In a legislative session already dominated by intense debate over the state of public safety in Vermont, the House on Thursday passed a measure aimed at tackling one of the most pervasive forms of violence in the state: domestic and intimate partner violence.
The bill, H.27, cleared the chamber on a 106-31 vote, making it the first to win full approval by the House this session. It would expand the definition of domestic violence to include “coercive and controlling behavior” for the purpose of granting abuse prevention orders in Vermont’s civil courts. All 31 representatives who voted against the bill were Republicans.
A carryover from the 2023 session, H.27 would enable judges to grant abuse prevention orders to those whose intimate partners are inflicting emotional and mental abuse on their partners — potentially before the abuse becomes physically violent. Currently, survivors must prove in court that they’ve been physically abused by their partners before they can get such legal protections.
According to testimony from domestic violence experts delivered to the House Judiciary Committee, coercive and controlling behavior can run the gamut: abusers attempting to control their partners’ finances or ability to travel; monitoring their internet and phone usage; dictating their clothing and aesthetic choices; making verbal threats against their domestic partners, as well as against children, pets or even themselves.
An abuser need not lay a hand on their partner for these actions to inflict emotional and psychological damage, according to Rachel Louise Snyder, a professor at American University who has reported on domestic violence for the New Yorker and the New York Times. But in many cases, the violence does eventually become physical, she said.
Testifying to the House Judiciary Committee last week, Snyder described various cases of coercive and controlling behavior that she has covered in her years as a journalist. She described one couple in Billings, Montana, whose case she had documented: Michelle Monson Mosure and her husband Rocky Mosure. Rocky, 10 years Michelle’s senior, controlled her finances, her clothing and her movements. He would spontaneously take their two children on camping trips without telling Michelle, which “petrified” her. When they would return, Michelle “was so happy to see (their) kids, she did whatever (Rocky) said, and he controlled her in that way,” Snyder recounted.
“Another thing he did was go to the outskirts of Billings, Montana, where they lived and got a rattlesnake — an actual, wild rattlesnake,” Snyder told the committee. “And he kept it in a cage, a horizontal cage in their living room. And he told her that he was going to put it in bed with her, or put it in the shower with her, if she did anything out of line. And she was just absolutely petrified. They had that snake in their house for two months.”
It was not the rattlesnake that killed Michelle in the end. It was Rocky. Michelle was 23 years old when she died, Snyder said.
“Eventually, Rocky went and got a gun from the Thrifty Nickel,” Snyder said. “And he killed Michelle in front of those kids. And then he killed the kids — first his daughter, then his son. And then he killed himself.
“So when we’re talking about coercive control, we are talking about deadly, deadly behaviors,” she concluded.
In presenting H.27 to her House colleagues on the floor this week, Rep. Angela Arsenault, D-Williston, shared Vermont’s domestic violence statistics. According to Arsenault, 40% of all calls to Vermont law enforcement for violent crime are situations of domestic violence. Eighty percent of those domestic violence victims are women. And nearly half of all of Vermont’s homicides are connected to domestic violence, Arsenault said.
“We cannot say that we truly care about public safety, or the women of our state, without doing all we can to address domestic violence,” she said on the floor after Thursday’s roll-call vote on the bill.
Reached shortly after Thursday afternoon’s floor vote, Arsenault told VTDigger that hearing 31 of her colleagues cast votes against the bill made her “really sad, actually.” And at the start of a legislative session already focused on public safety, Arsenault said, she was “perplexed as to why anyone would vote against this bill.”
“It is really hard for me to understand why a party whose governor touts public safety as one of his top priorities would vote against a bill that, in fact, increases public safety in a very real and important way,” Arsenault said, referring to Republican Gov. Phil Scott.
VTDigger made repeated attempts to reach numerous House members who voted against H.27 Thursday evening. None responded before publication, and no member who voted ‘no’ explained their opposition on the House floor on Thursday.
In the House Judiciary Committee’s deliberations on the bill, Republicans questioned whether the bill could infringe upon First Amendment rights to free speech, or whether Vermont’s already swamped judicial system could handle a potential influx of newly requested abuse prevention orders.
Asked about H.27 during an unrelated press conference Wednesday, Scott said he had not yet reviewed the bill but told reporters, “Here’s what I do know: Domestic violence, domestic abuse, is rising and we need to find ways to counter that.”
As for some GOP lawmakers’ objections to the bill, Scott appeared not to agree with them as of Wednesday, saying, “I know the judiciary system is compromised, challenged at this point. But at the same time, it’s hard to utilize that as a reason to not provide for the safety of those situations.”
