VOICES
Survivor testimony for a bill to criminalize coercive control, AKA emotional abuse, in Maine. The public hearing was March 3.
My name is Mary Lou Smith. I am 85 years old and left my abusive marriage at the age of 65. My ex was a "respected" college professor on the outside. Inside our house my children and I lived hell on earth. No One Knew! I lived with coercive control the entire 43 years of my marriage. My ex's abuse was physical, verbal, emotional, psychological, and financial.
He would put me down with ridicule, offensive and crude language. He would say, “Wait until everyone finds out you are a fake and a fraud.” I walked on eggshells 24/7 never knowing when his anger would explode on me and my children.
It is imperative that LD 670 “An act to address Coercive Control in Domestic Abuse Cases” is passed to give victim of domestic abuse the legal rights to address their verbal, emotional, psychological, and financial abuse along with physical abuse.
In my 43 year marriage I had black eyes and bruises but the emotional abuse hurt and damaged me more.
I am Mia Mantello of Lincolnville. I am a survivor of domestic violence, having been in an emotionally and physically abusive marriage in my late teens and early 20s.
I am also a psychotherapist and have been in practice for 33 years.
Please understand that coercive control is the beginning, and in fact, foundation of intimate partner violence. At first it can appear subtle, but it increases in intensity over time and attacks the very core of the victim's personhood. Self- confidence, self-assertion and self-esteem are eroded over time, and the victim tolerates more and more coercion and control because of growing fear and a keenly felt lack of agency.
Any victim understands this erosion of emotional and psychological strength.
By the end of my marriage I was afraid of many things, including asserting myself and even driving at night.
We need to understand coercive control as the foundation of--- and beginning, middle and end of----one human's domination and terrorization of another.
My name is Eleanor Busby, and this is not just another bill—it is a necessary lifeline for victims like me who have been financially devastated by the abusive control of a partner.
I am 72 years old, and instead of retiring in safety and dignity, I face the grim reality of working until the day I die simply to survive. Why? Because my ex-spouse exerted financial control over me in ways that destroyed my independence, my security, and my future.
Over the years, I worked hard and saved diligently, setting aside what I could for retirement. My life savings were not extravagant, but they amounted to nearly $250,000—invested in my home, which was designed to be broken into rental units which would give me stability in my later years. But my ex-husband took that from me through deception, coercion, and outright fraud. He forged my signature and signed away my savings, and when I finally discovered the full extent of his manipulation, it was too late.
He controlled our household finances under the pretense of "managing" them for our well-being, but in reality, he let our bills go unpaid while keeping me in the dark. When I finally broke free, I found myself with ruined credit, a mountain of debt, and no home to call my own. The financial abuse was not just an inconvenience—it was an annihilation of my stability, forcing me into a cycle of struggle that I will never escape.
This is why this bill matters. Coercive control is a form of domestic abuse that is just as destructive as physical violence, yet our laws fail to protect victims from its insidious reach. By criminalizing financial abuse and coercive control, we are not just punishing abusers; we are giving survivors the legal recourse they desperately need to reclaim their lives. We are affirming that people like me deserve a second chance.
No one should be able to strip another person of their autonomy, their financial future, and their dignity without consequence. Without laws addressing coercive control, abusers continue to act with impunity, and victims remain trapped in a cycle of dependence and despair.
I urge you to pass this legislation and send a clear message: Financial abuse is not just unethical—it is criminal. Survivors deserve justice, and they deserve the opportunity to rebuild their lives without the constant shadow of their abuser's control.
Thank you for your time and for your commitment to protecting victims of domestic abuse.
My name is Lisa Perry. Twenty years my abuser used coercive control to keep myself and my children in a constant state of panic and confusion. The one example I would like to share with you is a tactic he used on my adult autistic daughter. In this example I'll refer to her as Dawn.
After graduating high school Dawn began working a few hours a week cleaning houses. Her boss would come by and pick her up on the days she worked. She would often have coffee with her or have a coffee on her return home. Occasionally she would forget to take the k-cup out of the coffee maker. For almost two years our abuser would take the k-cup and put it either in her shoe or her coat pocket, so she would find it while getting ready to go out the door to work in the morning. It took her almost two years to tell me this was happening to her.
The abuser knew when Dawn found the k-cup it would throw her into a panic, and she would worry about it all the time she was at work. When she came home from work, the abuser was almost always sitting in a chair facing the entryway and she would have to walk past him to get to her room.
When Dawn told me this was happening, I began checking her shoes and jacket every morning to make sure there wasn't a k-cup hidden inside. Sometimes weeks or months would go by, and nothing would happen but the moment I let my guard down she or I would find another k-cup. Shortly before we finally were able to leave the abuser, I confronted him about the hidden k-cups, he just became very angry and blamed Dawn for telling me about it.
This was just one of the hundreds of ways he used coercive control to keep us walking on eggshells. This insidious form of control takes away the victims’ self-confidence and slowly whittles away any semblance of free will. Please support this bill and the next time you have a cup of coffee, think of my Dawn.
My name is Christine Buckley and I have been a Maine resident since 1987 and have resided in Waldo county since 2002.
I am here today to speak about how important it is to include coercive control in the legal definition of abuse here in Maine.
Since I joined Patrisha McLean’s grassroots organization Finding Our Voices about 5 years ago, I have had the honor to get to know with many women who have had the experience of being trapped in abusive relationships. I intentionally use the word “trapped” because I have heard countless stories from women who were afraid to leave their abusive partners because of REPEATED violent, horrific and terrifying threats from those abusive partners in an effort to manipulate the women into staying in the relationship. Threats like,
“If you leave me, I will kill myself.”
“If you leave me, I will kill your dog.”
“If you leave me, I will kill you.”
“If you leave me, I will kill your children.”
Imagine, for a moment, how paralyzing it might be to hear these kinds of threats knowing that it is unlikely that the police or the courts with take those threats as seriously and she does.
The question needs to change from:
“WHY DOESN’T SHE LEAVE HER ABUSER?”
to
“WHAT IS HE DOING TO KEEP HER TRAPPED?”
I have personally experienced coercive control. In 2000, when my first child was born, her abusive birthfather repeatedly threatened to kill my dog when I would not agree to stay with him. He stalked me, threw rocks at my windows, left notes on my car pleading with me to “stop this nonsense and just be a family together”. The police only offered unhelpful advice like “so maybe don’t let your dog out after dark” and “just give it some time and things will die down.”
I couldn’t sleep. I was afraid to leave the house. I was afraid to leave my infant daughter in daycare so I could not go to work. That coercive control of my life went on for 18 months until he lost his parental rights in court. In my case, I was not persuaded to stay with my abuser, but he emotionally tortured me for 18 months and cost me thousands of dollars in legal fees and yet he was never charged with any crime.
COERCIVE CONTROL needs to be legally recognized as a commonly used means of keeping women trapped in abusive relationships. And the police need to start asking different questions when investigating domestic violence calls for help.
A year ago this week, the Gabby Petito Bill was passed in Florida requiring that police officers ask 12 important questions when called to a DV dispute to assess the situation. Questions 2, 6 and 11 address methods of coercive control. (See questions)
Our law enforcement should certainly be asking the same questions here in Maine. But let us begin by passing this bill to add COERCIVE CONTROL to our state’s legal definition of ABUSE.
My name is Suzanne Barton, and I use to live in York County. My children attended Thornton Academy in Saco, ME.
I humbly support LD 670, and I ask that you all pursue this bill until it becomes law.
Why?
I have witnessed first-hand the devastation caused from prolong, coercive control.
As a mother, it witnessed the long-term trauma caused; not just for me, but worse---the children. Please add verbiage that minor children be protected from coercive control as well.
As a tax payer, advocate and activist, I have seen the ripple effects to which coercive control adversely effects learning and academics in children; changes in my own brain and ability to process and learn new information / same with minor children; the cost in lost work, lost time in the classroom, and the additional resources in the form of law enforcement as well as behavior health hospital admissions.
DV, IPV, and coercive control are public safety issues that costs tax payers millions when left unaddressed, and / or re-framed as "high conflict divorce," or "maternal parental alienation."
I see the devastating effects of trauma within my full-time work (Behavioral Health).
I work with adults seeking services due to childhoods riddled with violence (verbal, emotional, psychological, and physical).
I testify that living through this type of abuse---to this day 20 years post divorce---is life changing.
We will never be the same people. We will never completely heal. We are left to learn to manage and that's it. There are no words for this. The medical professionals, teachers, etc.. are not aware of the signs and symptoms. It goes misunderstood and mislabeled as ADD, or ADHD, or oppositional etc.
We are slowly recovering but the pain and the trauma is there every day we rise up and get out of bed.
As a healthcare professional, I testify that it is worth preventing such abuses, and pursuing trauma informed care / interventions / wrap around services that understand coercive control.
As Frederick Douglas once stated, "It is easier to raise a child well, than to repair a broken man," (paraphrase).
Thank you for your tine and attention.
I am Patrisha McLean, CEO and founder of Finding Our Voices and I support LD670, An Act to Address Coercive Control in Domestic Abuse Cases.
Finding Our Voices is the grassroots nonprofit providing peer-support and resources to Maine women survivors of domestic abuse.
In Camden, I sat with a woman I will call Cathy who had been rescued by her best friend a few days earlier after texting that friend, “He almost killed me last night”. She and her three children were living with that friend until they could figure out the next steps.
Cathy was 32 years old. She had been with her husband since she was 15. They lived in a trailer down a long dirt road. She wasn’t allowed to work. She didn’t have a car and he was constantly breaking her cell phone.
While Cathy was telling me this, she kept her hand over her mouth. When she said to me you have beautiful teeth, I asked her about her own teeth and why she was covering them up.
Her teeth were black and broken. Why? Because in the years she lived with her husband he did not “let her” brush them.
He didn’t tell her she couldn’t brush her teeth. Coercive control AKA emotional abuse is more insidious than that.
Starting soon after they met, and over time, he filled her with fear of doing the wrong thing to set him off and there were more and more things she had to avoid doing, with new and always ridiculous things added all the time. This served to keep her in a constant and debilitating state of terror.
At some point, every time she started to brush her teeth he would say “Oh, you’re making yourself beautiful for your boyfriend.” She would try to defend herself, but that would just ramp things up.
So in the end, it was safer for her to just stop brushing her teeth. She also stopped going to the dentist. When she had an appointment, he would sabotage it and he made her feel she was not worth the money for dental treatment. The problems with her teeth stemming from coercive control impacted her physical health, robbed her of her confidence, and socially isolated her. The state of her teeth and health challenges made it hard for her to get a job or get promoted, and robbed her of the ability to be the parent she wanted to be.
My talk with Cathy was the start of a Finding Our Voices program called Finding Our Smiles where 35 dentists including many from Augusta are now providing free and dignified dental care to women survivors of domestic abuse.
Yes, there are cases with Finding Our Smiles that fit the current definition of domestic violence in Maine civil and criminal courts, with women needing dental treatment due to punches in the mouth, being shoved down stairs, and, once, for a baseball bat to the mouth.
But over and over again women applicants to this free dental program tell us they are in desperate need of dental care due to neglect of their teeth from emotional abuse, AKA coercive control.
This is just one example of how insidious and evil and pervasive coercive control is, and also the deep and long-lasting damage that it does. I urge you to follow the lead of States including Hawaii, Connecticut and Massachusetts by adding coercive control to the definition of domestic abuse in Maine.
My name is Mary Kamradt and I am Chief of Staff at Finding Our Voices, the grassroots nonprofit providing peer support and resources to women survivors of domestic abuse in Maine.
As a 35-year survivor of domestic abuse that began in my teens, and as a staff member at Finding Our Voices, I am deeply committed to prevention efforts. I believe early education can equip students to recognize the signs of abuse, understand the characteristics of healthy relationships, and potentially deter future abusers. My story may have unfolded differently if I had been educated when I met my abuser. Regrettably, as a 16-year-old, I was unaware of the insidious nature of coercive control and the subtle undermining of my rights and dignity that would ensue for the next 35 years.
My abuser methodically isolated me from family and friends and used intimidation and threats to ensure my obedience. He controlled and sabotaged my finances, forced me into sexual acts against my will and tracked my whereabouts. Any dissent on my part would provoke a violent outburst. He destroyed my belongings, drove erratically to terrorize me, and vividly described how he would end his own life, warning I’d have to live with the guilt. Emotionally, I was conditioned to submit in order to shield myself and my children from potential harm.
After my children became independent, I felt increasingly isolated and lonely. I made friends online which would trigger a shocking ending to our relationship after he set fire to my house while I was in bed. I am fortunate and grateful to be alive today. But perhaps if I’d been educated on the risks and had the support of legislation behind me, I would have navigated the situation differently.
Coercive control is fundamental to domestic abuse. This manipulative behavior aims to create dependency by isolating victims from their support systems, exploiting them, and stripping them of their autonomy. The repercussions of such actions have a profoundly damaging effect on entire families and the broader community.
I believe that collaboration with other organizations and the wider community is crucial for enhancing domestic violence prevention efforts. By joining forces and securing support from our legislators through initiatives like Bill LD670, we can elevate awareness, educate our youth, and promote accountability in addressing the domestic violence crisis in Maine. It is crucial to follow the lead of other states by incorporating coercive control into the definition of abuse and clearly defining coercive control within protection from abuse legislation.
Thank you for your time.