American sociologist Evan Stark, who has died at the age of 82, developed a new understanding of domestic violence in his book Coercive Control: How We Entrap Women in Our Private Lives (2007). Since then, it has been taken up by governments, the judicial system, activists and social groups. survivors around the world. He argued that incidents of physical assault are only the most visible part of domestic violence.
Based on his 30 years of research as a forensic social worker, he has documented a broader, more destructive pattern of manipulative behavior and subjugation that borders on kidnapping and slavery, which he calls “coercive control.” His book describes how abusive men use coercive methods to destroy women’s autonomy, isolate them from friends and family, and deny them access to basic resources that most people need. We have detailed how to use management.
Stark has uncovered a phenomenon he describes as hiding in plain sight. His research helped show that coercive control is the most dangerous form of domestic violence. Its presence or absence is a better indicator of future homicide than the presence of physical violence alone.
Recognition of that fact has led governments around the world to introduce new crimes based on Stark’s research. The Serious Crimes Act 2015 made England and Wales the first jurisdiction in the world to criminalize coercive control. By 2021, so will Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland. Australia’s New South Wales state will pass mandatory regulation legislation in 2022, and Canada is expected to pass similar legislation this year.
These criminal justice reforms will not only save lives, they will also help abused women rebuild the way they see themselves. Recognizing coercive control as a criminal offense counters the gaslighting typical of coercive control, where women can be held responsible for abuse. Beyond the legislative context, Stark shaped academic understanding of abuse and its representation in the media. “Coercive control” is now an important term in international use.
Stark was born in a housing cooperative in Queens, New York. His mother Alice (née Fox) worked as a secretary for civil rights leader Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful black labor union in the United States. Evan’s father, Erwin Stark, was a writer, teacher, and pacifist. Evan attended Roosevelt High School in Yonkers and studied sociology at Brandeis University, where he also participated in the civil rights movement as a student representative for CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality.
After graduating from Brandeis University in 1963, he pursued a doctoral degree at the University of Wisconsin, but had his graduate student scholarship revoked in 1967 in retaliation for his role as a leader in the movement against the Vietnam War. . From 1971 until 1975, Stark was an assistant professor of sociology at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He then earned his doctorate from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1984 and a master’s degree in social work from Fordham University. He then established an independent private practice in forensic social work.
In 1977, Stark married Anne Flitcraft, an American physician and early researcher in the epidemiology of domestic violence, who focused on the effects of abuse on women’s health. In 1978, the couple traveled to England and visited one of the first shelters, Chiswick Women’s Aid in west London, which was founded by Erin Pidgey in 1971. They also visited a safe house run by Women’s Aid in the Midlands.
Upon returning to the United States, they worked with a small group to find shelter in New Haven, Connecticut. During his next decade, Stark and Flitcraft influenced local and national policy in the United States, co-chairing the Task Force on Domestic Violence Prevention within the U.S. Surgeon General’s Workshop on Violence and Public Health in 1985. I served as
Starting in 1995, Stark became a professor at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, where he focused his attention on the legal and theoretical implications of early grassroots activism. He began giving expert evidence against abused women in criminal and civil trials, gaining extensive knowledge of the experiences of survivors that formed the basis of the theories and reform proposals he proposed in Coercive Control. I did.
Stark retired from teaching at Rutgers University in 2012 and devoted the next few years to his law career. He spoke extensively about the need to reform traditional criminal justice responses to domestic violence.
Initially, the countries most receptive to his ideas were the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth of Nations. His keynote speech at the Scottish Women’s Aid 30th anniversary celebration in 2006 was the first to convince Scottish campaigners that a new approach to the criminalization of domestic violence was needed.
Seven years later, while Mr Stark was visiting professor at Leverhulme at the University of Edinburgh, Scottish MSP Bill Walker was found guilty of 23 counts of assault against his three ex-wives and a stepdaughter. Scottish judge Catherine McKee gave Walker the maximum sentence allowed (one year in prison), but she echoed Stark’s investigation in her summing up. The most notable aspects of Walker’s abuse, she wrote, were bullying and coercive behavior, which at the time was not itself a crime.
In 2019, Ms Stark flew to London to give expert evidence to the Court of Appeal in the case of Sally Challen, who was sentenced to life in prison for murder after killing her husband in 2010. After coercive control was criminalized in the UK in 2015, Ms Challen had appealed her conviction, claiming her husband had engaged in “controlling or coercive behaviour”. Stark’s evidence helped the court and the public understand the impact of her coercive control over Sally, and her murder conviction was quashed.
Stark was a disciplined writer, often starting work before sunrise, and was famous among friends and family for his stories and dry wit. He was famous among his colleagues, family, and friends, and annually circulated an annotated list of literature that moved him, sometimes extending to his three pages. He also liked to play the piano, especially jazz standards and musicals, often singing loudly without warning. He was the oldest person on the dance floor, sometimes by decades.
Stark is survived by Anne and her sons Sam, Daniel, and Eli. His first marriage to Sally Connolly produced a son, Aaron, but ended in divorce. three grandchildren, Adrian, Ezra and Ash; and his sister Joyce.
