This week, the ManKind Initiative submitted evidence to the Home Office’s consultation on Strengthening the Law on Domestic Abuse.
The substantive points made were that we agreed with the government’s proposals because:
- It will reduce the ‘believability threshold’ for male victims to the same level for female victims. This is broadly because while the statutory sector will recognise physical injuries on a male, they will not so readily accept or recognise non-physical ‘controlling or coercive’ behaviour on a man
- We also believe that the law would help ensure that the threat and use of false allegations and the threat of denying parental contact is fully recognised as a controlling and coercive behaviour. This also includes recognising the continual and purposeful breach of parental contact orders as a form of domestic abuse.
mankindnews.wordpress.com 
The Law is being Brought in in the passage of the Serious Crimes Bill. Rather buried within the Bill which is mainly about Serious Organisaed Crime and internet Crime is the new offence(in fact the first offence of Domestic Abuse as such). On the plus point it does separate ot Domestic Abuse from the collection of offenses that are taken as a “proxy” at the moment.
The wording can be found at the Section 5 Para 73 onwards. In fact it seems to be clearly based on violence or threat of being the course of behaviour that is coercion
Click to access 15160.pdf
The main wording is:
73 Controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship
(1) A person (A) commits an offence if—
(a) A repeatedly or continuously engages in behaviour towards another
person (B) that is controlling or coercive,
(b) at the time of the behaviour, A and B are personally connected,
(c) the behaviour has a serious effect on B, and
(d) A knows or ought to know that the behaviour will have a serious effect
on B.
(2) A and B are “personally connected” if—
(a) A is in an intimate personal relationship with B, or
(b) A and B live together and—
(i) they are members of the same family, or
(ii) they have previously been in an intimate personal relationship
with each other.
(3) But A does not commit an offence under this section if at the time of the
behaviour in question—
(a) A has responsibility for B, for the purposes of Part 1 of the Children and
Young Persons Act 1933 (see section 17 of that Act), and
(b) B is under 16.
(4) A’s behaviour has a “serious effect” on B if—
(a) it causes B to fear, on at least two occasions, that violence will be used
against B, or
(b) it causes B serious alarm or distress which has a substantial adverse
effect on B’s usual day-to-day activities.
(5) For the purposes of subsection (1)(d) A “ought to know” that which a
reasonable person in possession of the same information would know.