Financial & Economic abuse
Controlling finances and impacting a person economically is abuse.
What is it?
Financial abuse is where the perpetrator withholds or restricts a victim’s access to money, and economic abuse is limiting a victim’s access to basic necessities/services/employment and education. These types of abuse are separate but often go hand in hand, and as always, are a form of control.
What does it look like?
Limiting a victim’s access to money and having full control over their income, wages, or benefits.
Insisting on having access to the victim’s bank accounts, use of joint bank accounts, or prohibiting them from having or accessing a bank account altogether.
They may make rules on how and when income is spent and ask for receipts for money spent. They may refuse to contribute to household bills and insist that everything be placed in the victim's name (companies cannot recover debt from a person if it is not in their name, regardless of living arrangements/marital status, etc.), they may force you to take out credit cards and loans in your name, sell your property or possessions, and they may also do these things without your knowledge.
They may equally insist on having all property, vehicles, and possessions in their name. Post-separation abuse between intimate partners may result in the withholding of child maintenance; equally, a perpetrator may use money as a bargaining tool for allowing/restricting child access/contact.
They may also:
Stop the victim from accessing food/water/shelter/transport
Stop/restrict medical treatment; this includes emergency care, routine care, medications, and special care/carers (this is particularly common in pregnancies, elder victims, and those with long-term illnesses or disabilities, including mental health disorders)
Prevent or restrict the victim from gaining employment or accessing education/training
Stop the victim from having access to a phone/TV/internet
Factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIA, formerly Munchausen syndrome by proxy) can be seen within domestic abuse, and this is where the perpetrator will lie/fake illnesses in another person that they are responsible for, most commonly parent to child.
Perpetrators may also force their victims to move abroad and take/restrict access to their identification documentation such as visas/passports. This is particularly common within so called honor-based abuse and victims who have been brought into the UK regardless of consent.
The purpose of financial/economic abuse is to prevent the victim from having any independence financially and physically, or being able to better themselves in regard to employment, etc. It is, of course, another part of the victim’s life that they seek to have power and control over, even after separation. This is particularly dangerous for those who share children with their perpetrator, or for those whose perpetrator is their main caregiver.
Having little or no access to money, or being heavily in debt, means it is incredibly difficult for a victim to escape. Equally, if the perpetrator is dependent on the victim, it may inhibit extreme feelings of guilt, once again preventing them from escaping.