26/12/2024NEWS

University teacher’s online education-coercive control

As part of the “16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence” campaign (December 2024), Lana Bobić held 19 online training sessions on the topic of “Coercive Control” for teaching staff at UNIGEM partner universities. Gender-based violence manifests in various forms, and one of the most subtle and difficult to recognize is coercive control.

The TPO Foundation, together with 19 partner universities from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro, has been organizing various forms of education for the past four years in conjunction with the “16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence” campaign. During December 2024, online training sessions were held for university teaching staff as part of the UNIGEM (Universities and Gender Mainstreaming) project.

Trainer Lana Bobić emphasized that coercive control is hard to recognize and its power lies in the fact that the techniques are not fixed, meaning the abuser experiments with different methods in various contexts. Among the recognized techniques, Lana Bobić explained:

  • LOVE BOMBING – showering the victim with attention and affection at the beginning of the relationship, creating a fast-paced relationship, presenting it as a fateful love, i.e., the person the victim had been waiting for, who is not afraid to show emotions and reveal all their dark sides.
  • BOILING A FROG – a technique where the victim’s resistance is gradually and almost imperceptibly reduced over time, increasing the abuser’s power (violence does not start with a slap, and when physical violence does occur, the victim is already “boiled”).
  • Isolating the person from family, friends, work, and support.
  • DEATH THREATS – using both active and passive threats, often involving children, driving the victim insane, stalking, degrading, shaming, surveilling, and blackmailing.
  • CONTROL OF BASIC NEEDS – a technique that involves controlling food, medication, sleep, money, i.e., micromanaging the victim’s daily activities.
  • JEALOUSY AND FALSE ACCUSATIONS OF INFIDELITY – a technique of control, intimidation, and isolation, often used to justify physical violence.

There are numerous other mechanisms that abusers use to control their victims, manage their lives, time, and resources. For university teaching staff, it is important to raise awareness about these issues but also to pass this knowledge on to their students in order to prevent gender-based violence.