A bill built on a body count
On June 29, 2026, Dutch Justice and Security Minister David van Weel opened public consultation on a bill that would, for the first time, make psychological abuse and "coercive control" standalone criminal offences under Dutch law (Rijksoverheid.nl). The bill defines coercive control as a sustained pattern of humiliating, frightening, or isolating a partner to dominate them — not a single incident, but a pattern the current criminal code largely can't reach unless it escalates to threats or physical assault.
Two provisions matter most for digital policy. First, sextortion — threatening to distribute someone's intimate images — becomes a crime in its own right, rather than only prosecutable when it's used to coerce a separate act. Second, prosecutors would be able to pursue stalking (belaging) and coercive control cases without the victim filing a formal complaint, removing a threshold that Dutch criminal procedure has long required for this offence category.
The motivating statistic is grim and well-documented. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reports that between 2020 and 2024, an average of roughly 43 women were killed by homicide or manslaughter each year in the Netherlands, and about 22 of those killings — roughly 60% — were committed by a partner or ex-partner (CBS, Nov. 2025). CBS also found the per-capita rate has barely moved in fifteen years. Researchers treat coercive control as a frequent precursor to these killings — the pattern that precedes the act — which is the core case for the bill: give police and prosecutors a legal hook to intervene before abuse turns lethal, rather than only after.
The case for the bill, stated fairly
That case deserves to be taken seriously before it's argued against. Digital sextortion is a genuinely under-addressed harm: threatening to release intimate images is coercive and traumatic regardless of whether the target complies, yet under current Dutch law the standalone threat often falls outside clean statutory coverage unless tied to another demand. Making it its own offence closes a real gap and matches an emerging European norm — the UK criminalized coercive control in 2015 and Ireland in 2019.
The complaint-requirement change also has a defensible rationale. Under Article 285b of the Dutch Criminal Code, stalking currently carries a maximum sentence of three years and can only be prosecuted on the victim's formal complaint (EIGE, Netherlands legal definitions). In coercive-control relationships, that requirement can become a control lever of its own — an abuser can pressure a victim into withdrawing or never filing a complaint. Removing the requirement in principle lets the state act on independent evidence (police reports, digital records, witness accounts) instead of relying on a victim who may be too frightened, isolated, or financially dependent to come forward.
Where proportionality should bite
But both provisions carry real costs that the consultation process should be forced to confront, not wave through on the strength of the femicide statistic alone.
Coercive control as defined in the draft — "systematically humiliating, frightening or restricting someone's freedom" — is a pattern offence, and pattern offences are inherently harder to bound than incident offences. Courts will need to distinguish genuine domination from the ordinary friction, jealousy, and controlling moments that occur in unhealthy but non-criminal relationships. Vague pattern standards invite both under-enforcement (prosecutors declining ambiguous cases) and over-charging in acrimonious separations, where allegations of psychological abuse can become a tool in custody or divorce disputes rather than a shield against them. The bill's consultation period is the moment to demand a tighter statutory definition and evidentiary threshold, not a green light to proceed on vibes.
The removal of the victim-complaint requirement for stalking is the more consequential change and the one that most cuts against a rights-protective instinct. Complaint requirements exist precisely because prosecution itself imposes costs on victims — court appearances, cross-examination, exposure, and in coercive-control cases, potential retaliation. Removing that gatekeeping function transfers control from the person who bears those costs to the state. That can be justified when victims are being coerced into silence, but it also means prosecutions can proceed against a victim's express wishes — including in cases where the victim, not a controlling partner, made the informed choice not to pursue charges. A well-drafted version of this reform would let prosecutors override the complaint requirement only on a documented finding of ongoing coercion, not make override the default.
None of this is an argument against the bill's core aim. Sextortion as a standalone digital-era offence is overdue, and the femicide data makes a genuine case for earlier intervention. But a bill motivated by control being used as a weapon should be wary of handing prosecutors a broader, less-checked form of control over how a case proceeds. The Netherlands has ten weeks of consultation to get the guardrails right before this becomes law — Van Weel's ministry should use them to narrow the definitions, not just defend the headline goal.