Background
As the law currently stands, coercive control is only considered an offence when the victim is “personally connected” to their abuser (romantically involved, formerly romantically involved, or related to one another).
The psychological and behavioural hallmarks of coercive control (isolation, monitoring, financial restriction, threats, humiliation, and the systematic erosion of autonomy) are not exclusive to domestic settings. They are documented in a wide range of organisational and institutional contexts including, but not limited to:
• Workplaces and employment relationships: Employers who systematically isolate workers, control their movements, monitor communications, issue threats of dismissal, or exploit visa or housing dependencies to coerce compliance.
• Religious organisations: Controlling institutions that manipulate doctrine to restrict members’ freedom of association, dictate personal conduct, impose financial obligations, threaten spiritual punishment, and enforce isolation from family and friends who leave the faith.
• Educational institutions: Schools, universities, or training providers that systematically humiliate, isolate, surveil, or control students in ways that cause serious psychological harm.
• Care settings: Residential care homes, supported living providers, and care organisations that exert coercive control over vulnerable adults or children in their care.
• Cults and closed communities: Organisations that meet the definitional characteristics of coercive control but fall outside domestic abuse provisions.
Existing Legal Frameworks Are Insufficient
Proponents of the status quo may argue that other legal mechanisms (such as employment law, safeguarding legislation, charity regulation, or common law offences) adequately address this conduct. This argument does not withstand scrutiny.Employment law addresses contractual and discriminatory conduct but does not criminalise systematic psychological coercion as such.Safeguarding legislation operates primarily in a protective and regulatory capacity; it does not create criminal liability for coercive control by organisations.
Harassment legislation requires a course of conduct between identified individuals, making it ill-suited to capturing the systemic, institutionalised nature of organisational coercive control.
No single existing provision captures the cumulative, systematic nature of coercive control as a pattern of behaviour in the way that Section 76 does in the domestic context.
The Proposed Amendment
We propose that Parliament enact an amendment to the Serious Crime Act 2015, or introduce a standalone provision, that extends the criminal offence of coercive or
controlling behaviour to apply where:-The perpetrator is an organisation, institution, body corporate, or a person acting in an official capacity on behalf of such an entity;
-The victim is in a position of dependence, vulnerability, or reduced autonomy by virtue of their relationship with the organisation or institution (including but not limited to employment, residence, membership, education, care provision, or discipleship);
-The perpetrator engages in a repeated or continuous pattern of coercive or controlling behaviour towards the victim; and
-That behaviour has, or the perpetrator knows or ought to know that it is likely to have, a serious effect on the victim.The amendment should include clear statutory definitions to ensure legal certainty and proportionate application:
• "Coercive or controlling behaviour": should retain the same meaning as in the existing legislation, with supplementary statutory guidance issued in respect of the organisational context.
• "Serious effect": to include causing fear of violence, causing serious alarm or distress, and substantially adverse effect on day-to-day activities, as in existing law.
• A de minimis threshold: to ensure that ordinary and lawful exercise of managerial, institutional, or pastoral authority does not fall within the scope of the offence.
• Corporate liability provisions: to ensure that where coercive control is perpetrated as part of the policy or culture of an organisation, both the individual actors and the institution may be held to account.