We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 August 2023
Drawing on a qualitative study conducted with both individuals who have been shunned from the Jehovah’s Witnesses community and those who were in a position to shun others, the authors identify areas of development within the Serious Crime Act 2015 and propose that there is scope to interpret the law broadly to include instances of people shunned from the Jehovah’s Witnesses community.
1 “Domestic Abuse Consultation Response and Draft Bill,” UK Government (website), last modified May 2019,
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/domestic-abuse-consultation-response-and-draft-bill.
2 Home Office, “Domestic Abuse Act 2021: Overarching Factsheets” (2021), https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/domestic-abuse-bill-2020-factsheets/domestic-abuse-bill-2020-overarching-factsheet.
3 Home Office, “Controlling or Coercive Behaviour in an Intimate or Family Relationship. Statutory Guidance Framework” (2015), 3, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/482528/Controlling_or_coercive_behaviour_-_statutory_guidance.pdf.
4 Serious Crime Act 2015, c. 9 (UK), https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/9/contents/enacted.
5 Serious Crime Act 2015, section 76.
6 Home Office, Statutory Guidance Framework, 3
7 F v. M, [2023] EWFC 4, para. 12(i). Although the applicant, a father, initiated the case in order to restore parental rights, in a summary, Judge Hayden highlighted the coercive and controlling behaviour of the husband.
8 FG v. HI, JK through her guardian, [2021] EWHC 1367 (Fam), para. 65(c).
9 Regina v. Darren Paul Willey, [2021] EWCA (Crim) 1024.
10 Domestic Abuse Act 2021, c. 17 (UK), https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2021/17/contents/enacted.
11 Domestic Abuse Act 2021, section 1(3) (internal cross reference omitted).
12 Abrahams, Edward H., “The Pain of the Millennium: Charles Taze Russell and the Jehovah’s Witnesses 1879–1916,” American Studies 18, no. 1 (1977): 57–70, at 57 Google Scholar.
13 Néill, Clayton Ó, “Jehovah’s Witnesses and Blood Transfusion: An Analysis of the Legal Protections Afforded to Adults and Children in European/English Human Rights Contexts,” European Journal of Health Law 24, no. 4 (2017): 368–89, at 369CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 “6 Million COVID Deaths—What Does the Bible Say?,” Jehovah’s Witnesses (website), accessed June 14, 2022, https://www.jw.org/en/library/series/more-topics/covid-deaths-bible-meaning-hope/; “What Is the Sign of ‘the Last Days,’ or ‘End of Times?,’” Jehovah’s Witnesses, accessed June 15, 2022, https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/last-days-sign-end-times-prophecies/.
15 Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, “Armageddon Is Good News!” The Watchtower, Study Edition, September 2019, 8–13.
16 Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, “Look! A Great Crowd.” The Watchtower, Study Edition, September, 2019, 26–31.
17 Ó Néill, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Blood Transfusion, 369.
18 Stark, Rodney and Iannaccone, Laurence R., “Why the Jehovah’s Witnesses Grow so Rapidly: A Theoretical Application.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 12, no. 2 (1997): 133–57, at 136CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 Joseph Blankholm, “No Part of the World: How Jehovah’s Witnesses Perform the Boundaries of Their Community,” Journal of the Faculty of Religious Studies, no. 37 (2009): 197–211, at 197.
20 Holden, Andrew, Jehovah’s Witnesses: Portrait of a Contemporary Religious Movement (London: Routledge, 2002), 11 Google Scholar.
21 Barry Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses v. BXB [2021] EWCA (Civ) 356, para. 22.
22 “2021 Grand Totals,” Jehovah’s Witnesses, accessed May 20, 2022, https://www.jw.org/en/library/books/2021-service-year-report/2021-grand-totals/. The term publisher refers both to those members who have been baptized and those who, though not yet baptized, have been considered qualified to be endowed with the responsibility of preaching.
23 Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society of Pennsylvania, Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Divine Purpose (New York: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York and International Bible Students Association, 1959), 32, https://wt-archive.netlify.app/Books/1959/Jehovahs%20Witnesses%20In%20The%20Divine%20Purpose/1959_dip_E.pdf.
24 “Jehovah’s Witnesses around the World. Britain,” Jehovah’s Witnesses, accessed March 23, 2023, https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/worldwide/GB/.
25 “How to Treat a Disfellowshipped Person,” Jehovah’s Witnesses, accessed June 10, 2022, https://www.jw.org/en/library/books/gods-love/disfellowshipped-person/.
26 “Display Christian Loyalty When a Relative Is Disfellowshipped,” Jehovah’s Witnesses, accessed June 10, 2022, https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/202002285#h=1:0-30:0.
27 “When a Loved One Leaves Jehovah,” Jehovah’s Witnesses, accessed June 9, 2022, https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/watchtower-study-september-2021/When-a-Loved-One-Leaves-Jehovah/.
28 “Why Disfellowshipping Is a Loving Provision,” Jehovah’s Witnesses, accessed June 9, 2022, https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/w20150415/disfellowshipping-a-loving-provision/.
29 Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Republic of Korea, Shepherd the Flock of God—1 Peter 5:2 (New York: Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses Wallkill, 2019)Google Scholar, ch. 19.
30 Jehovah’s Witnesses, “When a Loved One Leaves Jehovah.”
31 “Let Nothing Distance You from Jehovah,” Jehovah’s Witnesses, accessed June 9, 2022, https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/w20130115/let-nothing-distance-you-from-jehovah/.
32 Jehovah’s Witnesses, “Display Christian Loyalty.”
33 “Punishing Fellow Members,” Watch Tower, March 1, 1919, 69–70, https://ia600902.us.archive.org/5/items/WatchtowerLibrary/magazines/w/w1919_E.pdf.
34 “Keeping the Organization Clean,” Jehovah’s Witnesses, accessed June 9, 2022, https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1952160?q=keeping+the+organization+clean&p=doc.
35 “What if a Publisher Refuses to Stop Associating with a Disfellowshiped Person?,” in ““Questions from Readers,” Jehovah’s Witnesses, accessed June 9, 2022, https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1955727?q=What+if+a+publisher+refuses+to+stop+associating+with+a+disfellowshiped+person%3F&p=doc.
36 “Disfellowshiping—How to View It,” Jehovah’s Witnesses, accessed May 9, 2022, https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1981688.
37 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Final Report, 2017, https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/final-report.
38 “About Us,” Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (website), accessed July 15, 2023, https://www.iicsa.org.uk/about-us.
39 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Final Report, Preface and Executive Summary, 2017, 76, https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/sites/default/files/final_report_-_preface_and_executive_summary.pdf.
40 “Child Protection in Religious Organisations and Settings Investigation Report,” Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (website), accessed July 15, 2023, https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/investigation/cp-religious-organisations-settings/part-h-conclusions-and-recommendations/h1-conclusions.html.
41 Re F (Mental Patient: Sterilisation) [1990] 2 AC 1, 72E (opinion of Lord Goff).
42 Gillick v. West Norfolk AHA [1986] 1 AC 12 at 184G (opinion of Lord Scarman).
43 Gillick v. West Norfolk AHA [1986] 1 AC at 184G.
44 Re O (A Minor) (Medical Treatment) [1993] 1 FCR 925, [1993] 2 FLR 149; Re S (A Minor) (Medical Treatment) [1993] 1 FLR 376; Re R (A Minor) (Blood Transfusion) [1993] 2 FCR 544; Birmingham Children’s NHS Trust v. B & C [2014] EWHC 531 (Fam).
45 Corr. [Tribunal of First Instance] Ghent (East-Flanders) March 16, 2021, GE/G/52/98/771/2015, https://hrwf.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-0316-Ghent-Court-Decision-EN-1.pdf [hereafter Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses].
46 Massimo Introvigne, “Ghent Decision Overturned on Appeal: Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Shunning Can Be Freely Taught and Practiced in Belgium,” Bitter Winter, June 20, 2022, https://bitterwinter.org/ghent-decision-overturned-jehovahs-witnesses/.
47 Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 55.
48 Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 55.
49 Home Office, Country Policy and Information Note. Russia: Jehovah’s Witnesses, April 2021, 7, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/979215/Russia_-_Jehovah_s_Witnesses_-_CPIN_-_v.1.0__April_2021_.pdf.
50 Case of Jehovah’s Witnesses of Moscow and Others v. Russia, App. No. 302/02, (2010), https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-99221.
51 Home Office, Country Policy and Information Note. Russia, 8.
52 Serious Crime Act 2015, section 76(1).
53 Home Office, “Cross-Government Definition of Domestic Violence—A Consultation: Summary of Responses,” September 2012, 19, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/157800/domestic-violence-definition.pdf.
54 Serious Crime Act 2015, section 76(2).
55 Serious Crime Act 2015, section 76(6)(c).
56 Domestic Abuse Act 2021, section 68.
57 Domestic Abuse Act 2021, section 68(4).
58 Walklate, Sandra and Fitz-Gibbon, Kate, “The Criminalisation of Coercive Control: The Power of Law?,” International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 8, no. 4 (2019): 94–108 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 95.
59 Charlotte Barlow et al., “Police Responses to Coercive Control,” N8 Policing Research Partnership, June 2018, introduction, https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=56477.
60 Wiener, Cassandra, “Seeing What Is ‘Invisible in Plain Sight’: Policing Coercive Behaviour,” Howard Journal of Crime and Justice 56, no. 4 (2017): 500–15, at 504CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
61 Braun, Virginia et al., “Thematic Analysis.” In Handbook of Research Methods in Health Social Sciences, ed. Liamputtong, Pranee (Singapore: Springer, 2019), 843–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
62 British Psychological Society, Code of Ethics and Conduct (Leicester: British Psychological Society, 2009); British Psychological Society, Code of Human Research Ethics, April 2021, https://explore.bps.org.uk/binary/bpsworks/06096a55b82ca73a/9787a5959b2bfdff7ed2a43ad5b3f333a5278925cfd667b1b2e64b5387c91b92/inf180_2021.pdf.
63 Stark, Evan, Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 228, 229, 205Google Scholar.
64 Andrew Day and Erica Bowen, “Offending Competency and Coercive Control in Intimate Partner Violence,” Aggression and Violent Behavior, no. 20, (2015): 62–71; Robertson, Kirsten, and Murachver, Tamar, “Women and Men’s Use of Coercive Control in Intimate Partner Violence,” Violence and Victims 26, no 2 (2011): 208–17CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Stark, Coercive Control.
65 Stark, “Re-presenting Battered Women: Coercive Control and the Defence of Liberty” (manuscript), 2012, 119, https://www.stopvaw.org/uploads/evan_stark_article_final_10; Evan Stark, Coercive Control, 7.
66 Hayes, Sharon and Jeffries, Samantha, “Romantic Terrorism? An Auto-Ethnographic Analysis of Gendered Psychological and Emotional Tactics in Domestic Violence,” Journal of Research in Gender Studies 6, no. 2 (2016): 38–61 Google Scholar.
67 Stark, “Re-presenting Battered Women,” 11.
68 Lalich, Janja and McLaren, Karla, Escaping Utopia. Growing up in a Cult, Getting Out, and Starting Over (New York: Routledge, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lifton, Robert J., Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of “Brainwashing” in China (New York: Norton, 1961)Google Scholar; Rodríguez-Carballeira, Álvaro et al., “Group Psychological Abuse: Taxonomy and Severity of Its Components/Abuso psicológico en grupos: taxonomía y severidad de sus componentes,” European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context 7, no. 1 (2015): 31–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
69 To ensure participants’ anonymity, we use pseudonyms throughout.
70 Williamson, Emma, “Living in the World of the Domestic Violence Perpetrator: Negotiating the Unreality of Coercive Control,” Violence against Women 16, no. 12 (2010): 1412–23CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, at 1418.
71 Williamson, “Living in the World of the Domestic Violence Perpetrator,” 1418.
72 Williamson, 1418.
73 Williamson, 1418.
74 Hayes, Sharon and Jeffries, Samantha, Romantic Terrorism: An Auto-ethnography of Domestic Violence and Survival (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 13 Google Scholar.
75 Wiener, “Seeing What Is ‘Invisible in Plain Sight,’” 508.
76 Stark, Coercive Control, 262.
77 Home Office, “Cross-Government Definition of Domestic Violence,” 19.
78 Nora Femenia, “Humiliation Dynamics and a Therapy of Social Action: A Path to Restore Dignity after Domestic Violence” (paper presented at Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law Conference, “Humiliation Dynamics and Restorative Dialogue,” Gipuzkoa, Spain, April 10–11, 2008, https://www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/FemenniaViolenceHumiliation.pdf.
79 Crossman, Kimberly A., Hardesty, Jennifer L., and Raffaelli, Marcela, “‘He Could Scare Me without Laying a Hand on Me’: Mothers’ Experiences of Nonviolent Coercive Control during Marriage and after Separation,” Violence against Women 22, no. 4 (2016): 454–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Westmarland, Nicole and Kelly, Liz, “Why Extending Measurements of ‘Success’ in Domestic Violence Perpetrator Programmes Matters for Social Work,” British Journal of Social Work 43, no. 6 (2013): 1092–1110 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
80 Hamberger, L. Kevin, Larsen, Sadie E., and Lehrner, Amy, “Coercive Control in Intimate Partner Violence,” Aggression and Violent Behaviour, no. 37 (2017), 1–11 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 3; Mary A. Dutton, Lisa Goodman, and R. James Schmidt, Development and Validation of a Coercive Control Measure for Intimate Partner Violence: Final Technical Report, December 2005, https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/214438.pdf.
81 Raven, Bertram H., “The Bases of Power: Origins and Recent Developments,” Journal of Social Psychology 49, no. 4 (1993): 227–51, at 238Google Scholar.
82 Dutton, Goodman, and Schmidt, Development and Validation of a Coercive Control Measure, 750.
83 Wiener, “Seeing What Is ‘Invisible in Plain Sight,’” 509.
84 Hayes and Jeffries, Romantic Terrorism?, 31.
85 On humiliation, guilt, and shame in domestic abuse, see Strauchler, Orin et al., “Humiliation, Manipulation, and Control: Evidence of Centrality in Domestic Violence against an Adult Partner,” Journal of Family Violence 19, no. 6 (2004): 339–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
86 Lalich and McLaren, Escaping Utopia, 94.
87 Stark, Re-presenting Battered Women, 11.
88 Stark, 11.
89 Serious Crime Act 2015, section 76(2).
90 Serious Crime Act 2015, section 76(6)(c).
91 Serious Crime Act 2015, section 76(7); see Family Law Act 1996, c. 27, section 63(1), https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/27/contents.
92 Franklin, Kris, “A Family Like any Other Family: Alternative Methods of Defining Family in Law,” New York University Review of Law & Social Change 18, no. 4 (1991): 1027–78Google Scholar.
93 Palazzo, Nausica, “The Strange Pairing: Building Alliances between Queer Activists and Conservative Groups to Recognize New Families,” Michigan Journal of Gender and Law 25, no. 2 (2018): 161–237 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
94 Muraco, Anna, “Intentional Families: Fictive Kin Ties between Cross-Gender, Different Sexual Orientation Friends,” Journal of Marriage and Family 68, no. 5 (2006): 1313–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
95 Heslin, Kevin C. et al., “Alternative Families in Recovery: Fictive Kin Relationships among Residents of Sober Living Homes,” Qualitative Health Research 21, no 4 (2011): 477–88CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
96 Ebaugh, Helen R. and Curry, Mary, “Fictive Kin as Social Capital in New Immigrant Communities,” Sociological Perspectives 43, no. 2 (2000): 189–209 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
97 Kim, Esther C., “‘Mama’s Family’: Fictive Kinship and Undocumented Immigrant Restaurant Workers,” Ethnography 10, no. 4 (2009): 497–513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
98 Kim, “‘Mama’s Family,’” 508.
99 Kim, 508.
100 Domestic Abuse Act 2021, section 68(4).
101 “New Laws to Protect Victims Added to Domestic Abuse Bill,” UK Government, press release, para. 9, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-laws-to-protect-victims-added-to-domestic-abuse-bill.
102 Stark, Evan, “Coercive Control as a Framework for Responding to Male Partner Abuse in the UK: Opportunities and Challenges,” in The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Violence, ed. Nancy Lombard (London: Taylor & Francis, 2018), 15–27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pitman, Torna, “Living with Coercive Control: Trapped within a Complex Web of Double Standards, Double Binds and Boundary Violations,” British Journal of Social Work 47, no 1 (2017): 143–61Google Scholar.
103 Boss, Pauline, Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1999)Google Scholar.
104 Raza, Farrah, “Limitations to the Right to Religious Freedom: Rethinking Key Approaches,” Oxford Journal of Law and Religion 9, no. 3 (2020): 435–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Addison, Neil, “Religious Freedom in the United Kingdom,” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 99, no. 396 (2010): 427–35Google Scholar.
105 European Court of Human Rights, Guide on Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (2021), https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Guide_Art_9_ENG.pdf.
106 Raza, Limitations to the Right to Religious Freedom, 448.
107 Miller, Justin K., “Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t: Religious Shunning and the Free Exercise Clause,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 137, no. 1 (1988): 271–302 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 302.
108 European Court of Human Rights, Guide on Article 9, at 6.
109 Raza, “Limitations to the Right to Religious Freedom,” 462.
110 See Serious Crime Act 2015, section 76(4).
