In Control: Dangerous Relationships and How They End in Murder

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Her ground-breaking research led to the creation of the eight-stage homicide timeline, laying out identifiable stages in which coercive relationships can escalate to murder and revolutionising our understanding of them. We are no longer an item (other reasons but this didn’t help) but I am still very concerned that something else could happen. And for those who don’t understand why the women (or in some cases, the men) don’t leave, there are a few, but they are also generally the same in most cases. We could double it certainly. If you start bringing in suicides, you could probably multiply it by five, six or seven times. If we’ve got a serial killer they’re given a huge amount of forensic attention, as are terrorists. Why not domestic killers? Why have we still got that really low status? Police officers are not rushing into the domestic abuse department. It’s not got that cachet. And yet that’s where they are most likely to come across killers. Police have proposed that coercive control legislation could be used more frequently to hold perpetrators to account for domestic abuse related suicides. However, the maximum penalty for a coercive control offence is only five years. In August 2018, mother of three Kellie Sutton, 30, attempted to take her own life and died three days later. Her partner, Steven Gane, 31, was subsequently convicted of controlling and coercive behaviour, actual bodily harm and assault. Judge Philip Grey said: “Your behaviour drove Kellie Sutton to hang herself … you beat her and ground her down and broke her spirits.” Gane was jailed for a mere four years and three months.

You refer to stage two as the “commitment whirlwind”. Many romantic tropes like “love at first sight” underpin this idea. How can we distinguish love from danger? Whilst these are the main ones the wish list for the future includes that an accused is not allowed to know the identity of his accuser and a third party is appointed to conduct the accusation on their behalf, therefore denying the facing of your accuser in court. Stage one is a history of control. How can women establish this, and what should the courts do about recognising it as evidence?

From the book: Why won’t she get into the ambulance? I wanted an answer

Being able to recognise these stages of the eight timeline is a key issue that should be learnt more to be able to keep women safe from a worryingly statistic of intimate homicide. And answers the question of ‘why didn’t she just leave’ , these people are under an insane amount of pressure to meet the perpetrators ego loyalty and control where leaving isn’t a safe option sometimes and the book explains and rejects why victim blaming isn’t acceptable. It can be an insight to these relationships and provides a responsibility to educate and recognise coercive control.

The book also explains why victims stay with their potential and eventual murderers. The reality is that they are (justifiably) afraid that leaving is likely to be more dangerous than staying. From my own years of experience in this field and research collected by others, I believe between a quarter to a third of female suicides could be directly related to domestic abuse.” The abused partner is also intertwined, either by living arrangements or by kids, and is often financially twisted up with this cunning person who has already set it up so they cannot easily just go. No system is devoid of problems. But we know we’ve got an adversarial system so we need to be able to circumvent some of the problems it raises. If lawyers and judges had more knowledge about how domestic abuse works that would then become part of the adversarial arguments. I also think courts need to recognise the power dynamic. You’ve got someone who’s willing and happy to have arguments and the victim will do anything to avoid arguing with this person. We don’t even give them equal status. The victim doesn’t have a dedicated advocate and the offender does. Recognise those power dynamics and the way they’re used by controlling people. It's important to be able to read the signs and see what could be brewing in a relationship. Having this knowledge will help you understand people, the ways control works and will help you be able to spot coercive or dangerous domestic situations, a skill you hopefully will never need, but is good to know nonetheless.A woman is killed by her partner or ex every four days in the UK but the domestic homicide expert fears there may be many more with suspicious deaths going uninvestigated because of basic misunderstandings of the forces at play in domestic violence and how violent and abusive men cycle through identifiable and escalating stages of control and coercion.

The controlling patterns are not responses; they are systems to enforce and monitor control. Always there, always working.” Chapter one describes the first stage, which is having a history of controlling behaviour or stalking. It implores readers to look for ‘red flags’ in past relationships, as well as the likelihood that somebody will repeat this behaviour.

I was in a relationship for ten years that followed exactly these stages as described. It is actually quite telling how much they follow an escalating course. But domestic violence has a clear pattern. Jealousy. Controlling behaviour. Stalking. Verbal abuse. A history of violence. All responsible community minded people want to work to reduce domestic violence. But if we are not to have an honest conversation about it then no real progress can be made. He lost control, people say after another woman is killed. He just snapped, they say after another wife, partner, or girlfriend dies because of male violence.