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The Control Code® on the Record: Stenographers and the Earliest Signs of Abuse

Presenter: Lindsay Stoker, RDR, RMR, CRR, CRC, CA CSR Most people still think the biggest warning sign of a dangerous relationship is “one really bad fight” or a history of assaults. But emerging work on intimate partner homicide points to something earlier and harder to see: patterns of coercive control — the slow, systematic erosion of a target’s freedom, reality, and voice. As court reporters, we sit on the front lines of this problem. In depositions, hearings, and trials, we capture these dynamics verbatim, word for word, on the record. In this session, realtime veteran and author Lindsay Stoker shares concepts from her forthcoming book, The Control Code®, a framework for spotting the leading indicators of coercive control that are also inside the transcripts we take every day. Using anonymized, composite excerpts, we’ll “run it through the filter” together and see how familiar questions, tones, and comments can reveal an underlying model of control long before there’s a headline or a restraining order. We’ll also talk about how stenographers can recognize these patterns while staying firmly within our ethical lane — and how our community can come together to help reshape the conversation about abuse itself: from focusing only on what’s visible (incidents, injuries, “big moments”) to finally recognizing the control code that’s been running underneath the whole time.