WomenSV Launches Online Coercive Control Training to Combat Covert Abuse and Empower Survivors

Understanding and Documenting Coercive Control: Executive Summary Workshop Now Available for Survivors, Advocates, and Service Providers

LOS ALTOS, CA, UNITED STATES, May 8, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- WomenSV, a nationally recognized nonprofit specializing in education and advocacy around covert abuse and coercive control, launched a new online coercive control training program: Understanding and Documenting Coercive Control: Executive Summary Workshop. This trauma-informed, self-paced workshop is designed to help survivors, advocates and service providers recognize, document, and report coercive control and other forms of domestic abuse, including the often-overlooked but deeply harmful tactics of covert abuse.

For domestic violence survivors to get the support and protection they need, they must first explain what they have been through. Yet coercive control is difficult to describe and even harder to prove. The new 90-minute training offers in-depth definitions of coercive control and covert abuse using real-world examples, and provides step-by-step instructions and templates to help survivors document their experiences in a concise, two-page Executive Summary that can be customized for their audience and goals.

Whether survivors are seeking support from an advocate or therapist, preparing for court or reporting abuse to law enforcement, the workshop provides an empowering way for survivors to share their stories. For domestic violence advocates, therapists, law enforcement officers, court staff and allies, who receive limited training around coercive control, the new workshop provides guidance to effectively support the survivors they serve.

Coercive control is a pattern of threatening, isolating, controlling behavior that underlies nearly all forms of domestic violence. It can, but does not always, involve physical and sexual abuse. Often it involves covert emotional abuse, financial abuse, technology-facilitated abuse, legal abuse and stalking.

“Subtle forms of abuse may be one expression of coercive control, but so are strangulation and murder, the ultimate acts of exerting control over an intimate partner,” explains Ruth Darlene Patrick, Founder and Executive Director of WomenSV. “Coercive control can range anywhere from subtle forms of abuse like gaslighting and love bombing to strangulation and includes everything in between. It's not always visible, but it's always dangerous.”

Even non-physical forms of coercive control can be deadly, explains Ruth Darlene Patrick. “Coercive control poses a lethality risk with or without a prior history of physical violence and presents an ongoing potential for homicide. Why? Because it involves treating an intimate partner like a possession and the ultimate right of property possession is the right to dispose of it when it no longer is useful or begins to cause trouble.”

Coercive control can involve overt (obvious) forms of abuse, or covert abuse. Covert abuse, or covert coercive control, often leaves no bruises, no broken bones, and no forensic evidence. Yet it can be just as dangerous. Survivors may experience veiled death threats, subtle intimidation, put-downs disguised as jokes, and gaslighting designed to make them question their reality. The new training teaches participants to recognize different forms of coercive control, including covert abuse tactics that often go unaddressed.

"Even without a single act of physical violence, coercive control can escalate to lethal outcomes," Ruth Darlene Patrick warns. "The risk of homicide is present whether or not the abuser has previously laid a hand on their victim."

Participants are reminded that the training does not constitute therapy or legal advice. The Executive Summary is not a legal document but can be a helpful supplement when seeking legal or therapeutic support.

The training was created by Ruth Darlene Patrick, a state-certified domestic violence advocate with over 14 years of experience. As Founder and Executive Director of WomenSV, she has supported more than 1,500 survivors and trained thousands of professionals, from therapists and police to corporate executives. WomenSV has earned national acclaim for its expertise in covert abuse and coercive control.

As funding for domestic violence organizations faces uncertainty, online education helps sustain vital resources. Enrolling in Understanding and Documenting Coercive Control: Executive Summary Workshop supports domestic violence prevention through education.

Enroll for instant, lifetime access at: www.womensv.org/coercive-control-training-documenting-coercive-control

Ruth Darlene Patrick
WomenSV
info@womensv.org
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