New South Wales has taken a significant step in addressing domestic abuse with the introduction of legislation criminalising coercive control. Coercive control is now recognised as a serious offence, and experienced criminal lawyers must be engaged to navigate the new legislative impacts.
The team at Hamilton Janke Lawyers is equipped with the knowledge and experience necessary to navigate these serious allegations, striving to achieve the best possible outcomes for our clients. Whether you’re seeking to understand the specifics of your case or need a robust legal defence, our lawyers are here to provide clear, practical guidance and support.
The act of coercive and controlling behaviour is a form of domestic and family violence. The New South Wales government has recognised this as a serious issue that requires legal redress and early intervention to prevent its traumatic and pervasive impacts on individuals and our community.
Accordingly, the Australian Government set out national principles to address coercive control in family and domestic violence to guide the development of effective responses to coercive control. These national principles aim to create a societal understanding to assess risk identification factors, understand the context of coercive control as almost always an underpinning dynamic of family and domestic violence, and increase knowledge regarding the impacts of coercive control.
In doing so, it is hoped a consistent approach to coercive control will be obtained through community understanding, making it easier for the legal system, non-government organisations involved and support services to work together to identify and address this insidious issue.
Therefore, to address coercive control, the Australian State and Territory Governments have now criminalised coercive and controlling behaviours, which provides recognition that abusive behaviours in intimate partner relationships not only involve physical violence but now also extends to non-physical abusive behaviours that control, intimidate, and limit the autonomy of the victim-survivor who is experiencing coercive control.
Given that coercive control is a gendered phenomenon, with most coercive control cases impacting women, this national scheme also lends support to the Government’s agenda to decreasing domestic and sexual violence towards women.
Section 54F(2) of the Crimes Act (1900) NSW provides examples that will constitute coercive control.
Accordingly, physical forms of coercive behaviour in intimate or family relationships involve physical violence, sexual violence, damage to the other person’s property or harm (or death) to the person’s animal.
Non-physical forms include emotional abuse and emotional manipulation, financial abuse such as financial control through preventing, restricting or regulating a person’s access to their own money, stalking/surveillance and tracking another person and behaviour that isolates the person from others, their support networks or their culture.
Under Section 54D of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW), a person over the age of 18 years who is currently in or has had an intimate partner relationship with a person and engages in a course of repeated abusive behaviour, rather than single or episodic acts, with an intention to exert power and control in which a reasonable person would consider that course of conduct to likely cause fear of violence or have a serious adverse impact on the other person’s capacity to engage in ordinary everyday life activities, will be found guilty of a criminal offence and face a maximum of 7 years imprisonment.
To identify coercive control, the offence emphasises the capture of repeated patterns of physical violence or non-physical abuse used to hurt, scare, intimidate, threaten or control someone.
However, the legislation fails to account for other relationships within the family and domestic violence context who can also experience coercive control. Currently, only intimate partners are recognised as people experiencing coercive control for the purposes of criminal law.
If you are experiencing coercive control, it may be helpful to document domestic abuse. You could:
All of the above will support tendency evidence, which aims to establish that an individual has a tendency to act in a certain manner or have a particular state of mind.
Similarly, if faced with disharmony at the end of a relationship or separation, the use of records will also be critical in determining clear defences to coercive control allegations.
Proving coercive control presents unique challenges. This is because the use of coercive and controlling behaviour often occurs in the context of a family home, where witnesses are limited and result in one person’s word against another person’s.
This complexity of coercive control cases is heightened by the fact that, more often than not, no visible injuries will be sustained, unlike in cases of physical domestic abuse, thus leaving no tangible or concrete evidence to objectively assess and prove in court.
Indictable charges are more severe offences and generally carry a maximum penalty greater than two years imprisonment. Accordingly, coercive control is an indictable offence, as the maximum penalty is seven years of imprisonment.
Under Section 54E of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW), it is a defence to coercive control if the course of the controlling behaviour and coercive conduct is reasonable in all the circumstances.
Should you plead not guilty, your matter will proceed to a hearing or trial where both the prosecution and defence will present evidence regarding your case. It is then up to the Magistrate, Judge or Jury to decide whether you are guilty or not.
If you plead ‘guilty’, you will then be sentenced accordingly. At sentence, there is the opportunity to make submissions about your personal circumstances and objective factors that may mitigate the punishment you receive.
As coercive control is a criminal offence under Section 54D of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW), the burden of proof that the prosecution must satisfy in order for the court to find you guilty is beyond reasonable doubt.
If you are being charged with criminal offences such as Coercive Control in NSW, it is vital that you seek legal advice and legal representation. Our experienced criminal lawyers will be able to advise you on how to proceed and assist you through every step of the process. Contact our expert Criminal Defence Lawyers now.
Hamilton Janke Lawyers are one of the top rated Criminal Law Firms in the region. We treat every client with the respect and commitment they deserve. This commitment to our profession has earned us a reputation which we are very proud.
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