Four years on from controlling and coercive behaviour being criminalised, survivors are reporting their psychologically abusive partners to the police at record levels. This week, the ONS has revealed that more than 17,000 incidents were recorded by the police last year – staggeringly, double the number reported the previous year.

At Women’s Aid, we campaigned for controlling and coercive behaviour to be made illegal because we know, from what women tell us, that power and control is at the heart of virtually all abusive relationships. We fought hard to challenge the myth that domestic abuse is only about black eyes and broken bones. We saw the new offence as a landmark step forward for the women who have suffered in silence, through years of humiliation and degradation, often living in dire poverty and under house arrest - but who thought nobody would take them seriously unless they’d been hit.

Police reports of coercive and controlling behaviour have doubled to over 17,000 a year, but this is a drop in the ocean compared to the 746,000 overall domestic abuse crimes reported to the police in the last 12 months.

Yet our Domestic Abuse Report revealed that more than two-thirds of survivors had experienced jealous and controlling behaviour, while 94 per cent had experienced emotional abuse, such as destructive criticism, constant humiliation, gaslighting and degrading behaviour.