ISAJO has brought together evidence of systematic abuse, existing laws and lessons from public inquiries to show how governments can act against organisations that control and exploit their members.
We are asking you to put protection from systematic abuse on your legislative agenda: strengthen the law, commission an inquiry, create a national route for reporting concerns, and fund prevention, safe exit and recovery. The briefing below sets out the models you can adapt and the steps you can take now.
Download the policy briefing
A four-page PDF with practical steps governments can take to address systematic abuse.
Policy guidance for lawmakers
Web version of ISAJO’s October 2026 policy briefing. Download the four-page PDF above.
Systematic abuse needs a systematic legal response.
Executive summary
A legislative framework for making systematically abusive organisations prosecutable — let’s break the cycles of abuse. Systematically abusive organisations operate as organised crime rings, creating systems of coercion and exploitation directed at their own members. Control can extend across information, relationships, work, money, education, healthcare and daily life.
Serious offences may sit inside that structure: sexual violence, child abuse, trafficking, forced labour or servitude, unlawful confinement, blackmail, extortion, financial crime and food or sleep deprivation. Yet authorities often encounter only one fragment at a time: one assault, an unpaid worker, a safeguarding concern, an unusual transfer or a former member reporting threats.
The Parliament of Victoria’s 2026 inquiry concluded that group-based coercion must be understood as a pattern of conduct, not reduced to disconnected incidents. The legal wording, inquiry model and specialist expertise already exist. Your government can adapt and scale them now.
Implement proven law. Address the problem systematically. Scale what already works. Make the controlling system visible in law, safeguarding and investigation. The objective:
- Detect abuse earlier.
- Prevent further victims.
- Investigate those directing the system.
- Stop abusive operations from continuing.
Two decisions now
Legislate for coercive control and systematic abuse beyond the family home. Build on France’s law against creating or maintaining psychological or physical subjection and Scotland’s existing course-of-conduct offence under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018. The Scottish offence applies to partners and ex-partners; its approach to repeated coercive behaviour can inform protections in other settings. Separately, the Family Survival Trust’s UK legislative proposal (PDF) seeks to extend Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 beyond intimate and family relationships into the wider community. This is a proposal for reform, distinct from Scotland’s existing law.
Commission a Parliament of Victoria-style inquiry in parallel. Use the 2026 Parliament of Victoria inquiry as the implementation model: hear survivors and families, and identify gaps across law and public services. The inquiry should produce a clear, time-bound implementation plan while legislative drafting proceeds.
Current responses often address incidents without recognising the wider system.
Systematically abusive organisations can operate as organised crime rings directed at their own members. They concentrate authority, isolate followers, create dependency through money, housing, work and relationships, control information, and punish dissent or attempts to leave. Within that environment, serious offences can be concealed or normalised: for example, sexual and child abuse, forced labour, trafficking, fraud, blackmail, unlawful confinement, food and sleep deprivation.
The problem is not only the individual crimes, but the system that allows them to continue. Victims may be unable or afraid to report; other members may be coerced into enforcing the rules; families are often dismissed; and police, health, education, safeguarding and financial authorities may each see only one fragment of the controlling system. The lack of recognition and paths to disrupt these cycles of abuse allows the systems to persist for years or decades, sometimes expanding internationally.
The consequences extend far beyond the organisation. Survivors need protection, housing, healthcare, legal support and long-term recovery; followers need routes out; and principal offenders require effective prosecution and rehabilitation to reduce re-offending and prevent abusive organisations simply reforming under another name. These systems currently impose substantial costs on policing, safeguarding, health, justice and public services, which often lack effective tools to coordinate and stop the abuse.
Breaking the cycle requires prevention, coordinated multi-agency detection, stronger legislation, survivor recovery and an effective pathway for dealing with offenders and dismantling abusive systems. A controlling organisation can make crimes easier to commit and conceal.
What authorities may see
- Assault or a sexual offence.
- Unpaid or coerced labour.
- A child safeguarding concern.
- Fraud or unusual transfers.
- Harassment of a leaver.
- Medical or educational neglect.
- Co-housing arrangements.
These may be evidence of a systematically abusive organisation.
Hallmarks of an abusive organisation
- Concentrated authority. A leader or small hierarchy sets rules, rewards and sanctions.
- Dependency. Housing, work, income, status, healthcare, education or relationships become tied to the organisation.
- Information control. Outside information, independent relationships and criticism are restricted or discredited.
- Punished dissent and exit. Shunning, threats, blackmail, financial loss, family separation or reputational retaliation keep people compliant.
- Distributed enforcement. Followers may be induced or coerced into policing, recruiting or harming others.
Parliament of Victoria
The 2026 inquiry report, Coercion and harm in high-control groups — Volume 1: Crossing the line (PDF), found that a behaviour-based response must recognise cumulative, group-based coercion and produced 98 findings and 39 recommendations spanning law, services, coordination, monitoring and research. It is a comprehensive model to copy anywhere.
Read Volume 1: analysis, findings and recommendations (PDF) → · Both report volumes →
ISAJO findings
Family and survivor testimony repeatedly shows the same organisational signals: coercion by leaders or senior members; coded language or unusual rituals; self-censorship; isolation; dependency across money, work, education or healthcare; and retaliation around dissent or exit.
ISAJO source referenced in this briefing: When the Silence Breaks — book project and overview of ISAJO’s work →.
The human and societal costs of exploitation
Sources in the briefing: MIVILUDES (2025); ILO (2024); OECD (2026), education and earnings.
Working models already exist
France: use the offence
France’s About–Picard Law (2001) created the offence of fraudulently abusing a person in a state of ignorance, weakness or psychological/physical subjection, including where serious or repeated pressure had impaired their judgement. It also gave courts powers against organisations whose activities create, maintain or exploit that subjection.
Experience with the earlier legislation revealed enforcement challenges. Between 2017 and 2022, 361 cases were investigated and only 95 ended in convictions, while many others were dropped because the offence was considered insufficiently characterised. French ministers cited this gap when strengthening the law.
In 2024, France created a clearer offence: placing or maintaining someone in psychological or physical subjection through serious or repeated pressure, causing serious harm or inducing a gravely prejudicial act or omission. Penalties rise where leaders, minors or organised groups are involved, reaching seven years’ imprisonment and €1 million in the most serious cases.
Do now: instruct legislative counsel to prepare a local adaptation.
Parliament of Victoria: use the inquiry model
The Parliament of Victoria’s 2026 inquiry produced 98 findings and 39 recommendations after submissions, questionnaires and hearings with affected people, experts and institutions. Its recommendations are explicitly behaviour-based and cover law, services, coordination, monitoring and research.
Any national or regional government can closely copy this architecture: hear survivors and families; map gaps in criminal law, safeguarding and services; identify which agencies see fragments; and return with a comprehensive public implementation plan.
Do now: copy the Parliament of Victoria terms of reference and evidence-gathering logic.
Create or strengthen a national focal point for systematic abuse
Models already exist. France’s MIVILUDES coordinates reporting, analysis, prevention, training and action across government, while Austria has maintained a statutory specialist information and counselling office since 1998. A national body should connect evidence across police, health, education, safeguarding, labour, financial and justice agencies rather than leaving each service to see only isolated incidents.
Fund specialist organisations
Survivor organisations such as AVISO already provide family support, specialist referrals and prevention work. Stable public funding could expand these services, improve exit and recovery pathways, and ensure access to specialist expertise.
Study adjacent laws
Scotland
Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018. Since 2019, Scotland has criminalised a course of coercive or abusive behaviour, not just individual incidents. The law expressly covers patterns that create dependency, isolate or control daily life, or frighten, humiliate and punish. It applies only to partners and ex-partners, but could be extended.
Japan
Unjust Donation Solicitation Prevention Act (2022). Japan outlawed coercive donation practices, including exploiting fear of spiritual harm or misfortune to obtain money, and pressuring people to borrow or sell assets to donate. The law gives cancellation and recovery rights and creates an enforcement route through the Consumer Affairs Agency.
United Kingdom
The Family Survival Trust has produced a detailed legislative proposal to extend Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 beyond intimate and family relationships. The proposal would make repeated coercive control criminal regardless of the setting — targeting the abusive behaviour rather than requiring the group itself to be classified.
Four decisions for implementation
Four practical steps governments can take now.
Put a proven offence into drafting now
Use France’s Article 223-15-3 as the core. Depending on your current legal landscape, you can adapt course-of-conduct wording from Scotland, targeted financial protections from Japan, or wider-community coercive-control drafting from the Family Survival Trust.
Open the French offence → · Read the wider-community drafting proposal (PDF) →
Commission a Parliament of Victoria-style inquiry now
Use the Parliament of Victoria as the template for terms of reference, evidence gathering and recommendations. Run the inquiry in parallel with drafting legislation, and require a clear implementation plan.
Create one national route in
Designate or establish a MIVILUDES-style national focal point to receive reports, connect evidence concerning the same organisation across agencies, train public servants and refer cases to competent authorities.
Fund prevention, protection and recovery now
Provide stable funding for prevention, family guidance, safe exit, evidence gathering and survivor recovery. Protect leavers and whistle-blowers from retaliation; train frontline services. The support for people leaving a systematically abusive organisation should be at least proportional to that for people leaving prison, leaving criminal gangs, war veterans or victims of domestic abuse.
Build critical-thinking and coercive-control awareness into education, so that people are aware of the “Submission as Preference Shifting” (SAPS) model, the Influence Continuum, and the Behavioural, Information, Thought and Emotional Control (BITE) Model.
What good looks like
ISAJO’s vision is a system in which abuse is identified early as an organisational pattern, not left to accumulate as disconnected offences. Survivors and families have a clear national route to report concerns; agencies can connect intelligence and act together; leavers, witnesses and children are protected from retaliation; and specialist prevention, exit and recovery support is funded. Frontline services and schools are trained to recognise coercive control.
Those who design and direct abusive systems are held accountable, repeat offending is actively managed, and abusive organisations cannot simply re-form under another name. The goal is a world where systematic abuse is no longer tolerated, people have the knowledge and resources to recognise and resist coercion, families can be reunited, and survivors can rebuild their lives with dignity, freedom and self-determination.
Why this can move quickly: the statutory wording, inquiry model and specialist civil-society infrastructure already exist. The task is adaptation, coordination and scale-up, not invention.
Where to go next
Use the linked laws and inquiry documents to brief colleagues, then explore the practical resources or contact ISAJO about the briefing.
References
- ISAJO (2026), When the Silence Breaks — book page · ISAJO website.
- Parliament of Victoria (2026), Coercion and Harm in High Control Groups — inquiry and report.
- France — About–Picard Law (2001) and Penal Code Article 223-15-3 (2024) — Légifrance.
- Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018.
- Family Survival Trust (2025), Controlling or Coercive Behaviour in the Wider Community — legislative proposal (PDF).
- MIVILUDES — activity reports.
- Japan — Unjust Donation Solicitation Prevention Act (2022) — Consumer Affairs Agency.