Incredible Women: Legal Systems Abuse, Coercive Control, and the Credibility of Victim-Survivors
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Fitz-Gibbon, Kate
Meyer, Silke
Walklate, Sandra
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Abstract
Research has long demonstrated that victim-survivors of intimate partner violence face barriers to being believed when they seek help via the legal system and are simultaneously at risk of their abuser weaponizing the legal system against them. This article draws on the experiences of 54 women victim-survivors of coercive control in Australia who had experienced legal systems abuse within criminal and civil protection order systems. Drawing on feminist legal theory, we highlight that the legal system continues to disbelieve women and validate abusers. These experiences hold implications for victim-survivor views on the merits and risks of criminalizing coercive control.
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Violence Against Women
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© The Author(s) 2023. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
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Criminology
Health sciences
Human society
Law and legal studies
Social Sciences
Women's Studies
coercive control
legal systems abuse
feminist legal theory
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Reeves, E; Fitz-Gibbon, K; Meyer, S; Walklate, S, Incredible Women: Legal Systems Abuse, Coercive Control, and the Credibility of Victim-Survivors, Violence Against Women, 2023