Evan Stark's central argument in Coercive Control is that domestic abuse has been misunderstood as a series of assaults when it is better understood as a liberty crime — a sustained pattern of domination that removes a person's ability to act freely, of which violence may or may not be a part.
The load-bearing mechanism in that pattern is isolation, and the UK Home Office statutory guidance on controlling or coercive behavior lists it explicitly among the evidential indicators: isolating a person from friends and family, monitoring their time, controlling their movements, and depriving them of support.
The reason isolation is load-bearing is chapter 282's. Everything else in a coercive relationship depends on the target having no comparison information. Another person's reaction to an incident, another relationship to measure this one against, and someone who would notice a change are all reality checks, and they are also material exits — the person you would stay with, the person who would lend you money.
The detection problem is that isolation almost never announces itself. Nobody says stop seeing your sister. What happens is a sequence of individually reasonable events.
Your friend is described as a bad influence, and one specific piece of evidence is offered. There is an argument every time you see a particular person, so seeing them becomes expensive. Family events are difficult for a reason that is true. A move is proposed for a job. Your phone is checked because of a specific past incident. Money is consolidated for efficiency. Each of these has a plausible individual justification, and each is defensible in isolation.
Which is exactly why the detection protocol has to be quantitative and periodic rather than event-based.
Audit your contact graph, once a quarter, in writing. List the people you had independent contact with — without your partner present — twelve months ago, and the people you have independent contact with now. Independent is the operative word.
The signal is a net loss, sustained, with a plausible reason attached to each departure.
The same audit works for money, movement and information: what can you do without asking, what do you know that they did not tell you, where can you go.
The counter-response is deliberate rebuilding, and it should be treated as maintenance rather than as a response to a crisis. One independent relationship, maintained regardless, held by someone who knows enough about your situation to notice a change.
This counters Law 12.