Coercive control Easy Read Page 2

Coercive control can happen in lots of different ways.

These are just some of the ways it can happen.

They can hurt your mental health.

Mental health means the way you think and feel.

They might

• Be very mean to you

• Say you are bad at things.
  

Coercive control can be sexual abuse.

This means they make you do sexual things you do not want.

They might make you feel very bad about yourself.

They might

• Make jokes about you

• Share information you do not want them to.
  

They could use violence to hurt you and might make you feel scared.

Violence means they do very bad things that make you not safe.

They might

• Hurt you in a physical way

• Throw or break things on purpose.
  

They might make threats to you.

Threats are when they say they will do something bad to you.

They might say they will take away your visa.

A visa is something you may need to stay in Australia if you were not born here.

They might do things to stop you seeing your family and friends.

They might take away your phone to stop you talking to other people.

They might stop you doing things on your own.

They might

• Make rules about what you can wear

• Say you can not leave the house.

They might control how you use money.

They might not let you

• Work outside of your home

• Look at your bank account.
  

They might follow you when you do not want or know it.

They might look at your emails and texts.

They might stop you from doing things from your culture.

Culture means the way you do things because of where you or your family are from.

They might not let you

• Speak your own language

• See people who have the same culture as you.
  

They might

• Make rules about when you have sex

• Say you can not use contraception.
  

Contraception is something that can stop you or someone else getting pregnant.

They might use services to scare and control you.

This means they might

• Give fake information to child services

• Lie to immigration services.
  

Immigration services are services that help people who have moved to Australia.