This was originally published to The Straits Times on December 9 2021. 

The Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) agrees with Care Corner Singapore chief service officer Agnes Chia that it is important to recognise coercive control behaviours that are designed to restrict a person’s life, and to belittle her while making her dependent on the abuser (Watch out for coercive control violence too, Dec 2).

Coercive control refers to a pattern of controlling behaviour: threats, humiliation, intimidation and other demands used to establish power over victims.

As mentioned by Ms Chia, current legislation, while broadly covering coercive control, does not fully address situations involving coercive control that appear harmless on the surface.

This kind of behaviour operates in a much subtler manner that goes beyond explicit threats of harm, derogatory comments, shouting and other actions that would prompt neighbours to call the police.

Many callers to Aware’s women’s helpline tell us that while they might not consider physical violence to be the most distressing aspect of their abuse, it is what they raise to the authorities to get the protection they need.

While controlling behaviours and other forms of non-physical abuse are more pervasive, these callers find them harder to prove.

However, there is still a lack of public understanding of coercive control. Catalyse, Aware’s corporate advisory, consulting and training arm, has trained 500 workshop participants this year on how to support victims of domestic violence.

Based on the feedback received, a big revelation for participants is the idea that family violence covers not only physical threats and harm, but also power and control exerted over another person to dominate her.

We are glad that social workers and counsellors are trained to identify signs of abuse, including coercive control, and that the Taskforce on Family Violence plans to educate the police and the public on it.

We urge the Government to go further and consider broadening the definition of family violence to explicitly include coercive control as an additional category of family violence.

Since the task force recognises the importance of identifying coercive control and plans to cover the concept in its training programmes, the law should also be revised to include its definition and to extend legal protection to victims.

We believe that a legislative update, together with educational programmes, will go a long way to help Singapore tackle all forms of family violence, including the subtler form of coercive control.

Lee Yoke Mun, Projects Executive, AWARE