Is it coercive control? / ISO / ISO-3
ISO-3
Discrediting or sabotaging supporters
Definition
Systematic denigration, smear, or harassment of the target's friends, family, therapist, advocate, or attorney, aimed at severing trust in those relationships.
How it operates
Denigrating supporters so the target cuts them or so they withdraw. Friends and family are labeled as sexually contaminated, manipulative, or enemies until the target performs the cutoff. Controlling who the target sees and talks to is isolation. Discrediting those people is how remaining ties are made unusable. Harassing the target's people directly, producing proxy isolation, including contacting family in order to find the target. Dual-code HAR when the same conduct is also harassment. Isolation applies when the function is network-severing. Smearing the target in public so the community withdraws or turns on the target, including negative postings on social media. Dual-code HAR-2 and ISO-3 when the function is network-severing. Discrediting professional supporters to the target. Attacks on a therapist, advocate, or attorney designed to make the target drop them are ISO-3. Performing for an evaluator is INST. Constructing the target as mentally unwell to a court or other system is INST and PATH. Continuing isolation and discrediting after separation as a named class of post-separation abuse.
Function
Destroy the credibility of remaining supporters so the target stops turning to them, or so those people withdraw. Independent witnesses have already been labeled as liars, mercenaries, or enemies.
Harm
The target loses both the people and the credibility of the people who might have offered perspective, validation, or practical help. Lack of support can feel more traumatic than the abuse itself. Remaining supporters, once discredited, cannot test the abuser's version of events.
Why this is coercive control
Ordinary one-off criticism of a third party does not aim to sever the relationship. The conduct here destroys remaining independent witnesses.
Constructed example
“Your therapist is filling your head with garbage. She gets paid to make you think you're a victim.”
Fictitious. Written to illustrate the behavior. Not a case.
Pence & Paymar 1993; Spearman, Hardesty & Campbell 2023; Stark 2007, 2012; Sweet 2019; Skoog Waller & Forinder 2025; Woodlock 2017.
Literature this family is drawn from
- Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford University Press.
- Stark, E., & Hester, M. (2019). Coercive control: Update and review. Violence Against Women, 25(1), 81-104.
- Pence, E., & Paymar, M. (1993). Education groups for men who batter: The Duluth model. Springer.
- Katz, E. (2016). Beyond the physical incident model: How children living with domestic violence are harmed by and resist regimes of coercive control. Child Abuse Review, 25(1), 46-59.
- Harris, B., & Woodlock, D. (2019). Digital coercive control: Insights from two landmark domestic violence studies. The British Journal of Criminology, 59(3), 530-550.
- ANROWS. (2021). Defining and responding to coercive control: Policy brief. Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety.
- Fontes, L. A. (2015). Invisible chains: Overcoming coercive control in your intimate relationship. Guilford Press.
- Crossman, K. A., Hardesty, J. L., & Raffaelli, M. (2016). “He could scare me without laying a hand on me”: Mothers’ experiences of nonviolent coercive control during marriage and after separation. Violence Against Women, 22(4), 454-473.
- Serious Crime Act 2015, s. 76 (England and Wales) (controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship).
- Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018.
- Crimes Legislation Amendment (Coercive Control) Act 2022 (NSW), offense commencing July 1, 2024.
- Cal. Fam. Code § 6320(c), as amended by 2020 Cal. Stat. ch. 248 (SB 1141).
- Conn. Gen. Stat. § 46b-1(b) (Jennifer’s Law, 2021).
Identifying a behavior described here does not establish a pattern of behavior and does not establish coercive control. A tactic is not a regime. The instrument consolidates peer-reviewed literature so a reader can check when in doubt. The instrument is not a coding manual. Carlton Research does not provide the instrument as a weapon.
© 2026 Carisa Carlton.
Carlton, C. (2026). Is it coercive control?: ISO-3. Carlton Research Instruments. /codebook/iso-3. Last reviewed August 31, 2026.