Sexuality, Intimacy and Coercive Control: A Forensic Sexology Perspective

Domestic abuse is broader than physical violence

Under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, domestic abuse concerns people aged 16 or over who are personally connected. Abusive behaviour may include physical or sexual abuse, threatening behaviour, controlling or coercive behaviour, economic abuse, and psychological or emotional abuse. The statutory definition can include a single incident or a course of conduct.

The separate criminal offence of controlling or coercive behaviour has additional legal tests. It concerns repeated or continuous behaviour, a serious effect on the victim, and what the person responsible knew or ought to have known. Clinicians should understand this distinction without attempting to determine criminal guilt.

Coercive control is best understood as a pattern. Individual acts may appear minor when viewed alone, yet together they can restrict another person’s autonomy, daily life and ability to seek help. The pattern may continue or intensify after separation.

How coercion can enter sexuality and intimacy

Sexual behaviour does not sit outside the wider relationship. Fear, surveillance, financial dependence, threats, humiliation or isolation may affect whether a person feels able to refuse, negotiate contraception, seek sexual healthcare or decide what happens to intimate information and images.

Relevant patterns may include:

• pressure, intimidation or punishment linked to sex or sexual contact;
• monitoring communications, location, pornography use or sexual-health information;
• threats to disclose sexual orientation, gender identity, sexual history or intimate images;
• control of contraception, pregnancy decisions or access to medical care;
• using money, housing, immigration status, disability or caring needs to limit choice;
• using separation, children or professional allegations to continue control.

No single item automatically establishes coercive control. Context, pattern, impact, fear and the consequences of resistance all matter. Equally, relationship status never creates permanent consent, and consent to one act is not consent to another.

Conflict, distress and abuse are not interchangeable

Couples can experience intense conflict, poor communication, infidelity, sexual difficulties and incompatible wishes without one person coercively controlling the other. A specialist assessment therefore avoids both minimisation and over-labelling.

Useful questions concern freedom and consequences: Can each person disagree safely? Can either person end a conversation, leave the room, contact friends, control their own money or decline sexual contact without retaliation? Is one person changing ordinary behaviour because they are afraid of what the other might do? Are monitoring, threats or restrictions becoming more frequent after separation?

It is the pattern and its effect—not simply the presence of arguments—that helps distinguish abuse from mutual relationship difficulty.

Why conjoint therapy may be unsafe

Joint therapy assumes that both people can speak with reasonable freedom and use the session without later retaliation. That assumption may not hold where there is coercive control, stalking, sexual violence or serious intimidation.

A shared session can reveal what a victim has disclosed, create pressure to retract it, provide new material for monitoring, or frame abuse as a communication problem to which both people contributed equally. It may also help the person causing harm present as cooperative without changing behaviour outside the room.

This does not mean every difficult relationship is unsuitable for couple therapy. It means therapists should assess safety separately, understand the limits of their competence, and avoid conjoint work when the format itself could increase risk. Specialist domestic-abuse advice may be needed before deciding how—or whether—to proceed.

Working with a person who is causing harm

Therapeutic engagement can support responsibility and change, but empathy must not become collusion. Work should remain attentive to patterns of entitlement, minimisation, blame, monitoring and retaliation, while also considering mental health, trauma, substance use, sexual functioning and other clinically relevant factors.

The safety of current or former partners and children remains a central outcome. A person’s distress about consequences is not the same as accountability for harm. Meaningful change involves recognising impact, respecting boundaries, developing non-abusive ways of managing emotion and conflict, and sustaining different behaviour over time.

General psychotherapy is not automatically a domestic-abuse perpetrator intervention. Practitioners need appropriate competence, supervision, referral pathways and awareness of specialist standards. The victim or partner should never be made responsible for monitoring progress or supplying the therapist with evidence.

Diversity and barriers to recognition

Domestic abuse can affect people of every gender, sexuality, ethnicity, faith, age and social background. Recognition can be harder when services assume heterosexual gender roles, overlook abuse in LGBT+ relationships, misread disability-related dependence, or fail to understand threats involving immigration status, community standing or disclosure of identity.

Responsive practice considers these realities without stereotyping. It also recognises that some people face greater barriers to specialist help, accessible communication, safe housing or financial independence.

A coordinated response

NICE guidance emphasises integrated pathways, specialist advocacy, ongoing risk assessment and multi-agency working. Support for people experiencing abuse and work with people who perpetrate it should be distinct but coordinated, with the safety of victims and children prioritised.

Information sharing should be necessary, proportionate, secure and explained wherever it is safe to do so. Practitioners should follow current law, professional standards, organisational policy and local safeguarding procedures rather than relying on a single generic rule.

Sources and further reading

• Home Office: Domestic Abuse Act statutory guidance
• Home Office: controlling or coercive behaviour statutory guidance
• Crown Prosecution Service: controlling or coercive behaviour
• NICE: domestic violence and abuse—multi-agency working
• GOV.UK: victim and witness services

Important: This resource provides general information for adults and professionals in England and Wales. It is not emergency, legal, clinical or individual safeguarding advice. Practitioners should follow current law, professional standards, organisational policy and local safeguarding procedures.