Nearly one in three (30%) of victims-survivors surveyed in the study reported that a partner or ex-partner had deliberately withheld essential medication or treatment (including vaccines) from them and/or their children.
Victims reported a number of incidents, including one victim-survivor reporting that her abusive ex-partner would deliberately withhold her pain medication on a regular basis with devastating effects on both her physical and mental health reporting “my pain levels became so high I was regularly hospitalized or bed-ridden, making me feel desperately isolated and unable to cope with daily life leaving me feeling suicidal.”
The research, funded by the Oak Foundation, was carried out by Prof. Marianne Hester and Sarah-Jane Walker from the University of Bristol's School for Policy Studies and Elizabeth McCarthy from Women’s Aid to address a lack of knowledge and information around this form of control.
They also interviewed domestic abuse practitioners as part of the study who said that the use of chemical control amongst victims-survivors is much more of a problem than we currently know especially as victims-survivors often don't recognise it as abuse themselves at the time.
The report stresses that there is a clear need for awareness and understanding amongst statutory and non-statutory agencies working with victims-survivors, perpetrators and commissioning services, including the police, local authorities and the NHS, about the nature of coercive control including how medication can be weaponized within coercive controlling relationships and the harm caused.
It also recommends that primary care practitioners, including GPs and pharmacists, should be supported to understand that perpetrators can, and do, use medication to abuse, in order to recognize potential red flags, for example, where a patient is either under or over requesting prescriptions for their medication and not improving as expected.
Professor Marianne Hester said,
"We are grateful to the Oak Foundation who recognised that ‘chemical control’ is an important area of abuse by male perpetrators and therefore commissioned this work. We have been able to show how prescribed and nonprescribed medication (and other substances) are being used by perpetrators to psychologically, emotionally and physically harm, the key motivating factor being coercion, control and abuse of an intimate ex/partner. These strategies of perpetrators put victim-survivors at further risk of declining health and early mortality with no thought for the dignity or safety of victims."