If you have spent any time inside the legal system as a survivor of coercive control, you know what it is to watch a piece of legislation move. You know the years between a bill arriving in committee and a bill reaching enforcement. You know the difference a statute makes when it names what happened to you. You also know the silence when it does not.
The Global Coercive Control Legislation Index exists because that silence is measurable.1 Since 2020, this platform has tracked how coercive control enters law worldwide. Country by country. State by state. Statute by statute. The Index is a living document. It now carries three significant updates from May 2026, and one of those updates demanded a structural change to the Index itself.
Table of Contents
What Has Just Been Added to the Index
Three updates have published in May 2026. Each one carries different weight, and the differences matter.
First, Canada. On May 15, 2026, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, 2026 SCC 16, creating a new civil tort of intimate partner violence built specifically around coercive control.2 3 This is not a criminal statute. It is not a family law amendment. It is a free-standing civil cause of action. Survivors can use it to seek damages from an abuser, independent of any criminal proceeding. Every Canadian province card in the Index now carries this entry.
Second, Colorado. HB26-1309, titled Abuse in Cases of Separation, has passed.4 The bill requires Colorado family courts to determine whether a party has committed domestic violence before applying the best interests of the child standard. Its definition of domestic violence explicitly includes coercive control. I’ve written a companion piece that covers the bill in full at Colorado Debates Major US Coercive Control Law.
Third, South Carolina. Mica’s Law — Senate Bill 588 and its successor S. 702 — failed to advance before the South Carolina legislative session ended on May 14, 2026.5 The Index now reflects that status change. The full account appears at Mica’s Law South Carolina: Coercive Control Bill Fails to Progress.
Fourth, Arizona. HB 2995 — the Alex and Lydia Act — passed the Arizona House unanimously in a bipartisan 52–0 vote and now awaits final legislative approval before reaching Governor Katie Hobbs. The legislation comes as Arizona leads the nation in post-separation filicide. To learn more, read my article, Arizona Bill Targets Coercive Control in Family Court.
Four updates. Four different stories. One Index that holds all of them.
The Methodology Has Changed
The Canadian ruling required something the Index has not had to do before: add a new tracked legal status.
Before the May 2026 Canadian ruling, the Index tracked three kinds of legal recognition of coercive control. One category was criminal offenses, in jurisdictions where coercive control is prosecutable as a standalone crime. Another was civil and family law incorporation, where coercive control appears in protective orders, divorce proceedings, or custody determinations without itself being a criminal charge. A third was Istanbul Convention ratifications, where signatory states accept treaty obligations under Article 33 to criminalize psychological violence in intimate relationships.
The Ahluwalia decision created a fourth category. A civil tort is neither a criminal offense nor a family law factor. It is a stand-alone cause of action in civil court — a survivor can sue for damages on the basis of coercive control alone. No other jurisdiction tracked in the Index has this. Canada is the first.
The Index now reflects this. Every Canadian province card carries a new entry line: Date: May 15, 2026 (civil tort) and Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, 2026 SCC 16 (civil tort) · federal legislation pending. The civil route is live nationwide. The criminal route, currently folded into Bill C-16, remains before Parliament. Survivors in Canada now have a legal remedy that does not depend on either the police or the prosecutor.
This is why the methodology had to change. An Index that only tracked criminal and civil-family law would have missed what just happened in Canada. The fourth category exists because the law itself produced something the existing categories could not hold.
Why the Index Exists
I established the Index in 2020 as the first systematic resource of its kind on the web. A practical problem drove its creation. Survivors, advocates, lawyers, journalists, and legislators were all working with fragments. No single place existed to look up where coercive control stood as a matter of law, anywhere in the world.
That gap mattered. A survivor in one US state needed to know whether her state’s law recognized what was happening to her. An advocate in Australia needed to compare drafting choices made in Scotland and England. A legislator in a US state needed to see what other states had done before drafting her own bill. A journalist covering a femicide case needed to know whether the jurisdiction had any framework at all for understanding coercive control as a pattern.
The Index addresses that need. It pulls together statutes, court rulings, treaty obligations, and pending bills into one place. It updates as the law updates. It explains what is in force and what is pending, what has passed and what has failed.
Peer-reviewed publications including the Southern Illinois University Law Journal, Palgrave Macmillan, and the University of Agder have cited the Index. Legal professionals, academics, advocates, and policymakers internationally use it as a working reference. The fuller story of why I built it appears at The Story Behind the Global Coercive Control Legislation Index.
How the Index Is Built
I build every Index entry from primary sources. Statute text, court rulings, government bill trackers, and treaty signature lists from the Council of Europe come first. Press coverage and secondary analysis help triangulate, but never replace primary text.
Each card carries a consistent set of fields: jurisdiction, current status, headline legislation or ruling, date, sponsor or court, region, and a timeline of legislative and jurisprudence events leading to the current status. Status options include Enacted, In Force, Awaiting Signature, Pending, Signed, and Denounced.
Status definitions matter. A bill introduced but not yet voted on by committee sits at Pending. Once the executive signs it, the status moves to Signed until its commencement date, after which it becomes In Force. A treaty signed but not ratified sits at Awaiting Signature. A treaty ratified and then withdrawn sits at Denounced. These distinctions are not pedantic. A bill at Signed does not yet protect survivors. Only a bill at In Force does.
The fourth tracked legal status — civil tort — sits alongside the existing categories. It applies where a high court has recognized a stand-alone civil cause of action for coercive control. As of the May 2026 ruling, only Canada meets that criterion.
What the Index Is Not
The Index is not legal advice. It does not tell survivors what they can do in their jurisdiction. It tells them what the law is, and where it sits. Moving from “the law says X” to “this is what X means for my case” requires a lawyer who knows the survivor’s full situation.
The Index also does not predict enforcement. A statute on paper is not the same as a statute that police, prosecutors, or family courts use reliably. England and Wales criminalized coercive control in 2015 under section 76 of the Serious Crime Act. Conviction rates have drawn considerable academic and advocate critique in the years since. The same gap exists wherever coercive control law exists. The Index records what the law says. The harder work — whether the law actually reaches survivors — appears elsewhere on this platform, particularly in the companion pieces on post-separation abuse and the coercive control and femicide research.
Finally, the Index reflects the languages and legal traditions accessible to a single researcher with sustained practitioner work in this field. Coverage is comprehensive for English-speaking common law jurisdictions and for Europe through the Istanbul Convention. Coverage is expanding steadily. Readers in jurisdictions the Index does not yet fully cover can submit corrections and additions through the platform contact page.
How to Use the Index
The Index serves several distinct audiences, and each one uses it differently.
Survivors typically arrive looking for one specific thing: does the law in my jurisdiction recognize what is happening to me? The Index answers that question directly. Filter by region, find the relevant card, read the headline legislation and the current status. If the status reads Pending, the bill exists but has not yet become law. If the status reads In Force, the legislation is operational, and survivors can ask a lawyer how it applies to their case.
Advocates and frontline workers use the Index to track legislative movement across multiple jurisdictions at once. The status filters allow rapid scanning. Bills pending this session, bills signed, bills that have failed to advance — all surface immediately. Setbacks are visible too, because the Index records legislation that has died alongside legislation that has passed. The South Carolina entry now carries that information.
Lawyers and legal researchers use the Index as a starting point for comparative work. Drafting choices made in one jurisdiction often instruct another. Scotland’s Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 — widely regarded as the most comprehensive coercive control law in force — comes up frequently in legislative consultations elsewhere. The new Canadian civil tort will join Scotland’s law as a reference point for jurisdictions exploring civil routes.
Legislators and their staff use the Index when drafting or amending bills. Knowing which definitions have survived legal challenge, and which jurisdictions have moved between civil and criminal frameworks, matters for drafting law that survivors can actually use.
Journalists use the Index when reporting on intimate partner homicide, post-separation abuse, and family court cases. Knowing whether the jurisdiction has any framework at all for coercive control changes the story they can tell about it.
How to Cite the Index
The Index is intended for citation, and researchers cite it regularly. The recommended citation format is:
Wakefield, Manya. (2020). The Global Coercive Control Legislation Index. Narcissistic Abuse Rehab. Accessed [YEAR-MONTH-DAY] from https://www.narcissisticabuserehab.com/coercive-control-legislation-index/
A downloadable PDF version is available from the Index page. The PDF updates on a rolling basis. The current version is dated 2026.
What These Three Updates Tell Us About the Field
Read together, the three May 2026 updates describe the state of coercive control legislation more honestly than any single one of them could. Canada took a route no other jurisdiction had taken — and reached it through the courts, not the legislature. Colorado passed a bill that places coercive control at the front of family court parenting determinations. South Carolina watched a bill that would have criminalized coercive control die in committee for the fifth time in six years.
Progress and setback at the same time, in different rooms, in different countries. That is the field. The Index exists to make that visible — not to celebrate the progress and not to flatten the setback, but to record both, accurately, in one place.
The work of legislating against coercive control is unfinished everywhere. Survivors deserve a reliable record of where the work has reached, and where it has stalled. That is what the Index provides.
Related Links
Frequently Asked Questions
The Global Coercive Control Legislation Index is a living research resource tracking how coercive control enters law worldwide. Manya Wakefield established it in 2020 as the first systematic index of its kind on the web. It covers criminal statutes, civil and family law provisions, Istanbul Convention ratifications, and — as of May 2026 — civil torts. Survivors, advocates, lawyers, legislators, and journalists use the Index, and it has appeared as a cited source in peer-reviewed publications including the Southern Illinois University Law Journal, Palgrave Macmillan, and the University of Agder.
Three updates were published in May 2026. Canada now appears with the new civil tort of intimate partner violence created by the Supreme Court of Canada in Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, 2026 SCC 16. Colorado has been updated to reflect the passage of HB26-1309, which embeds coercive control in family court parenting determinations. South Carolina has been updated to reflect that Mica’s Law — Senate Bill 588 and S. 702 — failed to advance before the legislative session ended on May 14, 2026.
The Canadian ruling created a legal status the Index had not previously tracked. Before May 15, 2026, the Index tracked three kinds of recognition of coercive control: criminal offenses, civil and family law provisions, and Istanbul Convention ratifications. The Canadian civil tort fits none of these categories. It is a stand-alone civil cause of action allowing survivors to sue for damages on the basis of coercive control alone. The methodology now includes civil tort as a fourth tracked legal status. Canada is currently the only jurisdiction in this category.
Every entry draws on primary sources. Statute text, court rulings, government bill trackers, and treaty signature lists from the Council of Europe come first. Press coverage and secondary analysis help triangulate, never replace primary documents. Each card carries jurisdiction, current status, headline legislation or ruling, date, sponsor or court, region, and a timeline of legislative and jurisprudence events.
Enacted means a bill has completed the legislative process. In Force means an enacted bill has reached its commencement date and is operational. Awaiting Signature applies to treaties signed but not yet ratified. Pending means a bill has been introduced but has not yet passed. Signed means the executive has signed a bill, but the bill has not yet taken legal effect. Denounced means a state has ratified and then withdrawn from a treaty. Civil tort, the new fourth tracked status, applies where a high court has recognized a stand-alone civil cause of action for coercive control.
No. The Index records what the law is and where it sits. It does not tell survivors what they can do in their specific case. Moving from statute to legal strategy requires a lawyer who knows the survivor’s full situation. The Index is a research resource, not a substitute for qualified legal counsel.
Yes. The Index reflects the languages and legal traditions accessible to a single researcher. Coverage is comprehensive for English-speaking common law jurisdictions and for Europe through the Istanbul Convention. Coverage is expanding steadily. Readers in jurisdictions the Index does not yet fully cover can submit corrections and additions through the platform contact page.
References
- Wakefield, M. (2020). The Global Coercive Control Legislation Index.Narcissistic Abuse Rehab. Updated May 2026. Retrieved from https://www.narcissisticabuserehab.com/coercive-control-legislation-index/ ↩︎
- Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, 2026 SCC 16. Supreme Court of Canada. Retrieved from https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/2026/2026scc16/2026scc16.html ↩︎
- Stark, E. (2007). Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life. Oxford University Press. ↩︎
- Colorado General Assembly. (2026). HB26-1309: Abuse in Cases of Separation — 75th General Assembly, Second Regular Session. Retrieved from https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/HB26-1309 ↩︎
- South Carolina General Assembly. (2025-2026). Senate Bill 588 / Senate Bill 702 — 126th Session. Retrieved from https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess126_2025-2026/bills/702.htm ↩︎
Manya Wakefield is a narcissistic abuse recovery coach, coercive trauma specialist, and the developer of the Coercive Trauma Recovery Method™ and TENEL™ (Traumatic Exposure to Narcissism in Early Life) — proprietary recovery frameworks built from seven years of direct professional work with survivors of coercive control, narcissistic abuse, and Adult Children of Narcissists. Both frameworks have been reviewed by Dr. Michael Kinsey, PhD, clinical psychologist, New School for Social Research. She is the founder of Narcissistic Abuse Rehab, a global social impact platform launched in 2019 to support survivors through evidence-based recovery frameworks. Manya is the author of Are You In An Emotionally Abusive Relationship (2019), a resource used in domestic violence recovery groups worldwide. Her original research contributions include the Global Coercive Control Legislation Index (2020) — the first systematic index of its kind on the web — and the Global Femicide Legislation Index (2026), comprehensive legal references used by advocates, legal professionals, and policymakers internationally, cited in peer-reviewed publications including the Southern Illinois University Law Journal, Palgrave Macmillan, and the University of Agder. Her expertise has been featured in Newsweek, Elle, Cosmopolitan, HuffPost, Parade, and YourTango. She hosts the Narcissistic Abuse Rehab Podcast, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music. All content on this site reflects Manya's direct professional experience working with survivors of narcissistic abuse and coercive control, her published research, and her ongoing advocacy work.
