After I’d left HMP Wakefield I’d continued to see the prison officer. But it had quite quickly turned sour. His behaviour became increasingly domineering and frightening, when I didn’t dress as he wanted, fill the kettle from the right tap, put a smile on my face like he wanted or go along enthusiastically with sex as and when he wanted. It was what we now refer to as coercive control, I can spot it at 30 paces these days. But hindsight is a wonderful thing, and back then we didn’t have a word for it. The onset was so insidious that I may not have identified it, even if we had. It became
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