New research has found the number of men who are becoming victims of coercive control is going up. The research, commissioned by IBB Solicitors, reveals more than a third of men in the UK have admitted to being a victim in a coercive control relationship.
However more than 53% have reported having experience some kind of bullying at the hands of their partner; the same percentage of women who have experienced the same.
Coercive behaviour included bullying, controlled spending, depriving them of food, spying on them or their activity, intentional destruction of or hiding their possessions and deleting their texts or emails.
A staggering 30% of men suspect their partner of spying on them or their activity. 29% have had their spending controlled or monitored; 27% have had their possessions intentionally destroyed or their texts deleted; and alarmingly 24% have had their partner deprive them of food.
Worryingly though nearly half of men (48%) said they nothing about it; a significantly higher than women (33%). By contrast, women were much more likely to say they had ended the relationship (37%) compared with only 1 in 6 (16%) of men experiencing issues.
The reasons for not reporting abusive behaviour vary significantly between the genders. Men are more likely to say they would be worried about their partner going to prison (22%) while women are more likely to be concerned about how they would be protected (28%).
London residents were significantly more likely to report being in a coercive control relationship (62%) than the rest of the country compared with a national average of 34%.
Incidence of all the other controlling or bullying behaviours researched were also much higher in London than other regions with roughly 50% of Londoners reporting ever experiencing each of the different behaviours researched.
Londoners were also by far the most prepared to report this kind of behaviour with 49% saying they would report it immediately compared with an overall average of just 28%.
View the full case study here to find out how we carried out this research and the coverage it generated.
