Too Broken to Escape: Why So Few Seek Protection Orders for Coercive Control

Too Broken to Escape: Why So Few Seek Protection Orders for Coercive Control

When people ask why someone doesn't just leave an abusive relationship, or why they don't seek a protection order, they reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of what coercive control does to a person. The very nature of coercive control creates a perfect trap: by the time you most need legal protection, you're least able to seek it.

How It Happened to Me

My relationship with my abuser was, in fact, quite short. I had been in a previous long relationship of almost two decades. The past five years of that relationship weren’t healthy, and in some ways, it created the backdrop that my abuser needed to exert control over me. That previous relationship didn’t end well and my self-esteem was low. I was incredibly lonely at the time. I should have taken the time necessary to heal.

We both had backgrounds of childhood trauma and family harm. In some ways, neither of us understood what a healthy relationship looks like. When two people who have experienced childhood abuse enter a relationship together, there’s a particular vulnerability. The behaviours that feel “normal” to both of you might be deeply unhealthy. You don’t have a reliable internal compass for what’s acceptable because your baseline was set by dysfunction. You might recognize abuse when it’s extreme, but the subtle erosions, the gradual escalations — they can feel familiar, even expected. And when someone shares that trauma background with you, there’s an intimacy in that shared understanding that can be mistaken for safety, when it may be creating a dangerous blind spot.

When it began, he was so very attentive, charming, helpful. He said and did all the right things, and some. He won me over very quickly, very soon.

When he disclosed that he had issues with me still being in contact with, for example, my ex from high school, or a man I used to work with some 30 years ago, I saw it as somewhat of a compliment. Not jealousy — he just cared that much, right? He was invested. He loved me enough to worry.

Within a month, my phone went missing. It reappeared hours later, nowhere near where I’d last had it. I discovered that some of those friends he’d mentioned — they’d disappeared from my social media lists. Just gone.

I placed a password on my phone. That created even more issues. He accused me of trying to hide things from him, of cheating on him simply by having contact with those individuals. When I told him I wanted some space, that I didn’t agree with him, that this wasn’t the case, I’ll never forget how he told me that in his previous relationship he had been cheated on and it had created a level of innate mistrust in him.

This seemed plausible to me. I said I understood but that it was no excuse for how he was carrying on. We kissed and made up, so to speak. He was sorry, overly attentive. He would be wonderful for a few days, and then slowly, slowly, the issue would be raised by him again. Ever so slightly. In a passing comment. In a way that made me wonder whether I was the one being unreasonable.

I took it on board — his insecurities from his previous relationship and the cheating. I felt it was my job to make him feel like he could trust me, my job to help him heal from that. If I proved to him that I wasn’t going to cheat on him like his ex-had, then that was what he needed. And so, it began like that.

The little comments he would make when I got a message notification: “Is that [name]?” “Did you tell him what happened between us?” He would go into detail about how severely the cheating had affected him, how he loved her so much and had never really got over her — until he met me.

So, you’re in this new relationship and you’re being abused via slow and incremental levels of coercive control at the same time as love bombing. Back then, while I was still grieving over my previous relationship, I had confidence to stick up for myself, to say no, that’s not okay, or no, that’s not true.

But that changed over time. A very short time.

It’s a very slow and insidious erosion of your own self. By the time the relationship was two years old, I was a former frame of myself. I was so used to reporting my every whereabouts to him, details of my days, what I was doing, where I had been. It became automatic, because then he wouldn’t ask, or snoop, or assume that if I hadn’t had contact with him, I was off doing something he didn’t approve of.

There were a few examples early on that stuck with me:

I was at the pools with him and my children. He claimed that men were staring at my breasts and told me to put a t-shirt on and cover myself up. I did. Then I bought a rash top.

I cleared my throat while walking past some men in army uniform. It had nothing to do with them. The reaction to this apparent complete lack of respect for him, and how degraded he felt, went on for weeks at the severe end. I learned anytime we were out together — and not together — not to look directly at anyone in army uniform, in an army truck, anything.

I was accused of listening to provocative music. So, I stopped listening to it at all.

He bought a very small recording device on a cheap Asian website — not a nanny-cam but similar. He demonstrated to me one day, without my knowledge of him having it, how he had recorded me eating chocolate from the cupboard when I had said I wanted to lose some weight. I would never know when or where he was using it. The cruel irony? At the same time, he was telling me how he loved me “big and beautiful.” He had told me that from the start. Yet now he was monitoring what I was eating, without my permission or knowledge.

He would tell me stories of his accomplishments over the years: knocking this fella out with one blow, how he had a nickname and people knew not to cross him. This created a fear in me that was real.

And then there was one of the only incidents that involved physical violence. He had been under the influence of both drugs and alcohol. I was tired and he wanted to have some unreasonable conversation very late at night. I wanted to go to bed and he was making no sense and becoming passive-aggressive. He wouldn’t let me physically get up and go to bed. This went on for hours. I was crying and I was accused of creating drama because I simply wouldn’t listen to him.

I managed to get up to go to the bathroom and he followed. I bolted out the back door, shut it in his face, and hid in an outdoor shed. I couldn’t get a signal in there to call the police. When I thought, he had stopped looking for me, I tried to sneak into the house. He grabbed me from behind a door, had me pinned up against the hallway wall, and told me: “If you ever do that again, I will fucken kill you.”

I was terrified. He was strong, overpowering. I was then able to understand exactly, physically, what he was capable of.

The night did in fact end with the police and the first of a few police safety orders. I have never forgotten that night. This traumatic incident remains fresh in my mind. Sometimes, when triggered by his ongoing behaviour, I will dream of it.

Afterwards, he blamed the alcohol in combination with whatever drugs he had taken — drugs he would not disclose to me. I got this big story about how he hadn’t had alcohol for so long and needed something else to relax, and on it went. He was so convincing, so very convincing and insistent. These were all massive red flags that I saw. But by the time he had done his talking, his convincing, his manipulation — the red flags were me, in my head.

I didn’t recognise what was happening. I didn’t see the foundation being laid, the groundwork for control that would follow. By the time I understood what I was dealing with, I was already diminished, already isolated, already doubting my own perceptions. The person who could have walked away early no longer existed — she had been systematically dismantled.

This is how coercive control works. It doesn’t announce itself. It presents as love, as care, as attention. And if you’re vulnerable — if you’re lonely, if your self-esteem is already compromised, if you’re hungry for connection — you’re the perfect target.

The Paradox of Proof

Protection orders require you to document and prove a pattern of behaviour. But coercive control works precisely because it's designed to be invisible, deniable, and impossible to capture in the discrete incidents and specific dates that courts demand.

How do you prove that someone has systematically dismantled your sense of self over years? How do you explain that a text message saying "we need to talk" makes your hands shake, when to anyone else it looks innocuous? How do you describe the constant monitoring, the gradual erosion of friendships, the thousand small humiliations that individually seem trivial but collectively create a prison?

You can't. Or rather, you can try, but it requires a level of clarity, organisation, and confidence that coercive control has specifically destroyed in you.

The Catch-22 of Diminished Capacity

By the time you recognise you need a protection order, coercive control has already done its work. You doubt yourself constantly. You second-guess your own perceptions. You've been told so many times that you're overreacting, being dramatic, misremembering, or causing problems that you no longer trust your own reality.

To apply for a protection order, you need to:

Believe you deserve protection (but you've been convinced you don't)

Trust your judgment about danger (but you've learned your judgment is always wrong)

Recall specific incidents with dates and details (but trauma has fragmented your memory)

Present yourself as credible and reasonable (but you're exhausted, anxious, and possibly exhibiting the reactive behaviours that result from long-term abuse)

Navigate a complex legal system (but you may have been isolated from support and resources)

Take decisive action (but decision-making has been systematically removed from your control)

This is the cruel irony: the same abuse that makes you need protection also makes you unable to seek it.

The Risk of Revelation

Even if you find the strength to apply, the process itself is dangerous. In New Zealand, when you apply for a protection order, the respondent will eventually see everything: your affidavit detailing incidents, your documentation of their behaviour, proof that you've been planning, seeking help, preparing to establish boundaries.

For someone who has maintained control through surveillance and punishment of any perceived defiance, this revelation can trigger escalation. You're not just seeking protection; you're exposing that you've been secretly documenting that you've recognised the abuse, that you're acting. Research consistently shows that the point of separation and legal intervention is the most dangerous time for victims of domestic abuse.

So, you face a calculation: is the risk of applying worse than the risk of staying silent? When you're already in survival mode, already depleted, already doubting yourself, this can feel impossible to assess.

The Credibility Gap

Coercive control often leaves you looking like the "crazy" one. You might be anxious, hypervigilant, emotionally volatile. You might have difficulty articulating what's happening because the abuse is so complex and pervasive. You might contradict yourself because your reality has been systematically distorted.

Meanwhile, your abuser often appears calm, reasonable, and articulate in formal settings. They're practiced at presenting a charming facade. They can reframe their control as concern, their monitoring as care, their restrictions as mutual agreements. They may even express hurt and confusion at your "accusations," positioning themselves as the real victim.

The legal system, despite improvements, still tends to favour visible evidence and coherent narratives. Coercive control provides neither. So, you walk into court already at a disadvantage, trying to prove something invisible to people who may not understand the dynamics at play.

The Isolation Factor

Coercive control works through isolation. By the time you might seek a protection order, you may have been systematically separated from:

Friends who might support you

Family who might validate your experience

Colleagues who might offer practical help

Financial resources you'd need for legal help

Knowledge of support services available

Witnesses who could corroborate your experiences

You're expected to navigate a complex legal process alone, without resources, while in a state of ongoing trauma. The isolation that made the abuse possible in the first place now makes escape nearly impossible.

Why So Few Seek Protection Orders

When you understand these barriers, it becomes clear why so few people experiencing coercive control seek protection orders:

They don't recognise it as abuse. Coercive control is insidious. Without physical violence, many victims don't identify their experience as "real" abuse. They might think they're just in a difficult relationship, or that they're the problem.

They don't believe they'll be believed. Without bruises or police reports, without witnesses or documentation, they assume (often correctly) that a court won't take their experience seriously.

They can't face the risk. The danger of applying, the exposure of their planning, the potential escalation - it all feels more dangerous than continuing to manage the abuse they know.

They don't have the capacity. The cognitive and emotional resources required to apply are exactly what coercive control has depleted. You need strength to seek protection, but seeking protection requires more strength than you have left.

They're too afraid of the consequences. Fear of their children being taken, fear of homelessness, fear of financial ruin, fear of being killed, fear of their abuser's threats being carried out. These aren't irrational fears - they're based on real risks.

They've internalised the abuse. After years of being told they're worthless, difficult, the cause of all problems, many victims genuinely believe they don't deserve protection. They blame themselves.

The Statistics We Don’t Have Tell Their Own Story

Here’s something revealing: New Zealand doesn’t track how many protection order applications are based primarily or solely on coercive control, as opposed to physical violence.

Research shows that most women who seek protection orders have experienced severe physical violence — assault, choking, threats with weapons, and lengthy exposure to abuse. While coercive control was added to the Family Violence Act 2018 definition, there are no criminal offenses that allow police to prosecute coercive control on its own unless a victim already has a protection order in place.

A 2025 study examining over 1,000 New Zealand Police reports for intimate partner violence found significant challenges in officers even recognizing and recording evidence of controlling behaviours. If frontline police struggle to identify coercive control when it’s right in front of them, how can victims be expected to successfully prove it in court?

The absence of statistics on coercive-control-based protection orders isn’t an oversight. It reflects a system that still primarily recognizes and responds to physical violence. Courts, police, and the legal framework itself are built around discrete, documentable incidents. Coercive control — which operates through patterns, accumulation, and psychological warfare — doesn’t fit that, Mold.

So, when we don’t have numbers on how many people seek protection orders for coercive control alone, that tells us something important: the system isn’t set up to capture it. And if the system can’t capture it, victims can’t successfully pursue it.

What This Means

The low rate of protection order applications for coercive control isn't evidence that it's rare or not serious. It's evidence of how effective coercive control is at trapping people.

The absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. It's evidence of a system that still doesn't fully understand or accommodate the realities of psychological abuse.

READ THAT AGAIN: The absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. It's evidence of a system that still doesn't fully understand or accommodate the realities of psychological abuse.

When we ask, "why didn't they just get a protection order?" we're asking someone who has been systematically broken down to perform an act of extraordinary courage, clarity, and capability - all while still under threat.

We need to do better. Better training for judges and court staff about coercive control. Better safety measures in the application process. Better support services that don't require victims to have already escaped before they can access help. Better recognition that the inability to seek help is itself a symptom of the abuse, not evidence that the abuse isn't real.

Until then, we need to stop questioning why people don't seek protection orders and start questioning why our systems make it so hard for them to do so.

Emma Richardson – emma.richardson26@yahoo.com fb – The Broken System Diaries

Mother, Daughter, Friend, Victim Advocate

If you or someone you know is experiencing coercive control or domestic abuse:

Women's Refuge: 0800 733 843 (24/7)

Shine Helpline: 0508 744 633 (9am-11pm, 7 days)

Police (emergency): 111

Community Law Centres: Free legal advice - find your local centre at communitylaw.org.nz