Control in The Legal Process

I’m angry today.

I planned to write a series of blogs about coercive control and prevention, but here I am back where I started. And yet, this too is about coercive control.

I’m over three years out from my abuser and yet I’m still not divorced. More delays,. More changes. More lies.

I’m angry again, because I look back at the way I was treated by this joke of a system called the justice system. I signed papers and agreed to things without counsel. Why? He ran me out of money. I signed papers under duress. Sign now or this control and manipulation will continue. Sign now or you’ll be run out of money. Sign now….

I wasn’t afforded the luxury of having a professional look out for me. I missed things.

I signed documents under duress. I agreed to things I didn’t realize until it was too late. I missed things. I’m not a lawyer.

How could anyone think this is fair or just?

Most of the past year, I was experiencing PTSD after my abuser tried very hard to silence me for life, to limit my freedom of movement (saying I couldn’t go near any place he works - yet he can work almost anywhere in public), insisting I change my last name (even though that is illegal where I live). At this time last year, my executive functioning was severely impaired, I was in poverty, and I was experiencing the worst PTSD of my life. The lasting effects of this continued into the beginning of this year, where I had to represent myself and signed documents I had not fully understood.

Then they prolonged the process again. He wanted me to agree to never communicate with his family, to allow him to write letters to me if he was going to be somewhere and didn’t want me to show up there too.

I have never gone near this man. There is no justification for limiting me in anyway. I have not broken any laws, have not tried to contact him or his family, have not gone to his workplace. In fact, I do my very best to stay away from him - even to the point of having to cancel an appointment because when I arrived I saw he had an appointment at the same time.

Make no mistake. This is coercive control. This is abuse. This is manipulation.

I thought leaving would stop him from abusing me.

I wonder again - for the millionth time - how can the legal system allow this kind of abuse, this kind of control, these kinds of games and delays and harm to come from a known coercive controller?