Coercive Control Field Check / RES

Category 16

Target Response Codes

Target responses record what a campaign of coercive control produces: compliance under constraint, minimization and self-blame, delayed or cyclical exit, resistance including violent resistance, help-seeking met by institutional indifference, silence under manufactured exposure, and attachment binding after intermittent reward. These responses document asymmetry and the trajectory of entrapment. They are not a diagnosis, a personality type, or proof that the target chose the abuse.

Johnson 2008; Stark 2007; Dutton & Goodman 2005; Tolmie et al. 2018, 2024; Sharp-Jeffs, Kelly & Klein 2018; Ptacek 1999, 2023.

• RES-1

  Compliance and Constrained Accommodation

  Acting in accordance with the abuser's demands, rules, or implied or-else in order to reduce immediate harm, protect children, keep housing or status, or avoid official retaliation.

• RES-2

  Minimization, Reframing, and Cultivated Self-blame

  Redefining the abuse (downplaying, justifying, normalizing, or taking responsibility) when leaving or naming the conduct looks unsurvivable.

• RES-3

  Delayed, Aborted, or Cyclical Exit

  Planning to leave, leaving, returning, or aborting an exit because the remaining options still include violence, poverty, loss of children, immigration harm, criminal exposure, or institutional disbelief.

• RES-4

  Resistance, Including Violent Resistance

  Acts that oppose the control regime, from small refusals and secret help-seeking to violence used against the abuser. Violent resistance here is non-controlling violence in response to a general-control project, not a matching campaign of control.

• RES-5

  Help-seeking Met By Institutional Indifference

  Approaches to police, courts, child protection, health care, or other institutions that produce no safety and sometimes produce additional harm, after which the target reduces or stops official help-seeking.

• RES-6

  Silence and Non-disclosure Under Manufactured Exposure

  Withholding disclosure of abuse, of harm to children, or of the abuser's crimes because the abuser has created criminal, immigration, or child-protection exposure and will spend that exposure if the target speaks.

• RES-7

  Attachment Binding and Intermittent-reward Responses

  Remaining oriented to the relationship, hoping for the return of warmth, or experiencing the bond as compulsive after a pattern of cruelty alternating with care.