Clare Ciborowska succeeds in complex fact-finding hearing in a private law case concerning allegations of coercive control.

Coercive control was made a criminal offence in 2015. Increasingly the family courts are grappling with the same patterns of behaviour in Children Act and Family Law Act cases. Coercive control is an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim.

The court has recently considered the distinction between allegations of a coercive nature and allegations of bad behaviour in a relationship in the case of L v F [2017] EWCA Civ 2121. Read more on Bailii here.

Instructed by Warrens, Eastbourne, Clare Ciborowska was successful in obtaining judgment in favour of the mother on all ten allegations of coercive control and domestic abuse that had been denied by the father resulting in appropriate measures being put in place as regards the children spending time with their father.