The submission is a collaboration between three leading voices in the field of coercive control. Survivors of Coercive Cults and High-Control Groups is a collective of lived-experience advocates who have worked extensively across legal, policy, and peer support spaces to ensure survivor-informed responses to group-based abuse. Stop Religious Coercion Australia, founded by survivors of the Geelong Revival Centre, is a national advocacy initiative focused on raising awareness of religious coercion and pushing for reforms that protect against the misuse of spiritual authority. Dr. Janja Lalich, Professor Emerita of Sociology, is an internationally recognized expert on cults and closed systems, contributing over 30 years of research and advocacy on recruitment, indoctrination, and coercive influence.
It proposes a new regulatory framework called group-based coercive control, which focuses on behaviours rather than beliefs to address cultic abuse and organized coercion. The approach is grounded in human rights, trauma theory, and lived experience.
