WEBVTT - Coercive Control, the Invisible Basis of Abuse 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:10.400 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:13.480 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:15.760 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:17.040 should know the podcast. 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:22.680 That's right. Big trigger warning just straight from the jump here, 0:00:24.200 --> 0:00:30.280 because this is about a form of domestic violence, more 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:36.120 specifically intimate partner violence, and it's a tough one. So 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:38.440 trigger warning. 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:43.160 Yeah. The reason that it's worth specifying the difference between 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:48.519 domestic violence and intimate partner violence is that domestic violence, 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:50.920 like you could have a kid who beats up a parent, 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:55.440 that's still domestic violence. Intimate partner violence is specifically between 0:00:55.720 --> 0:01:00.280 two people same sex, different sex, non binary in a 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:05.240 relationship where one abuses the other. That's intimate partner violence, 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:09.360 and it almost always includes actual physical violence. 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:12.480 Yeah, or as we'll see, where they both abuse each other, 0:01:12.720 --> 0:01:15.400 which is not as typical. 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:18.280 Obviously it may be a myth as well. We'll get 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:22.080 to that later. Okay. Yeah, So what we're talking about 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:26.600 is not just intimate partner violence or domestic violence, but 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:34.120 a specific kind of domestic abuse that for a while 0:01:34.280 --> 0:01:36.080 just kind of seemed like its own thing. But it 0:01:36.120 --> 0:01:39.360 seems like as more and more research gets built upon it. 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:43.240 This thing that we're going to talk about, coercive control 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:46.800 is actually the basis for a lot of the domestic 0:01:46.880 --> 0:01:51.360 violence or wife battering that it was long called. That 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:55.000 it's actually what's actually going on beneath the surface, and 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:59.200 that the actual beatings and the actual rapes inside the 0:01:59.240 --> 0:02:04.240 home are symptoms or just the most obvious parts or 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:08.320 factors in this larger thing, which is called coerceive control, 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:13.600 where one partner essentially controls the other partner's life. And 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:15.760 that's generally what we're talking about today. 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:20.799 Yeah, And the word coercion means, you know, persuasion through threat. 0:02:20.880 --> 0:02:25.440 So in this case, coerceve control is controlling that partner 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:30.359 generally through through threat. And then you know, we'll see 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:33.880 there's a host of sort of components to all this, 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:38.760 but actual violence is almost always a part of it. 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:44.200 Not necessarily always, but a lot of times that violence 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:46.960 is part of a like you said, like a larger 0:02:47.000 --> 0:02:51.480 plan to use the threat of that violence for control. 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:53.640 Right, or the violence itself for sure. 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:54.720 Yeah. 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:58.960 So our understanding of coercion in general dates back to 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:01.959 just after the Korean War, and I remember us discussing 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:05.960 this in the brainwashing episode. But there was a whole 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:10.880 thing where some POWs appeared to be to turn collaborators 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:16.840 with the Chinese and Korean captors, and it was chalked 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:19.760 up to brainwashing, that they had been brainwashed, which must 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:22.880 mean that they probably were pretty weak minded to begin with, 0:03:23.360 --> 0:03:26.000 so give him a break. And there was a social 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:31.400 scientist named Albert Bitterman who was not satisfied by the answer, 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:35.800 and he started studying what tactics the Korean and Chinese 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:39.640 captors had used on the POWs to get them to 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:43.320 seem to collaborate. And what he found was that they 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:46.839 used tactics that he came to kind of break out 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:53.440 into what constitutes coercion, how somebody could make someone act 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:59.160 against their will seemingly under their own will and without 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:01.960 just using phys violence. And he came up with a 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:03.240 whole list of stuff. 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:06.360 Actually, yeah, and you know, again just to point out, 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:10.200 like his whole jam was, this is not brainwashing. This 0:04:10.280 --> 0:04:14.560 is something entirely different. And I think and I agree 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:16.560 with him. I think he thought he was making it 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:24.640 more almost easier to believe, because brainwashing sounds so kind 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:28.039 of out there when you it kind of just conjuous 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:31.040 to mind, like people that literally don't have control of 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:35.480 their mind anymore. Where he's like, hey, coercion can kind 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:38.919 of happen to anyone, and your because your brain's not 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:41.800 being taken over. And like you said, he came out 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:45.640 with this chart of coercion and was like, you know, 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:48.360 the Chinese and Korean captors are doing this. It's not 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:52.599 like uh in World War Two with Germany in Japan, 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:56.960 when actual physical torture was you know, sort of the 0:04:56.960 --> 0:05:01.920 main component in this case. And again there is some violence, 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:05.280 but it's more these tactics and the threat of violence 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:09.680 that get someone under your sort of spell in a way. 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:15.720 Yeah, because threatening violence, when you're violent with somebody, there's 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:18.000 an end to it. There's a point that the person 0:05:18.120 --> 0:05:21.760 knows is it's going to come to an end. So 0:05:21.960 --> 0:05:24.880 now this thing that they've been worried about is actually happening, 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:27.000 and that means that the end is coming soon too. 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:30.120 The threat of violence, there is no end to it. 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:32.520 It's always around the corner. So it can generate like 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:36.880 real anxiety in ways that actual violence can't. Yeah, that's 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:39.920 just part of it. Another part of it is isolation, 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:44.640 monopolization of perception, like keeping people in a room with 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:48.680 the lights on twenty four hours a day. It just 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:51.919 has all sorts of weird effects on people. It also 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:56.960 helps to restrict information so they are completely isolated and 0:05:57.160 --> 0:06:01.480 have no contact or way to get information from outside 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:04.640 of their captivity. Those are just a couple of them. 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:09.080 Yeah, the list goes on with humiliation, any kind of 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:15.680 degrading punishment, you know, stripping people naked, no privacy, not 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:18.560 allowed to take care of their bodies and you know 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:21.760 go to the bathroom in a normal hygienic way or 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:25.800 bathe themselves, to basically kind of turn people and to 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:30.839 animals and break them down so they don't resist. Exhaustion, 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:34.800 of course, is one of them. You know, these long interrogations, 0:06:35.120 --> 0:06:39.080 you know, limiting food, limiting sleep obviously, so all of 0:06:39.120 --> 0:06:41.839 this stuff is sort of working them hard. All of 0:06:41.880 --> 0:06:45.160 this stuff is going to weaken their ability to resist 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:46.159 the coercion. 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:48.919 Yeah, and the one that gets me the most is 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:52.599 the most despicable of all occasional indulgences. Yeah, I know 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:56.839 you're gonna say that, because not only does it it 0:06:56.920 --> 0:06:59.920 almost like creates like an affinity for the captor in 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:04.240 the mind of the pow who's being mistreated, Suddenly there's 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:07.360 like this generosity that they can latch onto and be like, yes, people, 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:10.160 there is goodness still in the world. But the reason 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:12.480 that they're doing that is because it keeps you from 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:16.040 getting used to being mistreated. Man, isn't that just the 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:17.920 most despicable thing you can imagine? 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:21.600 Yeah, because what that says is that a human being 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:26.960 could potentially get so used to that abuse, coercive abuse 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:30.520 and physical abuse that they're not going to talk. So 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:33.000 throw them a bone every now and then, and it 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:37.400 just shakes up their mental sort of processes so they 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:38.240 don't get used to it. 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:42.400 Yeah, and it makes all abuse after that that much 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:48.160 more effective. Continuously. There's also demonstrating omnipotence, which I guess 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:51.520 just revealing information that they wouldn't guess that you had 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:55.200 would be pretty shocking and would also make you feel like, well, 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:58.240 there's no way to hide anything from these people. They 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:01.840 know everything. And then another one was trivial rules. Did 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:02.560 you see that one? 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:06.920 Yeah, So I mean that's I mean, that can be 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:11.920 just any mundane thing, like you know, you answer after 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:15.080 we knock this many times, or you approached the door 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:18.200 in a certain way, just any kind of little trivial rule. 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:22.880 And again it's just about control. 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:26.120 Right, and it creates a habit of complying in the 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:29.880 subject too, right. So if you put all this together, 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:34.800 Bitterman is widely considered to have essentially identified the techniques 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:38.520 of coercion that anybody could use on anyone else. And 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:43.640 in fact, the US government apparently used Betterman's tactics as 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:47.680 a playbook at Guantanamo Bay. I'm sure elsewhere as well 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:51.160 that we just don't know about at the moment. And 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:54.600 there was also this kind of weird thread that also 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:59.520 came about a couple decades after Bitterman's research in the fifties. 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:03.440 Already in the seventies, the women's movement, like we've talked about, 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:07.240 really started to gain steam, right, And one of the 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:11.920 things that a huge focus was the plight of women 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:15.920 who were physically abused by their husbands battered women, that's 0:09:15.920 --> 0:09:18.080 what they call them at the time, back in the seventies. 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:22.560 And one of the things that scholars, feminist scholars in 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:26.600 particular at the time noticed was that there were real 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:31.479 parallels between the tactics that Bitterman had identified of coercion 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:35.760 used against POW's in the Korean War and reports of 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:40.280 how women were treated in the home when they were 0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:43.920 victims of domestic abuse, and it became clear that these 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:48.120 coercion tactics had kind of been adopted unconsciously by men 0:09:48.160 --> 0:09:53.200 who abused their wives, and that, in a very roundabout way, 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:56.480 for decades later, laid the groundwork for our idea of 0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:57.560 coercive control. 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:00.640 Yeah, I mean, I mean you grew up. You were 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:03.720 a little younger than me. But in the seventies and eighties, 0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:07.040 the notion of you know, like you said, what they 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:09.640 call it at the time, the battered woman, the battered wife, 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:13.120 was a real It was really on the radar. I 0:10:13.160 --> 0:10:16.480 remember when I was a kid, there there were movies, 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:19.160 there was this It just scared the crap out of me. 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:23.680 Not to get too personal with my family, but you know, 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:26.800 I've talked a little bit before about having a nuts 0:10:26.920 --> 0:10:30.880 great childhood, and that just that the awareness of that 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:35.280 and fighting in the house all combined to just terrify me. 0:10:35.480 --> 0:10:38.040 When I was a kid. I remember there was and 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:39.520 I looked it up today because I was like, man, 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:42.320 I remember there was a TV movie with the guy 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:46.040 from mash that just terrified me. And I looked at 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:50.400 you from Honeycut, So I looked at it was an 0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:54.920 NBC TV movie called Battered, and it was three sort 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:58.480 of stories. Mike Ferrell was one of them, like the 0:10:58.600 --> 0:11:02.360 nicest guy ever on MAS played an abusive husband and 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:04.560 it just told each of these stories and it was 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:07.719 I remember this coming on and it just like it 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:11.080 was awful for a young kid to watch that while 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:14.160 also was sort of living in a household of yelling 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:17.160 and fighting and stuff like that. So it was just 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:20.559 it was a big part of the national landscape if 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:23.440 like a kid is hearing about this stuff all the 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:27.199 time via TV movies. Another one that came out was 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:30.000 obviously The Burning Bed, which was is a big case 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:32.400 that we're going to talk about now because it was 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:35.520 I mean, the movie it was a landmark TV movie, 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:38.120 but the case that it was based on also a 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:39.920 landmark case in a lot of ways. 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:44.160 Yeah, One, I'm really sorry that you experienced that as 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:48.560 a kid. That's awful things. And two, yes, the Burning 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:53.480 Bed was a huge, huge deal. It changed everything. Like 0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:56.280 this was nineteen eighty four that the TV movie came out. 0:11:56.920 --> 0:11:59.520 I think the book came out in nineteen eighty and 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:01.959 the whole thing was based on the experience of a 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:06.480 woman who throughout the seventies suffered tremendously at the hands 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:09.040 of her husband and then ex husband, who continued to 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:12.360 abuse her even after they were divorced. The woman's name 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:15.960 was Francine Hughes. Her husband and then ex husband's name 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:20.600 was Mickey Hughes. And he did everything like he beat her, 0:12:20.640 --> 0:12:25.959 he raped her, he controlled her. The story itself is 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:29.600 actually you could do an entire episode on it easily. 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:33.400 It was just so horrible that this happened, and it 0:12:33.520 --> 0:12:36.280 so captured the attention of America. Thanks to the book 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:38.520 and then to the TV movie, it really kind of 0:12:38.559 --> 0:12:43.240 helped move forward this awareness of just how bad the 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:46.720 lives of battered women were, because it was not a 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:49.200 secret that there were women who were beaten by their 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:52.600 husbands in America. I think it was outlawed in the 0:12:52.720 --> 0:12:57.240 United States, first by Alabama in eighteen seventy one. By 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:02.240 nineteen twenty, every state has had outlawed wife abuse in 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:07.920 the home right, Yeah, but in the courts that wasn't enforced. 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:10.840 There was very frequently not enforced, and in general American 0:13:10.880 --> 0:13:17.000 culture viewed wife battering spousal abuse as a private family matter. 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:20.240 As long as it happened buying closed doors and your 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:23.520 your wife didn't show up to work, if you let 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:27.240 her have a job with black eyes, people were probably 0:13:27.240 --> 0:13:29.200 going to look the other way. Even if you ended 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:32.120 up in court over it, criminal court over it, you 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:34.400 were still probably going to get off because it was 0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:37.640 a family matter. And I saw, just real quick, I 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:40.960 saw a quote that a writer named Aaron blakemore for 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:44.280 I think history dot Com found there was a New 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:47.439 York City councilman in nineteen seventy six named Leon Katz 0:13:47.920 --> 0:13:50.520 who said, are we to break up a marriage simply 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:53.800 because a man beats his wife? Like that was the 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:56.840 attitude at the time. So this is what the feminist 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.640 movement was up against. And circling back to the burning 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:00.760 bed help a. 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:04.600 Lot, yeah, big time. You know you mentioned in case 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:07.680 people are confused about how or why he continued to 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:11.240 abuse her after their divorce. This is over a thirteen 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:13.920 year period. But they divorced in nineteen seventy one, he 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:17.040 got in a bad car accident and she let him 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:20.840 move back into the house and suffered six more years 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:27.520 of abuse. And this guy was a despicable human being. 0:14:28.240 --> 0:14:31.800 If all of this abuse wasn't enough, and we're talking, 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:33.400 and this is stuff that'll come out, you know, as 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:36.520 clear examples of course of control, like not just the 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:41.520 physical violence, but threatening her life. She made her drop 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:46.320 out of secretarial school, burn her books the night of 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:50.480 the final incident. And this seems to be a common 0:14:50.520 --> 0:14:55.120 thing as far as tying in historical cultural at the 0:14:55.160 --> 0:14:58.120 time domestic roles of like, you know, the wife cooks 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:00.120 for the husband and takes care of the kids. In 0:15:00.160 --> 0:15:02.960 this and that he like destroyed the dinner, threw it 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:05.320 on the floor, made her clean it up, made her 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:09.160 cook it again, that kind of thing. And then in 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:13.920 another incident, strangled his daughter's kitten in front of uh. 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:16.360 He actually did. He didn't just threaten. 0:15:16.080 --> 0:15:20.680 To no, no, no, He did so a despicable human 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:24.720 to the point where after that final night where she 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:28.760 was raped, one final time, he passed out drunk and 0:15:28.840 --> 0:15:31.920 she set his bed on fire, which is why it's 0:15:31.960 --> 0:15:34.480 called the burning bed. And Fara Faucet got a lot 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:37.640 of acclaim for taking on like a really serious role 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:42.200 and portraying Francin and Hughes to the great Paul La 0:15:42.240 --> 0:15:44.240 Matt's despicable Mickey Hughes. 0:15:45.240 --> 0:15:48.080 I had not heard of him. I didn't bother to 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:49.640 look him up. Who is he? What did he do? 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:52.320 Oh? He was He was a great actor in the seventies. 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:53.240 He was in a lot of stuff. 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:55.120 Okay, I didn't recognize him. 0:15:55.160 --> 0:16:00.560 Yeah, you remember Melvin and Howard Jonathan Demmy move about 0:16:00.560 --> 0:16:04.320 the true story of the when the guy picked up 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:09.920 Howard Hughes as a hitchhiker. No, he was Melvin and 0:16:10.000 --> 0:16:11.520 he was in a lot of stuff, Paulick guy in 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:12.560 the seventies and eighties. 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:14.560 Okay, I got to see that movie. I've never heard 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:14.880 of that. 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:17.760 Well, it's not what you think. 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:20.880 It's not a fun road trip in that tradition of 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:21.440 road trip. 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:23.280 No, no, no, it's a very good movie. But that's a 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:25.600 very small part of it. Anyway. Just a couple of 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:29.680 more quick points just of how reprehensible this case was. 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:35.120 When the cops came they that night, they didn't arrest him, 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:37.400 and in front of the cops, they later testified the 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:41.000 police said that in front of them, he said it's 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:44.600 over for you because you called the police in front 0:16:44.640 --> 0:16:47.040 of the cops and they still didn't arrest him. And 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:50.200 after she killed him, she drove straight to the police 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:52.720 station and confessed. 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:54.720 Right, and we should say they had kids, and the 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:56.520 first thing she did was get the kids out of 0:16:56.520 --> 0:16:58.240 the house and then go back in and set the 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:00.920 bed on fire or said the bedroom fire around him. 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:06.440 So yeah, there was. Yeah, the impact that the book 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:08.879 and then the TV movie had and spreading awareness is 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:13.800 like really hard to overestimate. But it had another really 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:16.600 significant impact too in the courts, because remember we said 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:20.440 that the course would just kind of be like, yeah, sorry, 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:23.160 you shouldn't have burned dinner. I mean that's just what 0:17:23.200 --> 0:17:25.240 women do. You cook dinner and you do it right 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:27.919 or else who knows what your husband's gonna do kind 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:33.600 of thing. Right. And this, this case that Francine Hughes 0:17:33.960 --> 0:17:36.720 actually went through when she turned herself into the police 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:40.720 and was charged with first degree murder, she got off 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:45.200 just because she used a temporary insanity defense. I think 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:47.320 that that was what it took for a jury to 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:50.600 be like, okay, fine, we'll we'll let you off. We'll 0:17:50.600 --> 0:17:53.560 buy that, but we can only buy that because it 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:56.000 doesn't matter what else he did to you. All we 0:17:56.119 --> 0:17:58.600 know about is the physical abuse that happened from time 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:00.960 to time, And yeah, that sucks, but is it enough 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:04.960 to kill a man and she had to use temporary insanity. 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:09.119 And shortly after that, I think because of that case, 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:12.960 a psychologist named Leonora Walker started studying women who had 0:18:13.080 --> 0:18:16.920 killed their abusers and found that there were a lot 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:19.080 of similarities between them, and she came up with a 0:18:19.160 --> 0:18:22.760 concept called battered Women's syndrome, and essentially it sought to 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:27.440 explain how a woman put in a position of being 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:33.320 abused could reasonably kill her abuser, even if the abusers 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:37.280 not in the act right then of committing violence against them. 0:18:37.680 --> 0:18:41.040 And it laid a really great legal groundwork for a 0:18:41.080 --> 0:18:44.240 lot of women to follow who did kill their abuser, 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:48.080 because this had kind of been established like this is 0:18:48.119 --> 0:18:50.439 a thing, and that ultimately kind of came out of 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:51.600 the Francy Use case. 0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:54.679 Yeah, and she she got off on temporary insanity, but 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:58.720 also may have only gotten off on temporary insanity because 0:18:58.800 --> 0:19:05.080 of the credible groundswell of support from you know, obviously 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:08.800 largely women protesting outside the court. I mean, it was 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:11.200 a very well known case and a very big deal, 0:19:12.200 --> 0:19:14.400 and it was not one that could just be sort 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:17.960 of dealt with as usual because there were hundreds and 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:20.680 hundreds of women outside the court every day with signs 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:24.240 like demanding acquittal for Francy and Hughes. So it was 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:26.359 just sort of one of those moments in time and 0:19:26.480 --> 0:19:30.399 history that changed everything because people spoke. 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:34.399 Up so that the whole the syndrome really gets a 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:37.120 lot of people. Woman's gets a lot of people too. 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:41.000 There's some issues with the concept of battered women's syndrome 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:43.399 and that it basically says you have to be the 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:46.639 kind of woman who is submissive and passive and your 0:19:46.680 --> 0:19:49.560 husband's still beating you up. You're still cooking dinner correctly, 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:52.919 and your husband's still beating you up. It calls for 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:55.639 like a certain kind of perfect victim for juries to 0:19:56.520 --> 0:20:00.960 accept battered women's syndrome defense, and some people are like, Okay, 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:04.720 we need something that's like more gender neutral and essentially 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:09.960 says any reasonable person would kill their abuser given these circumstances. 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:14.400 And so battered women's syndrome has kind of evolved over time, 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:17.080 and the circumstances that have kind of been laid. Is 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:21.200 the groundwork for that reasonable woman to kill her abuser 0:20:21.359 --> 0:20:25.120 or reasonable person to kill her abuser was coercive control. 0:20:25.640 --> 0:20:30.639 Yeah, and within that Leonora Walker sort of groundwork that 0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:32.480 she laid one of the big things that she focused 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:36.919 on with something called learned helplessness, and that is this 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:40.560 concept that, hey, they have they have learned to be helpless. 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:44.040 They probably didn't go into this relationship or not necessarily 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:47.639 went in to this relationship like that, but through the 0:20:47.680 --> 0:20:52.120 tactics of coercive control a KA torture when looked at 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:56.600 in a military setting, they have learned to be helpless 0:20:56.720 --> 0:20:59.960 and maybe the only option is to set their back 0:21:00.160 --> 0:21:00.600 on fire. 0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:04.520 Yeah, but that's also a good example of how other communities, 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:08.920 like black communities, like black women in particular, are left 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:12.040 out of that battered women's because again, it requires them, 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:17.000 the victim to be perfect white, submissive, middle class typically, 0:21:17.760 --> 0:21:21.400 and if you're a black woman culturally speaking in America, 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:25.920 you're viewed is much stronger physically emotionally than a white 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:29.320 woman of that description. And so it'd be tough for 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:32.040 you to use battered women's syndrome because maybe you didn't 0:21:32.080 --> 0:21:35.200 learn learned helplessness, and that's a part of it. Maybe 0:21:35.200 --> 0:21:38.240 you do seem like you wouldn't put up with much guff, 0:21:38.280 --> 0:21:41.520 so you killed the guy who knows it's just that 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:45.200 battered women's syndrome was much more limiting. And then one 0:21:45.200 --> 0:21:47.400 of the things that coercive control does is really kind 0:21:47.400 --> 0:21:49.120 of spread it out and it takes the woman out, 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:52.080 and it takes the syndrome out and says, this happens 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:57.359 a lot, and it's a pattern that can result in 0:21:57.400 --> 0:22:00.880 the abuse. Are being killed by the abuse, and that's 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:03.520 a reasonable response to that kind of treatment. 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:06.080 Yeah, should we. 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:08.439 Take a break, Yeah, for sure. 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:11.320 All right, we'll be right back with more on coercive control. 0:22:38.480 --> 0:22:41.200 All right, So we've been throwing that word around a lot. 0:22:41.240 --> 0:22:44.800 That term, rather coercive control, was actually coined by a 0:22:44.800 --> 0:22:50.160 guy named Evan Stark, a sociologist, and again it's sort 0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:54.800 of trying to highlight the idea that what's going on 0:22:55.000 --> 0:22:58.800 is not just physical violence, but really just a deprivation 0:22:59.520 --> 0:23:04.880 of freedom, making sure that your partner doesn't have autonomy 0:23:05.560 --> 0:23:08.200 by controlling them. And he wrote a book in two 0:23:08.200 --> 0:23:12.800 thousand and seven called Coercive Control colin of course, the 0:23:12.960 --> 0:23:17.520 Entrapment of Women in Personal Life. Evan Stark has done 0:23:17.560 --> 0:23:21.879 some pretty great work. In nineteen seventy nine started getting 0:23:21.920 --> 0:23:27.080 into domestic violence work along with his wife, who was 0:23:27.080 --> 0:23:32.679 a physician named Anne Flitcraft who worked at Yale New 0:23:32.680 --> 0:23:37.560 Haven Hospital and noticed in the seventies that way more 0:23:37.640 --> 0:23:41.399 women were coming into the er that had been beaten 0:23:41.480 --> 0:23:46.800 up by their partner than the statistics typically had indicated. 0:23:46.880 --> 0:23:49.359 I think it was supposedly like one in twenty and 0:23:49.440 --> 0:23:51.880 she said it's actually more like one in four. 0:23:52.520 --> 0:23:55.520 Yeah. That was another way that I think society lived 0:23:55.560 --> 0:23:59.280 with itself and being complicit in allowing domestic abuse. It 0:23:59.400 --> 0:24:03.960 was this pretty rare, and Flickcraft was like, no, twenty 0:24:04.000 --> 0:24:06.440 five percent of women who come into the er were 0:24:06.440 --> 0:24:09.040 beaten by their husbands or sent there by their husbands. Right. So, 0:24:10.320 --> 0:24:14.080 in addition to kind of supporting the women's movement at 0:24:14.119 --> 0:24:17.920 the time and their assertions that this was a big 0:24:17.960 --> 0:24:19.840 deal and we need to do something about it and 0:24:19.880 --> 0:24:26.280 it's really widespread, Flickcraft's research inspired her husband to kind 0:24:26.280 --> 0:24:30.640 of go off and do this parallel work I guess 0:24:30.720 --> 0:24:35.000