Ellen Schwartz & Maliha Janjua: Coercive Control and Kids

Ellen Schwartz spent 37 years as a family law attorney before she had a name for what she kept seeing. Cases that were not assaults, were not terroristic threats, were not quite harassment, but where a client was clearly afraid and clearly controlled. Reading Rachel Louise Snyder's No Visible Bruises gave her the vocabulary, and she has spent the years since working to get coercive control into New Jersey law.

This episode has two guests, both from Women Aware, a domestic violence agency serving Middlesex County, New Jersey, recorded during Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Ellen Schwartz is its Director of Legal Resources. Maliha Janjua is Director of Client Services and a licensed clinical social worker who oversees residential and non-residential programs and has worked with survivors and their children for close to fifteen years. Between them the conversation covers the statute and the living room.

Ellen explains what New Jersey passed and what it does: not a standalone act of domestic violence, but a factor a judge has to weigh when deciding a final restraining order. She goes through the objections she heard from the bar, including that harassment law already covered it, and walks the actual elements of harassment to show what it leaves out. Nothing in it addresses being stopped from working, from seeing your family, from worshipping where you choose, or from making decisions about pregnancy and sex.

Maliha covers the child side. Once someone can no longer control an adult partner, the children become the route: threats about custody, interference with a child's therapy, messages relayed through kids, exchanges used as contact. She explains why the period after leaving is often more dangerous rather than less, what age-appropriate safety planning looks like, and why a child's instinct to intervene has to be redirected. She also describes how this surfaces in children, in aggression, in a six-year-old with a color-coordinated closet, in regression and missed milestones that a provider unfamiliar with abuse may not read as trauma. Ellen closes on choosing an attorney without repeating the dependence, and both explain the Family Justice Center model, where legal, medical, housing, and counseling services sit in one building so nobody has to tell their story twenty-five times.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why coercive control is a pattern rather than a single incident, and what that changes legally
• What a harassment statute does not reach: work, clothing, friendships, faith, and the body
• How the children become the route once the adult is out of reach
• Age-appropriate safety planning: code words, a designated room, a neighbor's door
• How abuse at home surfaces in kids, from aggression to perfectionism to lost milestones
• Choosing an attorney without handing over the decisions you just got back
• Why an account that comes back in pieces is a trauma response, not an inconsistency
• What a Family Justice Center is, and why to look for one near you

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What coercive control is, legally and clinically
3:00 Why some lawyers argued against the New Jersey law
7:00 Walking the harassment statute, and what it leaves out
10:00 Using the children once the adult can't be controlled
15:00 Staying for the kids: code words, neighbors, and real safety plans
19:00 How it shows up in children: aggression, perfectionism, regression
23:00 37 years in family law, and the cases that fit nowhere
29:00 Choosing an attorney without handing your power over again
35:00 Trauma-informed court prep, and why memories come back in pieces
42:00 PALS, creative arts therapy, and trauma-focused CBT
47:00 Family Justice Centers: every service under one roof

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Women Aware (New Jersey): https://womenaware.net/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.