Women’s Counselling Centre

Abuse Can Take Many Forms

Physical: Any unwanted or non-consensual physical contact or assault.

Verbal and Emotional: The attack on one’s emotional and mental well-being through name calling and put-downs.

Psychological: Any threatening, intimidating, isolating, or controlling behaviour.

Sexual: Any unwanted, non-consensual sexual contact or comments.

Financial: Control of all finances.

Spiritual Abuse: Any maltreatment of a person in the name of God, faith, religion, or church.

Organized and Extreme Abuse (OEA): This involves multiple abuses, systematic methods of control, and severe psychological & physical trauma inflicted upon individuals. This may also include physical and sexual abuse, mind control and torture.

Coercive Control: Generally, coercive behaviour is a continuing act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation, intimidation or other forms of abuse that is used to harm, punish or frighten a person during a relationship, and following separation. Often, the abuser is able to create and maintain their control without ever using physical force.

Coercive behaviour encompasses:
• Threats and intimidation (i.e. if you call the police, I will kill your children).
• Minimizing and denying the abuse
• Isolating the person from friends, family, or work/school
• Emotional abuse such as constant criticism and degrading verbal abuse
• Economic abuse and control
• Surveillance (i.e. monitoring who they speak to, when and for how long).
• Stalking and monitoring (following their everyday movements such as where they go to work, who their coworkers are, their friends, where they might go for dinner, etc.).
• Gaslighting (i.e. the gaslighter tells them that they are crazy or is blowing the issues in the relationship out of proportion, the gaslighter tells them one story and then tells other people a very different one).

(The definition of family violence in The Divorce Act has changed (1 March 2021) to include a broad and inclusive definition that explicitly includes coercive and controlling behaviours as well as behaviours that cause the person to fear for their own or someone else’s safety.)

Please use this link for more information:

https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/rib-reb/mpafvc-capcvf/pdf/RSD_2023_MakingAppropriatebrochure-eng.pdf

This material is sourced from:

https://lukesplace.ca/coercive-control/

You may be in an intimate partner abusive relationship.

If you are wondering whether you are in an abusive relationship, complete a quiz by clicking Here (The information contained in the quiz is not meant to be an exhaustive list of abuse warning signs. However, it is a list of the common experiences of women who have been abused. If you answered “yes” to any of the questions in the quiz, you may be in an abusive relationship. We encourage you to seek help.)