Dr. Nata Duvvury:

There is some significant academic writing on coercive control. Dr. Lindsay Stark is one of the main authors who first expanded our understanding of domestic violence to consider coercive control, which can include a range of behaviours from purely control behaviours, for example, wanting to know where someone is, asking who someone is speaking with and so on, to forms of emotional, physical and psychological violence. It is a pattern of behaviour that occurs over a lifetime; it is not one incident, but a repeated behaviour. It does not have to be physical violence. Ireland's coercive control legislation is important and we can take from it. In its implementation, though, it seems that an element of physical violence is what we are recognising as violence in the cases that are coming forward. We rarely recognise asking over and over again who someone spoke to, where did someone go, why is someone not at home by 12 a.m. or 1 a.m. or where did someone drive, yet these are as insidious and harmful as physical violence. We have to bring to the fore the importance of controlling behaviours, which are the hallmark of coercive control.