By Viji Sundaram. Ethnic Media Services.
A Southern California judge has upheld a new state law allowing victims to claim coercive control, designed to tip the balance in favor of women seeking child custody and restraining orders.
It didn't take long for Emily Caesar to realize that Trevor, her husband, had to have everything his way — how she dressed, who she talked to, how much she ate, where she went. He always reminded her that he was the head of the family, Emily told the court.
Emily was able to prove with written documents and audio how he had allegedly abused her again and again. “I felt like I wasn’t allowed to have my own thoughts,” she recalls.
Her attorney, Minty Siu-Kootnikoff, filed a request for a temporary restraining order in February 2021 and for custody of the couple's six-year-old son.
Siu-Kootnikoff was one of the first attorneys to invoke a new legal tool that California had enacted just a month earlier, allowing victims to allege a pattern of “coercive control” — psychological abuse that does not necessarily result in physical harm.
Siu-Kootnikoff, director of legal services at Sojourn, a domestic violence shelter in Santa Monica, saw the newly enacted law as the best tool to get her client legal relief.
“Domestic violence is about control, and it is not limited to physical abuse,” she said, noting that the new law is “crucial to addressing abuse that is not covered by criminal codes, but is just as damaging and destructive as a black eye or a broken arm.”
While not all judges are sympathetic, the conclusion of the judge who heard Emily's case shows that at least some jurists seem to have gotten the message.
“Courts’ views of domestic violence are evolving over the years,” Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael J Convey noted in his Feb. 5, 2021, ruling, “to reflect more subtle, more insidious behaviors, if you will, that can be called violence or abuse.”
Convey agreed with Siu-Kootnikoff that what Emily endured for years was indeed coercive control, and said that advocates say the purpose of reform is to give victims like Emily the benefit of the doubt.
California's 2020 law, introduced by state Sen. Susan Rubio, a survivor of domestic abuse herself, expands the definition of domestic violence and allows victims to present evidence of coercive control in family court applications for restraining orders or child custody. The coercive control law applies to civil cases, but not criminal ones.
California became the second state in the country to adopt such a reform, after Hawaii in September 2020.
July 2021, Connecticut passed a law similar to California's, with two additional provisions: It set up barriers that prevent abusers from dragging their partners to court for frivolous reasons, while also establishing a grant program for low-income survivors who need legal help when seeking a restraining order.
Coercive control occurs when an abuser isolates an intimate partner from friends and family, takes control of their personal finances and monitors their activity, or uses verbal attacks to reinforce his authority.
It's about "domination and control," noted David A. McLeod, an associate professor in the Department of Social Work at the University of Oklahoma who has researched and published articles on intimate partner violence. “If the abuser feels that he or she is losing control, he or she will pressure his or her partner to become docile again.”
The view from the podium
Women's rights advocates say embracing the concept of coercive control gives family courts additional options for criminalizing behavior that has economic and mental consequences for victims and can turn violent if not addressed early.
But they acknowledge that it is difficult to convince court officials that they should take victims who allege coercive control seriously. In fact, educating judges on how to apply the law will be key to their success.
Chitra Raghavan, a women's rights advocate and forensic psychologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, says it can take at least 10 years to figure out how the laws work.
A long court battle
Emily married Trevor in 2011, two years after they started dating. She was 30 and he was 28.
They ran their web design business out of their home in Castaic, Los Angeles County. But early on, she also noticed how “controlling and narcissistic” Trevor could be, she said. In 2015, they divorced, and had joint custody of their son, who was an infant.
Three years later, they got back together, agreeing that it would be best if Trevor became more involved in his son's life, they both said.
"He's everything to me," Trevor said of his son in a recent phone conversation.
But once together again, Emily said the abuse just intensified.
In November 2020, when Emily was trying to get her son dressed for school and asked Trevor for help because the boy was uncooperative, Trevor grabbed her by the arms and pushed her “multiple times” in front of her son, according to her testimony. She included photos of the bruises on her arm as documentary evidence.
Trevor's attorney, Matthew J. Chung, defended his client's behavior that day.
"Emily was the one who was provoking Trevor," Chung told the court. "Emily was the one who was yelling" at the boy.
Trevor claimed he was a victim, too. “It’s hard to sum up these very personal events,” he said over the phone. “But I can tell you that she did a lot of violence against me.”
At trial, Chung said Emily smoked marijuana in the presence of her son to deal with a diagnosed anxiety disorder, which diminished her parenting skills.
But Convey dismissed that claim: "There has been insufficient evidence that this use of prescription drugs or marijuana has altered or impacted her ability to care," he said.
She equally emphatically dismissed Emily's allegations that Trevor used unprescribed opioids and excessive alcohol.
But in his ruling, Convey granted Emily a temporary restraining order against her ex for three years along with sole custody of their son.
"I've made mistakes," Trevor said in an interview. But he said he found the judge's decision distressing: "I have to trust our son to someone who is not stable."
Trevor and Emily were ordered to attend separate parenting classes, while Emily said she continues to attend court-ordered group therapy.
When asked why she got back together with Trevor after everything she had experienced, Emily said that's a question she's often asked herself.
"Everything I suffered," he said, "is now in the past."
This article is part of a series on California’s coercive control law produced by San Francisco Public Press, a nonprofit investigative news organization. It was excerpted, edited and translated by Ethnic Media Services. Read the full article and others in the series at sfpublicpress.org/series/coercive-control. This reporting was funded by a grant from the Domestic Violence Impact Reporting Fund at the Annenberg Center for Health Journalism at the University of Southern California.
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