Coercive Control Signed Into Law in Hawaii

On September 15, 2020, Hawaii became the first state in the United States to adopt legislation recognizing coercive control as a form of domestic abuse. Governor David Ige signed House Bill 2425 into law.¹ The bill, introduced by Representative David A. Tarnas, amended the definition of domestic abuse in Hawaii’s insurance laws and domestic abuse protective order statutes to explicitly include coercive control between family or household members. It also created a statutory definition of the term itself.

The bill signing took place over Zoom, reflecting the public health constraints of that moment.² Among those present were Hawaii State Senators Laura H. Thielen and Rosalyn Baker and Members of the Hawaii House of Representatives Linda Ichiyama, Rep. Tarnas, and Linda Cheape Matsumoto. The Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women and the Hawaii’s Women’s Legislative Caucus had both supported the legislation.

The HB 2425 Definition of Coercive Control

Coercive control means a pattern of threatening, humiliating, or intimidating actions, which may include assaults, or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten an individual. It includes a pattern of behavior that seeks to take away the individual’s liberty or freedom and strip away the individual’s sense of self, including bodily integrity and human rights, whereby the “coercive control” is designed to make an individual dependent by isolating them from support, exploiting them, depriving them of independence, and regulating their everyday behavior.”

The People Who Made It Happen

Representative David A. Tarnas

Rep. Tarnas introduced the bill and shepherded it through the legislature.³ He learned about coercive control through two constituents. Officer May Lee in Waimea first introduced him to the concept. Rep. Tarnas said at the bill signing:

“Coercive control is the first step in domestic violence, if we can identify it and stop it there, we can save lives.”

Rep. David A. Tarnas

He also acknowledged the influence of Professor Emeritus Barbara Gerbert of the University of California, San Francisco, who was the first person to tell him about Scotland’s approach and what had been achieved there. Her research, and the results she shared, were formative in shaping the bill.⁴

Professor Emeritus Barbara Gerbert, UCSF

Professor Gerbert is a foundational figure in domestic abuse prevention research. At UCSF, she developed the AVDR model — Ask, Validate, Document, Refer — a framework designed to support law enforcement, healthcare professionals, and others in identifying and responding to domestic violence. Professor Gerbert explains:

“In my research at the University of California, San Francisco, I developed a model of steps people could use to reduce domestic violence. My goal was to support and simplify what law enforcement, health care professionals, veterinarians, and others could do. In 2009, the newly formed Violence Reduction Unit in Scotland asked me if they could use my AVDR model. Scotland had a very high rate of all types of violence. In ten years, violence rates have decreased dramatically.”

Professor Emeritus Barbara Gerbert

In 2009, Scotland’s newly formed Violence Reduction Unit adopted her model. Over the decade that followed, violence rates in Scotland decreased dramatically. The short film Harder — A Short Film About Domestic Abuse by Medics Against Violence documents the model in action.⁵

Superintendent Gordon McCreadie, Police Scotland

Under Superintendent McCreadie’s leadership, 25,000 Scottish police officers were educated about domestic violence and coercive control. On learning that Hawaii had passed HB 2425, he reflected:

“When appointed in 2017, I never imagined that Police Scotland and partners including Medics Against Violence would influence legislative change in Hawaii on coercive control.”

Superintendent Gordon McCreadie

His response captures something important about how this field advances — through networks of people committed to evidence and implementation, across borders and jurisdictions.

Why This Law Mattered: The Fiscal and Human Case

The case for coercive control legislation is not only humanitarian — it is economic. According to the World Health Organization, domestic abuse costs the United States approximately 3.3% of its gross domestic product annually in direct and indirect costs.⁶ The National Violence Against Women Survey, published by the Centers for Disease Control, found that domestic abuse causes a loss of 32,114 jobs and 8 million hours of paid labor every year. There are an additional 486,151 emergency room visits annually by people seeking treatment for rape and physical assault.

The 1994 Violence Against Women Act, sponsored by then-Senator Joe Biden, produced an estimated net benefit of $16.4 billion, including $14.8 billion in averted victims’ costs — evidence that legal frameworks designed to prevent domestic abuse produce measurable returns. Hawaii’s HB 2425 was built on the understanding that naming coercive control in law is not a symbolic act. It is an intervention.

Representative Tarnas was direct about the context: “We need to address domestic violence because it is pervasive in our community. It is even worse now because of the economic impact of the COVID pandemic.” He was right about both the problem and the timing. The pandemic saw significant increases in domestic abuse reporting across the United States and globally. Hawaii’s legislation, signed in September 2020, arrived at a moment when that reality was impossible to ignore.

To learn what other states have enacted or in the process of enacting coercive control legislation, read:

• Coercive Control Signed Into Law in Hawaii
• California Coercive Control Law: SB 1141 & 2026 Updates
• Vermont House Passes Landmark Bill to Combat Coercive Control
• Jennifer’s Law:Coercive Control Legislation in Connecticut
• Florida’s Lethality Assessment: A Coercive Control Intervention
• Massachusetts House Passes Bill To Combat Coercive Control
• Colorado Debates Major US Coercive Control Law
• Arizona Bill Targets Coercive Control in Family Court

The Intellectual Architecture of HB 2425: Scotland, Stark, and Susan Schechter

The bill was explicitly inspired by Scotland’s domestic abuse prevention program.⁷ But the intellectual lineage runs deeper than geography. The foundational research on coercive control was conducted primarily in the United States, by American scholars. Evan Stark’s landmark book Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life gave the field its most rigorous theoretical framework.⁸ Stark’s work built directly on the earlier contributions of Susan Schechter, the pioneering feminist activist and researcher who first introduced the concept of coercive control to Stark — a contribution he acknowledges directly. Schechter’s influence on this entire legislative movement is foundational and must be named.

And yet it was the United Kingdom — Scotland in particular — that legislated first, informed in part by American research that American legislators had not yet acted upon. England and Wales criminalized coercive control in 2015 under Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act. Scotland passed its Domestic Abuse Act in 2018, widely regarded as the most comprehensive coercive control law in the world. Hawaii, in 2020, became the first US state to follow. The flow of influence ran from American scholarship, through Scottish implementation, and back to an American legislature. That is the shape of how this change happened.

What Came Next: The Global Coercive Control Legislation Index

The conversation that preceded Hawaii’s bill is inseparable from how I came to build the Global Coercive Control Legislation Index.

On October 3, 2020 — a few weeks after Governor Ige signed HB 2425 into law — I reached out to Professor Barbara Gerbert on Twitter. She had posted about the Hawaii bill and wanted the word to spread. I was writing about it and offered to share it across my platform. She wrote back with characteristic generosity, providing context, connecting the dots between her own research, Scotland’s implementation, and Hawaii’s new law. She asked a question that has driven this work ever since: how do we get more states to pass and implement laws?

That conversation crystallized something I had been observing for months. Survivors, advocates, legal professionals, and researchers were asking the same question every day: is there existing coercive control legislation where I live? There was no single, sourced, regularly updated place to find a clear answer. That gap was the problem. The index was the response.

On October 20, 2020 — seventeen days after my conversation with Professor Gerbert, and five weeks after Hawaii’s law was signed — I launched the Global Coercive Control Legislation Index. It was the first systematic index of its kind on the internet: a living reference document tracking the legal recognition of coercive control across jurisdictions worldwide, drawing on primary legislative sources, categorized by legal framework, updated as legislation moves. What it showed, when I launched it, was a sorry picture. The United States had Hawaii — and California, which had passed its own legislation just weeks before. Almost nowhere else in the country had acted. The map was largely empty.

The Origin Story in FullThe full account of how the index came to be — including the methodology behind it, what a decade of implementation in England and Wales reveals about the gap between law and justice, and the documented risk of coercive control laws being weaponized against survivors — is available in my Substack essay Why I Built the Global Coercive Control Legislation Index. It is free to read and free to share.

The Map Since 2020: Six Years of Legislative Change

That largely empty map has changed. Not fast enough — but it has changed. As of May 2026, multiple US states have enacted coercive control legislation in civil, protective order, and family law frameworks. California enacted legislation in 2021. Connecticut followed with Jennifer’s Law that same year. Washington State, Colorado, New Jersey, Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, Kentucky, and Louisiana have all moved. Hawaii remains the only US state to have explicitly named coercive control in its protective order statute as a standalone definitional inclusion — a distinction that continues to matter.

Internationally, Australia and Canada have advanced significantly. New South Wales introduced a standalone criminal offence that commenced in July 2024. Queensland’s followed in May 2025. Canada’s Bill C-332, which would create a federal criminal offence applicable across all provinces, passed the House of Commons unanimously in June 2024 and is currently before the Senate. The full, sourced, up-to-date picture is maintained at the Global Coercive Control Legislation Index.^{9 10}

What England and Wales have shown — after a decade of implementation under Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 — is that law without training is insufficient. In 2025, nearly 53,000 coercive control cases were recorded by police in England and Wales. Fewer than 10,000 ever reached the courts. The charge rate, given the volume of reports, is disproportionately low. The lesson Scotland understood before legislating, and England and Wales learned afterward, is that professional training must accompany legal change — not follow it years later.

What Coercive Control Legislation Does

There is a persistent misconception about coercive control: that it is a private matter, that its consequences are contained within four walls. The research says otherwise. Coercive control has been identified as the single most consistent precursor to intimate partner homicide. It appears in the background of familicide. It is the scaffolding on which mass violence is frequently constructed, particularly when a perpetrator facing the loss of control over a primary target decides to extend the harm outward.

Research has established a significant correlation between domestic violence history and mass shooting perpetration in the United States. Coercive control is not a private tragedy. It is a public health emergency wearing the disguise of one. Legal recognition matters because it names what is happening. It gives survivors a framework. It gives law enforcement a basis for intervention before the escalation that ends lives. It gives family courts a language for what they observe when a coercively controlling parent uses custody proceedings as an instrument of post-separation abuse.

Hawaii understood this in 2020. Every jurisdiction that has legislated since has confirmed it. Every jurisdiction that has not yet acted is a place where survivors are still waiting for the law to catch up.

Take the Next Step

If you are navigating coercive control, or supporting someone who is, you do not have to do it alone. I offer a free 15-minute consultation to help you understand your situation and what support is available to you. For structured, one-on-one recovery support, learn more about narcissistic abuse recovery coaching.

Related Links

• Mica’s Law South Carolina: Coercive Control Bill Fails to Progress
• 20% of Hawaii Residents Experience Coercive Control
• The Story Behind the Global Coercive Control Legislation Index
• The Global Coercive Control Legislation Index
• The Complete Guide to Narcissistic Abuse Recovery

Frequently Asked Questions About Coercive Control

References

1. Tarnas, D.A. et al. (2020). Hawaii House Bill 2425: Relating to Domestic Abuse. Hawaii State Legislature. Signed September 15, 2020. ↩︎
2. Ige, D., Thielen, L.H., Baker, R.H., Tarnas, D.A., Ichiyama, L., Cheape Matsumoto, L. (2020, September 15). “Bill signing ceremony for the Women’s Legislative Caucus Bills.” Zoom. Retrieved October 3, 2020. ↩︎
3. Lee, C., Takumi, R.M. (2020, September 15) “HB2425: A Bill for an Act Relating to Domestic Abuse”. Committees on Consumer Protection & Commerce and Judiciary. Retrieved October 3, 2020. ↩︎
4. Tarnas, Brower, Creagan, Lee, C., McKelvey, Mizuno, Nakamura, Nakashima, Perruso, Takayama, Ward, Yamane, Lowen, San Buenaventura, Say. (2020, September 15). Hawaii House Bill 2425 relating to Domestic Violence: Coercive Control. Retrieved October 08, 2020. ↩︎
5. Medics Against Violence. (2017). Harder — A Short Film About Domestic Abuse. YouTube. ↩︎
6. Max, W., Rice, D. P., Finkelstein, E., Bardwell, R. A., & Leadbetter, S. (2004). The economic toll of intimate partner violence against women in the United States. PubMed, 15631280. ↩︎
7. Cassidy, P., Thomson, J., Mitchell, J., Media, P., & STV News. (2020, September 17). Hawaii’s new domestic abuse law influenced by Scotland. Retrieved October 05, 2020. ↩︎
8. Stark, E. (2007). Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life. Oxford University Press. ↩︎
9. Wakefield, M. (2020). The Global Coercive Control Legislation Index. Narcissistic Abuse Rehab. Updated May 2026. ↩︎
10. Wakefield, M. (2026). Why I Built the Global Coercive Control Legislation Index. Substack. ↩︎