It was an exceptionally hot spring day in Montreal, and lawyer Karine Barrette was trying to capture the attention of her audience, 150 police officers sitting in a room without air conditioning at the Maisonneuve Market.
“Are you dealing with a victim who worked before the relationship, and no longer works? Who would go out with girlfriends and who doesn’t anymore? Who cut ties with their family?” Barrette asked the officers.
“Sometimes, through the questions you ask, you’ll find out how their habits have changed since the start of a relationship.”
The officers had gathered for a workshop on coercive control. Barrette is a project manager from the Regroupement des maisons pour femmes victimes de violence conjugale — a network of women’s shelters. She asks them if they have already heard of the concept, and half of them raise their hands.
For police officers — and the general public — coercive control remains a relatively new term. Coined in 2007, it has gained popularity over the last few years as victims’ rights advocates strive to improve and modernize the current definition of intimate partner violence.
Coercive control involves a pattern of behaviour that seeks to dominate one’s partner. It not only includes physical violence, but also more insidious displays of abuse, like surveillance, denigration, financial abuse and isolation.
Onstage, Barrette and her co-facilitator, investigator Karine Côté of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), explained to officers that while many of those behaviours are not necessarily illegal — yet — they can pose significant danger to the victim, making them critical to detect.
Speaking to the crowd, Côté stressed the essential role of first responders.
“You get to be in the presence of both parties, you get to see inside the apartment. You are our eyes and ears but also those of investigators and [prosecutors],” Coté said.
Coercive and controlling behaviour is at the centre of many cases of intimate partner violence. A domestic violence advocacy group in Montreal has created a website that offers women resources to help navigate the issue.
This training will soon be indispensable: The Canadian Senate is expected to pass Bill C-332 — sponsored by NDP MP Laurel Collins — to criminalize coercive control.
Collins introduced the private member’s bill in May 2023 after seeing the impact of coercive control on her sister.
All new laws require an adaptation period and training for stakeholders. But in this case, Quebec will have a head start.
Since 2021, the Regroupement des maisons pour femmes victimes de violence conjugale and its partners travelled all over the province to train thousands of interveners on this modern understanding of intimate partner violence.
At the time, controlling and coercive behaviour was already criminalized in England and Scotland — in 2015 and 2018 respectively — and some Canadian politicians started to campaign for a similar law in Canada.
For Barrette and her colleagues who deal with family violence cases every day, there was no time to lose.
“Control is present in almost, if not all, domestic homicides,” the lawyer told Radio-Canada, citing a study which showed that 92 per cent of intimate partner murders were preceded by coercive control.
These statistics debunk the long-held belief that spousal homicides result from an escalation of physical violence: according to recent research, up to one-third of spousal homicide cases weren’t preceded by any physical abuse.
Barrette explained that while the group awaited the criminalization of coercive control, they aimed to equip stakeholders with the ability to recognize it early, allowing them to implement appropriate safety measures in advance.
Thanks to the support of an advisory committee made up of about 30 members in social work, law enforcement and the justice system, the group created adapted training sessions, which have since been offered to more than 6,000 social-judicial actors, including nine police forces in Quebec.
The SPVM, which at the time was preparing its own training on intimate partner violence, collaborated with the group to integrate coercive control into the curriculum.
Anouk St-Onge, chief of the SPVM’s specialized domestic violence unit, said police officers have learned through the training that intimate partner violence encompasses a lot more than they thought.
“Six years ago, when I took on the domestic violence file, I thought I knew what it was,” St-Onge said. “In the end, it was much more complex.”
Her colleague, Laio Auger, investigation supervisor at the SPVM’s domestic violence unit, sometimes accompanies Barrette as a co-facilitator for her colleagues.
She noted that police officers are used to working with areas of the law that frame specific offences, like assault. The training teaches them that they must also be on the lookout for behaviour like humiliation, financial abuse and gaslighting. Above all, officers are taught that it is important to write down everything they notice.
“Just because it’s not yet in the Criminal Code, doesn’t mean there’s nothing they can do about it,” Auger said. She added that identifying symptoms and displays of coercive control — and documenting it — can be helpful to building a case and liaising with partners to create a safety net.
Raising awareness
All signs of controlling behaviour noted in police reports can prove useful in court, explained lawyer Marie-Claude Richer. Since 2021, Richer has been running the Rebâtir legal clinic, which offers free advice to victims of intimate partner or sexual violence.
She added that her organization often finds itself doing awareness-raising work.
“We still have a lot of women who call us [at Rebâtir], and who tell us, ‘listen, I’m not sure I’m entitled to your free services because I don’t think I’m a victim of domestic abuse, because he doesn’t hit me,'” Richer said.
“But when we go over the facts with them, the story of their lives, there is always coercive control.”
The term is also relatively new to the courts. The words “coercive control” only started to appear in court decisions in 2021, after an amendment to the Divorce Act added it to its definition of family violence.
In 2023, Quebec’s Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions also adopted the concept. Now, the presence of coercive control can lead to the detention of the accused or prevent their release.
“Every year, we see an increase in judgments that deal with coercive control,” Richer said. “And that’s important, because before it didn’t exist.”
She said taking this type of violence into account can ensure that the courts better protect victims of family violence — including children.
A new attitude
At the Maisonneuve Market, facilitators of the coercive control training shared anecdotes from the field with officers.
One particularly chilling example involved a case where police noticed a bowl of dog food on the floor in a home where there were no pets.
The bowl belonged to a victim of intimate partner violence.
“It’s the total degradation of women,” Barrette said. “We’re not even dealing with the treatment of a human at this point. We are really humiliating the person,” she said.
Limiting victims’ access to resources, depriving them of sleep or preventing them from sleeping in the marital bed, denying them food, utensils and plates are all gestures that strip victims of basic dignity, she added.
In an interview with Radio-Canada weeks after the training, Barrette said that her audience’s reactions tend to vary. Some realize during the training that they themselves are victims of that kind of behaviour.
She explained one of the goals of the training is to deconstruct the idea that a police intervention is only successful if the victim files a complaint.
“When you manage to build a bond of trust with the victim — even if there is no statement — that’s not negligible,” she said. “You have sown a seed that will change the victim’s path.”
Barrette noted that until very recently, intimate partner violence was considered a private issue that only concerned the couple.
“Now, I think we are realizing that everyone has a role to play,” she said.
If you are affected by domestic violence, SOS violence conjugale is a provincewide toll-free crisis line, available 24/7. You can reach them at 1-800-363-9010 by phone, or via text at 438-601-1211. If you’re in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911.