I am a Virginia attorney, and have lived here most of my life. I know the legal system here and understand the burden of proof. I believed that my knowledge of the law, and my ability to hire experienced counsel, would allow me to protect myself when I left an abusive marriage.
I was wrong.
Access to justice is not simply about access to lawyers or financial resources. It is also about whether the law provides an effective remedy.
Virginia has made important progress in addressing domestic violence, but our legal system still struggles to provide relief when abuse consists primarily of coercive control rather than direct physical harm, leaving victims without timely or clearly applicable protection.
Virginia law recognizes some forms of nonphysical abuse, including stalking. But victims of abuse consisting primarily of coercive control often must fit their experiences into legal doctrines and evidentiary frameworks that were developed largely around violence, threats, and physical injury.
That gap can leave victims, most of them women, especially vulnerable during divorce.
Domestic violence experts define coercive control as a pattern of behavior intended to cause the victim to fear that violence will be used against them, or behavior that causes the victim to experience repeated trauma that has a significant effect on the victim’s daily activities.
Coercive control is about eroding the victim’s autonomy over time through gaslighting and manipulation. This type of psychological abuse is essentially a campaign to wear down the victim’s defenses so that the abuser can more easily control them.
Coercive controllers sometimes do end up being violent when victims decide to leave the relationship.
In 2021, The Virginia Mercury reported that about 40% of intimate partner homicides take place while or after a relationship is ending. This is precisely the time when abusers face a loss of control over the victim.
Some abusers appear adept at engaging in conduct that terrifies and destabilizes a partner while remaining difficult to fit into existing legal categories.
Like most other victims leaving these psychologically abusive relationships, I asked my attorney how I could keep my husband, an alcoholic with access to firearms, away from me while the divorce was pending.
The answer: Not much, unless I could obtain a protective order.
Although courts can exclude an abusive spouse from the home through a protective order, the victim must first prove conduct fitting a statutory framework focused on violence, force, threats or bodily injury. A sustained pattern of domination and psychological abuse may not fit neatly within this analysis.
And if the victim leaves the marital home to escape the control, the spouse who physically leaves may also face allegations of desertion unless the evidence establishes legal justification or constructive desertion.
Virginia precedent allows extreme nonphysical mistreatment to constitute cruelty as a fault basis in exceptional cases, thereby allowing the victim to file for divorce immediately. However, proving emotional or mental cruelty generally requires evidence of a sustained course of conduct serious enough to threaten health or make continued cohabitation unsafe.
And even if the victim files for divorce based on cruelty immediately, getting a hearing takes months, maybe even a year, still leaving the victim vulnerable while living with the abuser.
It is easier to prove physical harm because there is clear evidence, such as bruises.
But how do we prove coercive control? How do we prove psychological harm?
One way is through documenting the patterns through written narratives, text messages, and even video, but compiling a record takes time that the victim may not have.
How can victims protect themselves, and their children, when Virginia law does not provide timely relief?
Virginia has taken meaningful steps to address domestic violence over the past several decades, such as making stalking a basis for a protective order. The next challenge is to ensure that our legal system can respond effectively to protect victims when abuse is psychological, coercive, and cumulative rather than immediately visible.
Moreover, coercive control often unfolds gradually and privately. Professionals trained to evaluate discrete incidents may not immediately recognize a pattern of domination when the evidence arrives piecemeal over months or years.
Money alone will not solve this problem.
Creative lawyering can help document patterns and identify existing remedies, but lawyers cannot create protections the law does not provide.
Virginia should consider studying how other states have incorporated coercive control into their family law frameworks while preserving due process.
Several, such as Massachusetts and New Jersey, have enacted legislation recognizing coercive control in family-law proceedings, offering examples to study as Virginia lawmakers consider whether existing remedies adequately address this form of abuse.
At the same time, judges, attorneys, guardians ad litem, therapists and professionals who work with families should receive additional education on identifying patterns of coercive abuse and understanding how those patterns may appear in litigation.
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