On this episode, our guest is Evan Stark, a sociologist and forensic social worker who has been working at the intersection of feminist activism, child welfare, health research and justice reform since he and his wife Anne Flitcraft, MD helped found one of the earliest shelters for battered women in l970’s. His prize winning book Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life (Oxford, 2007) helped stimulate the new crime of “coercive and controlling behavior” throughout the United Kingdom and helped broaden the conversation in the United States.

Dr. Stark has served as an expert in more than 100 criminal and civil cases, including Nicholson v. Williams, a successful federal class action suit against New York City that made it unconstitutional to remove children from mothers solely because they had been victims of domestic violence. A founder of one of the first shelters for abused women in the U.S., in the 1980’s Dr. Stark co-directed the Yale Trauma Studies with Dr. Anne Flitcraft, path-breaking research that was the first to document the significance of domestic violence for women’s health.  He has consulted with numerous federal and state agencies and won a number prestigious awards for his research and advocacy.

His new book “What about the Children?” documents the many ways that abusive partners coercively control children and how children respond, holding that it is imperative to treat coercive control as a spectrum.  We will be talking with Evan today about coercive control, unpack some of the myths of domestic abuse and how batterers harm. and the implications of coercive control for policy and administration of reframing domestic violence as a “liberty crime,” and its effectiveness as a new law throughout the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe.

You can read more about Evan’s background in his CV here and download a summary of his work on coercive control here:

• Summary Article on Coercive Control
• A Research Paper by Lauren Bennett Cataneo titled “Evan Stark, Coercive Control–Revitalizing a Movement“
• An article on England’s first conviction for coercive control under its new law
• Here is an article on Ireland’s repeal of their Eighth Amendment which banned abortion
• Here is information on the ERA and CEDAW

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