The Best Work You May Never See: Women's Aid Stages Game Show To Raise Awareness of Domestic Abuse

A PSA from U.K. charity Women’s Aid highlights how signs of coercive control can be hard to identify as part of an abusive relationship. 

Styled as a bright and brash TV quiz show called “Spot The Abuse” being held before a cheering studio audience, the two-minute public service film features three smiling female contestants--Jade from Bournemouth, Aisha from London and Kate from Hertfordshire--being asked questions about relationships by a game show host. 

The aim of the campaign is to educate people about the signs of coercive control by using the popular format of a TV game show - albeit one where the questions are anything but entertaining, to demonstrate that women often don’t realize their relationship is abusive and that they’re victims of coercive control, as their partners tell them that their controlling behavior is normal. 

While it’s been illegal since December 2015, records of coercive control offenses have been steadily rising. Police recorded 24,856 coercive control offenses in England and Wales in the year ending March 2020, a huge rise of more than 50% from the 16,679 recorded the previous year. 

The pandemic has only exacerbated the problem. Within the first two weeks of lockdown alone, there was a 41% increase in users visiting the Women’s Aid Live Chat site to seek help on the issue. 

Research by Women’s Aid and Cosmopolitan in 2019 found that over a third of teenage girls had been in abusive relationships and more shocking still, when the remaining two thirds were asked about their relationships, 64% had been in abusive relationships without even realizing it.

The film, which has been pushed out across social channels, aims to highlight that domestic abuse isn’t always physical and that coercive control can happen gradually in a relationship with a pattern of behaviors that you may not initially identify as abusive, but when put together create a web of control. 

Alicia MacDonald of Missing Link Films directed the two-minute piece for London-based agency Engine Creative.

The glitzy lights, cheesy soundtrack and shiny world of a game show is not the normal place to communicate the harsh realities of domestic abuse but the format is perfect to land questions and answers around controlling behaviors.  

Christopher Ringsell, creative director at Engine Creative, said, “Educating people about coercive control through the lens of a game show is an unusual and powerful juxtaposition.