The concept of “coercive control” entered the lexicon about a decade ago and has become an increasingly prevalent theme in the true crime genre. Pioneered by Evan Stark, a researcher and expert on domestic abuse, it refers to a pattern of abusive behavior and manipulation — including isolation, humiliation, financial abuse, stalking and gaslighting — used to dominate a partner. Men are most often, but not always, the abusers.
Coercive control “is designed to subjugate and dominate, not merely to hurt,” Stark, who died in April, said in a London court in 2019 while testifying on behalf of a domestic abuse victim who’d murdered her husband. She, appealing her conviction, was subsequently released from prison.
Here are four picks across television, film and podcasting that show how this form of psychological abuse, though hard to prove as a crime, ruins lives.
Podcast
Because I’ve watched every episode of the MTV show “Catfish,” I thought that this six-chapter investigative podcast from Tortoise Media, which explores a true story in which coercive control overlaps with catfishing (tricking others, often into a romantic relationship, using fake digital profiles), was unlikely to shock me.
But the saga — about Kirat Assi, a woman from London whose life was turned on its head for nearly a decade after she fell for “Bobby” via Facebook — still managed to test my tolerance for how little legal recourse the deceived parties have. The story also speaks to why the damage caused by coercive control and by the proliferation of catfishing should not be minimized.
Documentary Film
These types of manipulations generally fall under the “if it’s too good to be true” warning, but few exemplify coercive control like “The Tinder Swindler.” This 2022 Emmy-nominated documentary from Netflix tells the saga of the con man Shimon Hayut (also known as Simon Leviev) who swept women he met on Tinder off their feet with whirlwind fairy-tale romances, complete with private jets and five-star hotels, before preying on their humanity and fears in order to bilk them out of millions of dollars.
“He was smart and funny and very impulsive,” said Pernilla Sjöholm, one of the three victims who appear in the film.
“I shared my whole heart with him,” said Ayleen Charlotte, another.
“The victims of these kinds of emotional crimes are often dismissed,” the film’s director, Felicity Morris, told Deadline when the documentary was released, adding that often the police just laughed at them when they reported the crimes. These women, though, were not deterred, and their determination to bring Hayut to justice — and not be shamed into silence — gives this story a rewarding spin.
DOCUMENTARY SERIES
This three-part Netflix series from 2022 is similar to “The Tinder Swindler” in that it tells the story of a man, Robert Hendy-Freegard, who psychologically entrapped and fleeced several people out of huge sums of money. But this story — which involves bizarre scare tactics and disturbing kidnappings — is more extreme, horrifying and haunting at every turn.
The docuseries gives a comprehensive overview of the elaborate situation and offers painful portraits of those affected, including pleas from the two adult children of Sandra Clifton who say Clifton disappeared from their lives after meeting Hendy-Freegard through an online dating site years prior. Another victim, Sarah Smith, recalls the depths of his mind games, which, she says, included starving her and locking her in a dirty bathroom for weeks.
The hunt for Hendy-Freegard, who masqueraded as a British secret agent, cut across numerous countries, including the United States. Chasing him was “like chasing a ghost,” said a Scotland Yard detective who worked on the case.
Podcast
If you missed this six-episode podcast during the height of its popularity (it was among the most downloaded of 2017), it is still worth a listen. In part, it might be responsible for bringing the concept of coercive control further into the mainstream as well as for propelling a slew of true crime offerings on the subject in the years since, including the ones above.
The podcast — from Wondery and The Los Angeles Times, based on the reporting of Christopher Goffard — follows Debra Newell, an interior designer from Southern California who falls for a seemingly wealthy and kind anesthesiologist, John Meehan, whom she met on a dating site for people over 50 years old. But Meehan is a master manipulator. Newell and Meehan’s troubling courtship is compelling enough, but perhaps even more so are the roles her daughters, Terra and Jacquelyn, play in the events.
As Mike Hale, a New York Times critic, put it, “Dirty John” is “like being in the middle of a multicar pileup that spins around you in slow motion, all the wreckage floating through the air for your examination.”
If you prefer a television adaptation, check out the 2018 series starring Connie Britton as Newell and Eric Bana as Meehan. While watchable, it is not as successful as the podcast at capturing the story’s complexity.