The Coercive Control of Children

Children of Coercive Control extends Evan Stark's path-breaking analysis of interpersonal violence to children, showing that coercive control is the most important cause and context of child abuse and child homicide outside a war zone, as well as of the sexual abuse, denigration, exploitation, isolation and subordination of children. The book provides a working model of the coercive control of children and illustrates its dynamics and consequences with dramatic cases drawn from the headlines and Dr. Stark's forensic practice. The cases include those in which the coercive control of children runs in tandem with the coercive control of women, where children are "weaponized" in the coercive control of their mother and cases where abused mothers harm their children to survive or protect them from worse.

By highlighting a criminal cause of child maltreatment and a plausible justice response, Evan Stark challenges the common assumptions that child abuse and neglect fall on a continuum of problems rooted in maternal deficits, immaturity, poverty, and environmental stressors as well as the combination of Child Welfare and Child Protection Services that currently provide the ameliorative response.

Evan Stark is a sociologist, forensic social worker, and an award-winning researcher with an international reputation for his legal advocacy and innovative policy work on interpersonal violence. With his wife, Anne Flitcraft, MD, Dr. Stark co-founded an early shelter for abused women, co-directed the pioneering Yale Trauma Studies showing the significance of domestic violence for women's health and co-chaired a U.S. Surgeon General's Task Force on Domestic Violence and Women's Health.