Cults exploit a legal loophole in order to escape accountability, Chris Shelton reports…
If someone controls your finances, isolates you from your relationships, and dictates your daily life, the law increasingly recognizes that as abuse, at least when it happens in a personal relationship. When those same patterns occur inside an organization, especially a religious one, there is often nowhere to turn, and even being believed can be a struggle.
This is not because the harm is unclear. It is because the law has been built to recognize coercive control in some contexts, but not in others.
The abuse of members in high-control groups, both religious and non-religious, has been documented for decades. Investigations, survivor testimony, and media coverage have revealed patterns of financial exploitation, social isolation, and systematic control over members’ lives. In some of the most widely scrutinized cases, including Church of Scientology and Jehovah’s Witnesses, former members and official inquiries have described environments where personal autonomy is heavily restricted and dissent is discouraged or punished.
For example, in the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that internal policies, including the “two-witness rule,” were applied even in child sexual abuse cases. This rule requires either a confession or a second eyewitness before action can be taken. In practice, this meant many allegations could not be substantiated within the organization and were often not reported to outside authorities.
This growing awareness raises an obvious question. If these harms are real and well documented, why is accountability so rare?
In the United Kingdom, coercive control has entered the legal mainstream in recent years; laws such as Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 recognize that abuse is not limited to physical violence. It can include patterns of behavior that isolate, dominate and restrict a person’s freedoms. However, these laws apply exclusively to people who are personally connected in a domestic setting, such as intimate partners or family members.
That limitation leaves an entire class of victims, such as those in high-control organizations, effectively outside the reach of the law.
The core concept behind coercive control legislation is straightforward. This kind of abuse is not defined by isolated incidents but through patterns of behavior that are sustained over time to create dependency, restrict autonomy, and establish ongoing control.
What is less widely acknowledged is that these same patterns appear far beyond domestic relationships. Research in psychology and violence studies has found that the same underlying mechanisms of domination, dependency, and psychological control are present across multiple contexts including cults, trafficking networks and other institutional environments.
This matters because it challenges a key assumption embedded in current law. Coercive control is often treated as if it were unique to romantic or family relationships. Yet the evidence suggests it is better understood as a broader pattern of human behavior that can emerge wherever there is a significant imbalance of power and control.
Under statutes such as the UK’s Serious Crime Act, coercive control becomes a criminal offense only when the individuals involved are personally connected, typically as partners, spouses, or family members. This creates a clear inconsistency. When one individual systematically isolates, dominates, and controls another within a personal relationship, the law may recognize it as a crime. But when an organization uses similar patterns to control its members, the same conduct often falls outside the scope of the law.
The behavior is comparable, and often identical. The legal response is not. This reflects a significant blind spot in our systems, one that allows group-based coercion to continue even after it has been documented, testified to, and widely exposed.
One of the most persistent obstacles to addressing coercive control outside domestic settings is the way opposition is framed. When proposals emerge to extend these laws to high-control groups, critics often argue that doing so would infringe on religious freedom. At first glance, that concern appears serious. On closer inspection, it is often misapplied.
No serious proposal suggests criminalizing belief, doctrine, or worship. The issue is not what people believe. It is what is done to them. Coercive control law is concerned with patterns of behavior that restrict autonomy, isolate individuals, and create dependency. Those patterns do not become acceptable simply because they are carried out within a religious structure.
The question is straightforward. Should demonstrable patterns of harm, coercion, and control be exempt from scrutiny simply because they are framed as religious practice?
In every other domain, the answer is no. Fraud remains fraud. Abuse remains abuse. Unlawful confinement remains unlawful confinement. Religious freedom protects belief. It does not provide a blanket exemption for harmful conduct.
Research has also shown that belief systems themselves can be used to reinforce dependency and submission when authority structures are rigid and dissent is discouraged. This does not make religion inherently abusive, it demonstrates how belief can be used within coercive systems. The systems themselves can become the source of the abuse just as much as a “bad apple” who happens to fall into a leadership role.
Resistance to expanding coercive control laws in this area is therefore not surprising. Systems that depend on maintaining high levels of control will tend to resist external scrutiny. This is typical throughout history. Abusive organizations and groups consistently fail to police their own behavior.
Some jurisdictions have attempted to address these environments by focusing on concepts such as “mental manipulation” or “psychological dependence.” These approaches are flawed because they rely on subjective interpretations of internal states that are difficult to prove. They also raise legitimate concerns about government intrusion into belief.
This is the wrong target.
The law does not need to determine what someone believes. It needs to determine what they did, how they did it, and what the effects were. Patterns of isolation, financial exploitation, intimidation, and control are observable. They can be documented, corroborated, and tested in court.
When harmful conduct is shielded by religious framing, the consequences extend beyond individual victims. Public trust in institutions erodes. Legal protections appear inconsistent. The line between protected belief and prohibited conduct becomes unclear.
The solution is not to weaken religious freedom. It is to clarify its boundaries. Belief must remain protected. Conduct must remain accountable.
One of the least discussed barriers to addressing coercive control is not legal at all. It is a gap in understanding. Coercive control is not an isolated act. It is a pattern of behavior that unfolds over time. This creates a mismatch with how law enforcement is trained to operate, which is focused on individual incidents rather than cumulative patterns. As a result, coercive behavior is often minimized, misunderstood, or missed entirely.
Even when it is recognized, it is frequently misinterpreted. Terms like “gaslighting” are widely used but poorly understood. Gaslighting is not simply lying, it is a systematic process of destabilizing a person’s confidence in their own perception, memory, and judgment through repeated contradiction and denial.
The misunderstanding also extends to vulnerability. Coercive control exploits ordinary human needs for connection, stability, and meaning. Under conditions of stress or dependency, susceptibility increases. This is often interpreted by outsiders or observers as “weakness” on the part of individual members when, in fact, it is not weakness at all but simply a typical human response to being abused.
Coercive control is never an accident. It does not occur because someone was trying to do good and made a mistake. It is a pattern of behavior that functions to dominate another person. That is why it persists. That is why it escalates. And that is why it does not respond to warnings or persuasion. Yet institutional responses often treat it as if it will.
Law enforcement and the courts frequently approach these cases as misunderstandings or conflicts that can be resolved through communication. That framework is incompatible with the reality of coercive control. The result is under-enforcement. Victims are not believed, patterns are not recognized, cases fail to move forward.
The good news is that there is no need to invent a new legal framework. The model already exists. Domestic coercive control laws are built around observable patterns of behavior. They focus on repeated actions that isolate, dominate, and restrict autonomy over time. These actions produce measurable harm, including psychological distress, financial exploitation, and loss of independence. The law evaluates what was done, how often it occurred, and what impact it had. There is no meaningful reason this framework cannot be applied beyond intimate relationships.
The behavior does not change when the context changes. A pattern of control remains a pattern of control, whether it is carried out by an individual or reinforced by a group. Legal systems already recognize shared responsibility in other areas of law. Coercive control is no different in principle. What limits its application is scope.
Current laws exclude cases where individuals are not personally connected. Expanding that scope would not require new theory, only consistent application of existing standards.
That application depends on clarity, competence, and consistency. Definitions must remain grounded in behavior. Legal professionals must be trained to recognize coercive dynamics. And no organization should be beyond scrutiny when credible evidence of harm exists. After all, it’s been shown in the recent past that there is no institution anywhere which is flawless or should ever be held above accountability. The path forward is not complicated. The law already recognizes coercive control. It simply needs to apply that recognition wherever the same patterns appear.
The concept of coercive control represents a major advance in how we understand abuse, but its impact is limited by where we are willing to apply it. The theory is not the problem, the breakdown lies in scope, enforcement, and will. Until coercive control is recognized wherever it occurs, many victims will remain invisible. And some of the most systematic forms of abuse will continue to operate behind the language of belief, authority, and tradition.
The question is no longer whether coercive control exists. It is whether we are willing to act on what we already know.
Chris Shelton holds a Masters in the Psychology of Coercive Control from the University of Salford. His new book, ‘What Now? A Practical Guide to Life After a Cult’ introduces a new framework that explains how high control groups exploit reason, emotional and morality, and offers practical advice for survivors on rebuilding identity, establishing healthy boundaries and restoring independent thought.
