Michelle H. has a civil divorce decree, but cannot remarry or even date within her faith without a religious divorce, which her former husband won't give her. Devorah S. left a physically and emotionally abusive marriage, but her manipulative ex continued to control her life for years by refusing her religious divorce request. Lonna R. says her husband demanded half a million dollars and sole custody of their child in exchange for a religious divorce. She did not comply, and in 2023, is still chained to a marriage that ended in civil courts in 2007. 

These three women share ties of faith and religion. But their dire situations may also include another connective thread: coercive control. As a frequent, but often "under the radar" form of domestic abuse, coercive control is behavior in which one spouse obstructs the other spouse's personal liberties through tactics that exert power and manipulative control over the victim and ultimately undermine their autonomy and independence. Coercive control often intersects with other forms of abuse, including physical assault or criminal coercion, in which the abuser uses force or threats to intimidate and control the victim's actions. 

'Get' Refusal as a Form of Coercive Control

Domestic abuse can affect anyone from any background. However, new legal protections for victims of coercive control now pending before the New Jersey Legislature (A1475) may be particularly important for women of the Orthodox Jewish faith abusively trapped in their marriages because their husbands refuse to grant them a religious divorce.