ALISON SANDY: Gerard Baden-Clay, Tyrone Thompson and how coercive controllers kill their women

When I left school, I knew two things when it came to dating — how to avoid getting pregnant and the importance of safe sex.

I had no idea about gaslighting or any of the other tactics used by coercive controllers.

Even when it was outlawed, first in NSW, then Queensland and, most recently, South Australia, I still didn’t know the red flags which appear almost innocuous at the start.

It wasn’t until I started researching my new podcast Kiss & Kill that I truly understood how easy it would be to be taken in by one of these “killer narcissists” or expert abusers.

Some of you will have listened to my previous podcasts, The Lady Vanishes, Shot in the Dark and The Truth About Amy — all investigations into hidden homicides.

What those projects all had in common was the failure by key decision-makers to view the deaths through a domestic violence lens during the initial investigations.

And upon doing that, the evidence was overwhelming. Yet there remains an ongoing reluctance for authorities to apply it.

Most of these deaths happened long before coercive control was part of the campaign to prevent domestic and family violence, let alone the discovery of the so-called “homicide timeline”.

For the best part of two decades, the timeline’s creator Professor Jane Monckton-Smith has been warning anyone who will listen that the biggest predictor of murder is not a pattern of violence, but ‘control.

She even wrote a book about it called In Control: Dangerous Relationships and How They End in Murder.

This is why the murder of Allison Baden-Clay in 2012 really struck a chord with the Australian population.

At the time, most of us were ignorant of coercive control. We entered the dating world dreaming of meeting the love of our lives — our soulmates — and living happily ever after.

That’s exactly what Allison thought she was signing up for when she met Gerard Baden-Clay, who presented as charming, confident and charismatic.

He was well-educated and seemed to truly love Allison — undoubtedly telling her all the things she wanted to hear, making her believe that he was “the one”.

Over time, he was less kind. He started criticising her, homing in on any seeming faults or moments of weakness.

When you read court documents, Allison’s personality was the one being scrutinised, not the man on trial’s.

She was described as “weak”, “anxious”, “depressed”.

Her inability to parent the way Gerard wanted her to and the fact that she had suffered depression early in their marriage — triggered by an abnormal reaction to anti-malarial medication — was a huge focus.

And then he became mean. He laughed at Allison in her underwear, told her she smelled. It was the ultimate gaslighting — and a textbook case study of a coercive controller.

So when Gerard Baden-Clay cheated on Allison, he blamed her. And so did she — for a time.

However, she found her strength in the end and like any of us, didn’t think her husband of 15 years was actually capable of killing her.

When you compare what happened with the stages of the homicide timeline, it actually feels like a Shakespearean tragedy.

And that’s just it. So many women have been killed like this; ignored right up to the very end.

Mackenzie Anderson, another victim featured in Kiss & Kill who was stabbed more than 78 times by her former partner Tyrone Thompson, did everything she could to protect herself.

Only her death would result in Thompson doing a decent stint in prison.

We keep hearing that domestic and family violence is Australia’s No. 1 crisis. A woman is killed in a DV incident every week and yet basic signs are still being ignored.

We can do more.

One seemingly simple thing would be to teach young people about what a healthy relationship looks like and to introduce awards for kindness and courage – not just being a good person, but sticking up for others when they are being treated badly.

There are awards for being smart, sporty, musical. What about being kind and courageous?

This is a cultural issue. We need to change what is considered normal.

And there’s no doubt understanding what’s wrong and rewarding what’s right is a critical step.

Alison Sandy is 7NEWS’s national investigations editor and executive producer and host of the Kiss & Kill podcast and vodcast, which goes live at 6pm Sunday, AEDT.