Children of Coercive Control

"This book identifies coercive control of women as the most important cause and context of 'child abuse' and child homicide outside a war zone, including deliberate injury to children, non- accidental child death and the sexual abuse, denigration, exploitation, isolation and subordination of children. I critique the current approaches to domestic violence and child maltreatment, provide a working model of the coercive control of children and closely examine three recent forensic cases involving of children of coercive control. In most instances, the coercive control of women and children run in tandem. In these cases, children are abused to further entrap and exploit their mother, a form of 'secondary' victimization. But I also provide examples of cases in which abused mothers harm their children to survive or to protect them from worse (examples, of what I term "patriarchal mothering") and where children are 'weaponized' or are otherwise implicated in the coercive control of their mother. In all these instances, the child is the victim of coercive control"--