Children of Coercive Control

In accessible prose illustrated by dramatic cases from his forensic practice, Evan Stark shows that the vast majority of children killed or seriously injured in families are victims of coercive control by their father. Coercive control has been adapted by many countries and US States as the overarching definition of violence against women. Children are secondary victims of this process. Stark describes why he would abolish the child welfare system and replace the ameliorative approach to child abuse and child protection with criminal laws against coercive control, and support independence for women and children.

Children of Coercive Control extends Evan Stark''s path-breaking analysis of interpersonal violence to children, showing that coercive control is the most important cause and context of child abuse and child homicide outside a war zone, as well as of the sexual abuse, denigration, exploitation, isolation and subordination of children. The book provides a working model of the coercive control of children and illustrates its dynamics and consequences with dramatic cases drawn from the headlines and Dr. Stark''s forensic practice. The cases include those in which the coercive control of children runs in tandem with the coercive control of women, where children are "weaponized" in the coercive control of their mother and cases where abused mothers harm their children to survive or protect them from worse. By highlighting a criminal cause of child maltreatment and a plausible justice response, Evan Stark challenges the common assumptions that child abuse and neglect fall on a continuum of problems rooted in maternal deficits, immaturity, poverty, and environmental stressors as well as the combination of Child Welfare and Child Protection Services that currently provide the ameliorative response.