Recent conference says coercive control cases on the rise in Longford

With cases of coercive control on the rise in County Longford, last week's training seminar on preventing domestic homicide in rural Ireland could certainly be seen as a most vital tool for frontline professionals in this day and age.

As Natalie O’Reilly, manager of Domestic Abuse Response Team in Longford Women’s Link, explains, every individual suffering from abuse is a potential future homicide statistic.

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“We have a high volume of clients at the moment, active clients within the DV service in Longford Women's Link, and as the professor said, 90% of abuse cases are coercive control, so they're already on the timeline to domestic homicide. All of these women potentially could be a statistic in the future. Hopefully not all will make the timeline of homicide.

It's our responsibility as frontline agencies that we prevent the escalation into the homicide; that somebody would be able to risk assess in the forensic lens and be that intervention, that support, to stop the escalation.”

Natalie says the hope now is to achieve a new model of practice, one that consists of a multi-agency response.

She explains further, “When a victim attends any kind of service, we understand they have multiple services that they have to gather support from, whether it's a solicitor, healthcare, social work, the Gardai, and what we're trying to achieve is a system where everybody is on the same page.

She added, “We've brought in a leading expert, Professor Monckton Smith, to deliver this framework that she's delivering across Europe, so that we’ll all have the same understanding of what coercive control is. During the first morning, she spoke about coercive control being the overarching law, and it’s all of the methods and tactics within coercive control that are achieved to maintain control.

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So it could be physical violence, it can be sexual, financial, psychological … so psychological is not coercive control, but it's a tactic under coercive control.

Professor Monkcton Smith really identifies how to risk-assess. She's giving us all of the tools of how in a multi-agency way, we can all risk-assess.”