Nicola Hanney finds that coercive control victims ‘are not being believed’
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An author and coercive control survivor who suffered years of abuse at the hands of a serving garda said abused women are ‘not being believed’ by the authorities.
Nicola Hanney spoke out after new figures provided by the DPP confirm there has been just 25 successful prosecutions since legislation making coercive control a criminal offence was enacted six years ago. This is despite separate figures which confirm more than 60,000 calls alleging coercive control were made to garda stations across the country last year alone.
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Out of the 25 convictions recorded since January 2019, just two people were convicted on a sole charge of coercive control. But in these two instances – which includes Nicola’s case – the perpetrator was originally charged with more offences.
In her critically acclaimed memoir, Stronger: What Didn’t Kill Me, Made Me, Nicola Hanney detailed the living hell she endured at the hands of Garda Paul Moody, who was sentenced to three years
and three months in prison for coercive control in 2023.
This abuse included smashing up her apartment, threatening to take their newborn son away while she received cancer treatment and isolating her from her friends and family.
Nicola Hanney described coercive control an ‘assault on the mind’, and said it is ‘shocking’ that more perpetrators have not been convicted. She told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘I’m one of the two [where the sole charge was coercive control]. There were more charges to start, but they were dwindled down to one charge of coercive control.’
Content retrieved from: https://www.msn.com/en-ie/news/uknews/nicola-hanney-finds-that-coercive-control-victims-are-not-being-believed/ar-AA1FqBDT.
