Autori: Dragoș-Nicolae DUMITRU, Marinela-Loredana BĂLĂNOIU

Publicat în: Revista Pro Lege nr. 3/2021

Disponibil onlineaici

Cuvinte-cheie: control coercitiv, control comportamental, victimă captivă, violență domestică, abuz psihologic.

Some considerations on coercive control behaviour as a type of violence and the need to criminalize it

Abstract:

„Finally, we have come to talk publicly about domestic violence, but we are talking about it in an outdated approach, in which the man comes home from work and beats his wife. But we all know that today the realities are much more complex”. Research in the field is increasingly demonstrating that domestic violence does not only consist in the exercise of acts of physical aggression. In reality, domestic violence often materializes in an approach of terror and permanent oppression that may include acts of control, psychological, economic, physical and sexual abuse. This form of abuse, known as coercive control, aims to bring the partner or former partner into a state of dependence, of total subordination to the aggressor, a situation in which the victim’s freedom of action is greatly diminished, if not suppressed, the felt effect being „captivity”. At the international level, the incrimination of coercive control in national legislations is increasing, in the context in which recent specialized studies more and more highlight the danger of this behavioural pattern. The usefulness and urgency of such an incrimination are also revealed by the analysis of the case law on homicide crimes committed between family members, coercive control being, not infrequently, a predictive factor of lethal violence.

Keywords: coercive control, control behaviour, captive victim, domestic violence, psychological abuse.