The New South Wales Parliament Will Move to Criminalize Coercive Control
It’s time for this lawyer to do her part.
I remember watching the movie Die Hard with my first husband, five or so years into our marriage and him making the comment that if he was held hostage he would see no problem murdering his captor if it meant securing his own freedom.
Few would disagree.
But what happens if you change the scene a little? Imagine a picture where the victim looks free, but has been gradually entrapped over a period of time, where her personhood has been eroded and her autonomy replaced with fear. Acknowledge that her support networks have been cut off, her time micro-managed, that she has been methodically deprived of sleep and punished if she makes an independent decision.
Accept that a man who professes to love her has taken her young life, full of promise and potential and made it his own. He has effectively killed the human inside her and replaced it with an afraid yet compliant robot.
Will you sympathize with that robot if she frees herself by murdering her captor?
Most won’t, and that is because the bars that imprison her are invisible, even to her.
