Kim Macdonald: Society has been asleep while so many women have been in hell

What is coercive control? You’ve probably seen the term on the back of buses and on TV, as part of a State Government education campaign. It is, sadly, something I’ve seen firsthand through a friend. I remember sitting with my friend in her backyard, where she would whisper that if we spoke quietly in a specific corner, the video cameras that watched her every move would not hear us. If she so much as drove through a new suburb, she would get questioned at home, after the tracker on her phone alerted her then-partner. And I can’t forget the time she became hysterically concerned when she realised her then-partner would — completely unreasonably — blame her for a shopkeeper’s mistake. As she would say, “If a bomb goes off in South Africa, I get the blame.” My friend was sometimes put through what I call a KGB interrogation. Dragged from her bed while sleeping, she was pushed on to a chair and a spotlight was shone into her eyes. These interrogations were so traumatic my friend spared me the details, to save me from sadness. Imagine that. Despite their considerable wealth, my friend was kept on a tight budget and was constantly told they were on the verge of bankruptcy. And so she signed what some in the family domestic violence sector call marmalade contracts. These are complex contracts abusers thrust at their partners during busy times of day, usually over breakfast, with claims the family will lose the roof over their heads unless signed immediately. The reality is that as victims hurriedly sign on the dotted line, often between mouthfuls of marmalade toast, they unwittingly sign away access to family assets. More often than not these contracts help the abuser hide money, ensuring that if the victim leaves, she leaves with nothing. In another classic sign of coercive control, my friend’s former partner tried to isolate her from friends and family, banning them from the home. On her children’s birthdays, my friend and her kids were forced to meet the grandparents around the corner from their home. She and her kids would then sneak back inside their home before her ex-partner became aware they had been missing. He would get furious if he did not know where she was for any amount of time. Once, when wanting to query her whereabouts, he called me non-stop for 40 minutes. I refused to answer my phone. When my friend found out she sought to placate his rage over my non-compliance by telling him I was too scared of him to pick up my phone. But if you are reading this — you know who you are — I was not scared of you. You just weren’t worth my breath. Her former partner went on to settle down with one of his mistresses. We pray she is OK. All these years later, my friend still bears the scars from her time under his coercive control. In her mind, he hangs over her shoulder like an ever-present bogeyman, criticising, belittling and gaslighting her, destroying her confidence to this day. It is death by a thousand cuts. Needless to say, my friend, like so many other victims of coercive control, never felt strong enough to re-enter the workforce. The financial penalty and the emotional toll she faces from that relationship will last the rest of her days. University research shows access to secure, affordable housing is a crucial lifeline for victims of coercive control and other types of domestic abuse. Landlords, please help if you can. My friend used to sing a line from an Amy Shark song: “You’ve been asleep while I’ve been in hell.” That line rings so true. Society has long been asleep while so many have have suffered, wrongly thinking that women could just leave a relationship if things were that bad. We are waking up now and realising it doesn’t work that way. Many women are just too broken and trapped by coercive control to leave without our help. 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732).