs around the clock, since many do not, and whether calls to it appear on an itemised phone bill, since some are specifically arranged not to.
An appointment with a doctor is also a reasonable place to start, and disclosure there is confidential.
Go urgently if you have thoughts of harming yourself.
How MyFreud can help
One of the specific harms here is losing confidence in your own account of what happened, because it has been contradicted so often. MyFreud gives you daily mood tracking that takes seconds, and a record made on the day is a different thing from a memory argued with later.
Download MyFreud and start today: App Store or Google Play.