Abuse after separation can take many different forms. What may appear to be separate problems involving money, children, legal processes, relationships or safety can be part of a pattern of abuse.
This page looks at how tactics can change after separation, how different tactics can form a pattern that may indicate a coordinated effort to achieve a particular outcome, and the areas of a woman's life that may be targeted in pursuit of it.
What changes after separation?
Separation changes the circumstances in which interactions between former partners take place. Direct access that existed during the relationship may disappear or become limited. Other connections, such as through money, property, children, or shared relationships, may remain. Separation can also create new points of contact through legal, financial and administrative processes.
Where abuse continues after separation, these changed circumstances can alter how it is carried out. New points of contact can result in completely new tactics.200, 201, 506 Whilst tactics used during the relationship may change in response to the new circumstances.201, 506, 527
For example, Economic Abuse may shift from controlling a woman's access to money during the relationship to hiding assets or income, withholding money or obstructing financial arrangements after separation.200, 201, 507, 508
Reputational Abuse may move beyond friends and family to allegations made to professionals, employers, schools or other organisations.506, 528
What else can make the pattern of abuse difficult to see?
Changing tactics are not the only reason it can be difficult to recognise a pattern of abuse. Research shows that Post-Separation Abuse can be subtle and difficult to recognise, and that its significance may only become apparent when individual actions are considered as part of a wider pattern.506, 525
Other factors can make the connections between individual tactics harder to see.
The tactics can be unpredictable
Different tactics can occur at different times and with different frequencies and levels of intensity. This unpredictability can make it harder to identify what connects them.526
Each problem demands attention
Tactics need to be dealt with as they happen. When they come one after another, attention is focused on each problem, its connection to other events may be harder to see.529
Patterns may only be visible over time
Individual tactics may occur days, weeks or months apart. Their relationship may become clearer when events are looked at together and their cumulative effect is seen.506
Recognising these barriers can help explain why the connection between individual tactics may not have been apparent. Seeing the pattern requires a different view: looking across the actions rather than at each one separately.
How can I see the pattern?
What looks separate may be connected
Seen on their own, individual actions can appear plausible or simply be difficult to make sense of. An individual action does not, by itself, establish a pattern of abuse.
When tactics recur or connect with other tactics, a wider pattern may begin to emerge. Seeing those connections can help reveal when apparently separate actions may form part of a wider pattern of abuse.
One way to look for a pattern is to step back from the individual actions and ask what each tactic is targeting, how the different tactics relate to one another, and what objective may sit behind them.
Looking at experiences through these questions can make the connections between tactics easier to see and provide a clearer picture of what is being done as a whole.
Post-Separation Abuse
Economic Abuse
Legal Abuse
Reputational Abuse
03An allegation is made to your boss.
01A payment does not arrive.
02Another letter from your solicitor.
06Something is said to the school.
09Negative comments are made about you to friends.
04He lost his job suddenly and cannot make child payments.
Former partners who continue abuse after separation do so to pursue specific outcomes. Harbour Lights Community groups these outcomes into three broad categories: 1. to re-establish control and dependency, 2. to punish and retaliate, or 3. to erase the life a woman has built outside the relationship.506, 527
The tactics he chooses, how he uses them, and which parts of a woman's life he targets can help her see which outcome he's working towards.527
Women who have shared their experiences with Harbour Lights Community describe something similar: former partners working, often deliberately, to dismantle the foundations their lives were built on.
Recognising which of these he may be working towards can help women anticipate what comes next, and prepare a little earlier for it.
1
To re-establish control and dependency
For some former partners, the objective is to regain authority and control by restoring the relationship, maintaining a woman's dependency or making separation too difficult to sustain.527
Economic abuse can provide a particularly powerful means of pursuing this objective. Restricting or interfering with money and essential resources can make it harder for a woman to maintain a separate life.507, 508, 519
Emotional tactics can also be used to maintain contact or exert pressure to return, including appeals to guilt or responsibility and, in some cases, threats of self-harm or suicide.
The resulting pressure can affect the foundations needed to remain separated: financial security, housing, employment and access to essential resources. In one UK study, 52% of women still living with an abuser said they could not afford to leave because they had no money of their own.519
What May Be Targeted
Financial security
Employment
Housing
Property
Debt
Access to essential resources
This May Involve
Primarily Economic Abuse, with Physical & Emotional Abuse where emotional pressure, intimidation, harassment or unwanted contact is also used.
For some former partners, continued abuse can become a means of retaliating against a woman for the separation.527
Tactics may be used to impose consequences for leaving, resisting attempts to re-establish control or removing the access and authority her former partner previously exercised.
Punishment can be pursued through very different parts of a woman's life. Financial resources can be withheld or depleted; legal and administrative processes can create cost and pressure; allegations can damage credibility and relationships; and stalking, harassment, threats or unwanted contact can create fear and disruption.201, 506, 528
For some former partners, the objective may be to systematically raze the life a woman has built outside the relationship as a means of destroying what he can no longer have.
The abuse can extend across nearly every area of her life and may continue over long periods, targeting financial security, housing, employment, reputation, relationships, the children, physical…
…safety and emotional wellbeing. The cumulative effect can strip away the resources, stability, connections and security on which her life depends.506, 528
Research documents abuse associated with profound deprivation, entrapment and loss of autonomy and agency, with effects that can undermine a woman's security, stability and ability to meet fundamental needs.506, 528
At the most extreme end of Post-Separation Abuse, the objective may be to kill. The intended target may be the woman herself or, in some cases, her children. Research on Post-Separation Abuse identifies threats to life and lethal violence among its potential consequences.528
Children can also be deliberately targeted as a means of harming the other parent. Research describes revenge filicide, in which a parent kills a child to cause emotional harm to the child's other parent, including in contexts involving rejection, separation conflict and disputes over child contact or custody.531, 532
What May Be Targeted
Life and physical safety
A woman's own life and safety and, in some cases, the lives and safety of her children.
If This May Be Happening
Threats to life or indications of serious or lethal violence require a different response. The immediate priority is the safety of the woman and her children.
If you or your children are in immediate danger, call 999 and ask for the police.
If you are calling 999 from a mobile and cannot speak, press 55 when prompted to be transferred to the police.
How is he trying to achieve it?
A former partner can pursue his objective using tactics that are part of a specific type of abuse.
Harbour Lights groups these tactics into four broad types of abuse: Economic Abuse, Legal Abuse, Reputational Abuse and Physical & Emotional Abuse. Identifying the tactics being used and what they target can help identify which type of abuse may be involved.
Economic Abuse
When money, property, employment, debt and other economic resources are used as the means through which control or harm is pursued.
How to move from identifying tactics to preparing for what comes next
Identifying individual tactics is the first step. Looking at which tactics affect the same area of your life can help reveal the type of abuse they may form part of.
Once a possible abuse type has been identified, you can look beyond the tactics you have already experienced. The PSA Framework brings together other tactics associated with that type of abuse, along with measures that can be used to respond to them.
This can help you respond to what is happening now, consider what else may arise and prepare earlier where preventative action is possible.
