A Note on Content

This book examines coercive control in close detail, at every scale from a single household to the apparatus of a state. In doing so it discusses domestic abuse, psychological control, torture, homicide, child abuse, suicide, and state violence. The treatment is measured rather than graphic, but it is sustained, and some of it is hard to read.

If you are currently in danger, or in crisis, please turn first to the appendix, “Resources and Help,” at the back of this book. It lists confidential services for immediate danger, for digital safety, and for building a record safely, and it opens with a warning about reaching those services from a device that may be monitored. Read that page before you read on.

And for the long work of coming back afterward — whether what was done is over or still going on — the appendix “Coming Back to Yourself,” also at the back of this book, sets that road out step by step.

The book does not ask to be believed; it asks to be checked, which is why every claim is sourced and tiered. But checking comes second. If something in your own life is beginning to feel wrong, your safety comes before any paper trail.