Coercive control con job

In the UK, the situation was more complex. Similar laws were introduced in England in 2015, making coercive control punishable by up to five years in jail. By 2020 these laws resulted in 24,000 'incidents' but only 300 convictions. That meant an incredible waste of police time for almost no result. Even though the laws were supposed to be gender neutral, 97% of those convicted were male.

Here too, the new weaponry against men only really started to work when police were trained exactly how to target men. In England, there was a 40% increase in arrests after police and staff were trained to identify coercive control behaviour – although after eight months the effect wore off and the brainwashing had to be repeated.

The Hannah Clarke masterstroke.

Our powerful Australian feminists had a new trick up their sleeves when the time came for trying to push through coercive control legislation in Queensland and NSW. They exploited the grieving parents of Hannah Clarke, a young Brisbane mother killed with her children in a family homicide. This tragic older couple were persuaded that their family members may not have died if coercive control laws were in place. They soon started appearing in news stories, spear-heading the feminist campaign, and using their new foundation to warn of the dangers of coercive control and its link to domestic homicide.

This too was a total invention. Even Evan Stark didn't endorse such claims. The alleged link to homicide wasn't promoted when coercive control was first introduced in other jurisdictions (such as Tasmania and the UK) and there's no evidence from these places that coercive control laws have had any impact on the safety of women.

But naturally we can count on the inventiveness of feminist bureaucrats to rectify that problem. When the NSW government set up their inquiry into proposed coercive control legislation, Speakman came out with a sensational claim from the 2017-19 report of the NSW Domestic Violence Review Team that 99% of domestic homicides were linked to coercive control. No convincing evidence was provided to support that claim, let alone any details about how their "research" was conducted.

The truth about this absurd claim was exposed in an excellent speech in November 2022 to the NSW Parliament by One Nation's Mark Latham, who pointed out this Review Team had produced a string of reports since it was established in 2010, clearly demonstrating that socio-economic factors are key to explaining domestic homicide: poverty; mental health issues; Aboriginality; cultural factors; drug and alcohol abuse and past criminal records.

But then along came a new Review Team head, Teresa O'Sullivan, and suddenly all that socio-economic data disappeared, to be replaced by what Latham called "politically-laden advocacy." According to Latham, her 2017-19 report was an example of what he called "mission search" namely, "an organization retrofitting its research in response to a newly fashionable theory." The Review Team were told to look for examples of "coercive control," which unsurprisingly they found 99% of the time. (Note to NSW readers, Mark Latham deserves our vote in the upcoming election for his brave advocacy for fair treatment for men).

Naturally when coercive control became part of the criminal law of NSW, the government congratulated itself for having passed this "life-saving" law reform. Note that in NSW, coercive control can be punished with up to 7 years jail, compared with 2 years for common assault. The Attorney General's Second Reading speech makes clear that coercive control need not involve violence and can even be totally harmless. How does this make sense?

The misidentification hiccup.

Now for the latest twist in this incredible saga.The ABC recently ran a story from Tasmania about family violence orders backfiring on women, warning of a "growing misidentification crisis" where police have "mistaken the victim for the perpetrator" and charged women with criminal offences. The article claimed police had failed to analyse "complex patterns of coercive control" - which means they get confused about who's actually in need of protection.

So, despite strenuous efforts to indoctrinate the police to target only men some brave officers had the guts to examine the evidence and determine where the blame truly lay in the troubled relationship.