Decode the language used inside high-control groups

Risk level reflects how urgent or severe the underlying harm is when this term is encountered by a survivor, family member, or support worker — not how common the term is. Many entries include a short note explaining the specific reasoning for that rating.

• High — sexual abuse, child-specific harm, or an active/ongoing safety risk.
• Medium-High — serious, sustained harm that is not acutely life-threatening (e.g. entrenched financial exploitation, forced labour, engineered isolation from all outside support).
• Medium — documented harm with real impact on autonomy or wellbeing, typically less severe or less acute than Medium-High (e.g. surveillance, identity erasure, information control).
• Low-Medium — contributes to a coercive environment but is less severe on its own, or its harm depends heavily on context.
• Low/Informational — descriptive, historical, or structural terminology with no direct safety implication by itself.

Harm categories are drawn directly from documented patterns reported by survivors, researchers, journalists, and public inquiries for each specific group — each entry links to its source. A term can carry more than one category (e.g. a punishment euphemism may be tagged both Coercive Control and Corporal Punishment / Physical Discipline). Hover any option in the “Harm category” or “Risk level” filters above for a one-line definition.

How this maps to Australian law. These ratings are an editorial severity scale for this glossary — they are not a clinical diagnosis and not a family-violence risk assessment. Where a term describes behaviour that Australian law already names, we link to that definition rather than inventing our own. For example: the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) s 54D creates a specific offence of “abusive behaviour” toward a current or former intimate partner intended to coerce or control them, and s 54F(2) lists examples including economic/financial abuse, shaming or humiliating a person, harassing/monitoring/tracking, damaging property, and isolating someone from family, friends, or culture (Crimes Act 1900 (NSW)). The Domestic and Family Violence Protection Act 2012 (Qld) s 8 defines domestic violence to include behaviour that is physically or sexually abusive, emotionally or psychologically abusive, economically abusive, threatening, coercive, or otherwise controlling and fear-inducing — with unauthorised surveillance, stalking, and threats to harm a person, child, pet, or property given as examples (Domestic and Family Violence Protection Act 2012 (Qld)). The Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department describes coercive control nationally as “perpetrators using patterns of abusive behaviours over time in a way that creates fear and denies liberty and autonomy” (Australian Government Attorney-General's Department). Formal family-violence risk assessment in Australia (e.g. Victoria's MARAM framework) uses a separate scale — “at risk,” “elevated risk,” “serious risk” — to judge an individual case's likelihood of future or lethal harm using professional judgement; our High/Medium/Low ratings describe a term's documented harm pattern in general, not any individual's current safety, and are not a substitute for a professional risk assessment.

Why some entries say “former-member accounts”. Much of what happens inside high-control groups is never tested in court. That isn’t because it didn’t happen. Coercive control is hard to prosecute, many survivors never report, and many harms aren’t crimes. Where an entry relies on the experiences of people who were inside a group, we say so. This reflects the legal limits on what this site can publish. It does not reflect doubt about those experiences. If you recognise your own experience here, it is real, and support is available.

“Group’s own materials” marks entries drawn from what a group itself wrote or published — its websites, letters, rules, forms and teaching materials — including where those documents are now archived by former members.

These ratings are editorial judgements made by this project and can be revised. If a rating looks wrong or you have a source that clarifies it, let us know.

What each entry represents. Where an entry describes a specific practice or incident, that description reflects reporting by the linked source — court records, public inquiries, regulatory findings, academic research, journalism, or survivor and ex-member accounts — not an independent finding of fact by this site. Matters that are alleged, disputed, or not yet finally determined by a court are described as such. Organisations named on this page may dispute characterisations attributed to outside sources; where we are aware of a public response or denial, we aim to link it, and we welcome corrections via contact us.