There's a lot of research into how the family court system has negatively impacted women, especially, as they're leaving abusive situations. Of course, abusive partners will try to use whatever tools they can.
One of the lessons learned that we've seen from the U.K. is that work needs to be done when it comes to educating prosecutors, judges, etc. One of the research studies looked at specific cases and saw some examples of this being used after the U.K. criminalized coercive control. What they found was that judges were able to tell the difference, at least in the cases they were looking at, but it was a small sample size.
In one example, there were back-and-forth accusations of coercive control from both partners, but one partner, the male partner, had been videotaping the woman for a year without her knowledge. He presented this as evidence to show her coercive and controlling behaviour, and the judge clearly saw that as an example of coercive control. He was able to identify it and rule in favour of the person who was the victim.
There were other examples in that case study showing people bringing forward accusations of coercive control and the rationale for denying them, with the ruling that it was being use as an attempt to continue to control the partner through family court proceedings.
It's really important that, as we implement this, people have the proper training and are aware of it, and not only judges, prosecutors and people in the criminal justice system, but also police officers. One of the other studies showed that after station-wide training, arrests around coercive control went up 41%. It is really critical at every level that we educate our criminal justice system about how this works.