'He wanted to destroy me financially': The economic abuse of domestic violence survivors
Resume
Editor's Note: If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, use a safe computer and contact help. Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800.799.SAFE (7233) or visit https://www.thehotline.org. Find resources for survivor's dealing with economic abuse here.
Nearly every domestic violence survivor has reported suffering economic abuse at the hands of their abusive partner.
They’ve been coerced into debt, had their credit scores ruined, lost all financial independence.
Few laws are on the books to prevent this.
That soon may change.
Guests
Adrienne Adams, professor in the Department of psychology at Michigan State University. Author of SAGE: The Frequency, Nature, and Effects of Coerced Debt Among a National Sample of Women Seeking Help for Intimate Partner Violence.
Carla Sanchez-Adams, senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. She helped write the petition to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that spurred the recent rulemaking process.
Also Featured
Kiesha Preston, a domestic violence survivor who experienced economic abuse.
Transcript
Part I
MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: More than 12 million Americans suffer from domestic violence, or more broadly, intimate partner violence, every year. That includes physical, verbal and psychological abuse. But almost all survivors, anywhere from 94% to 99%, also suffer from something that's almost never talked about.
Economic abuse.
KIESHA PRESTON: When I got into, like, group therapy and working with the therapist, that was the first time I'd ever even heard the term economic abuse. And I'm like, wow, I was dealing with this my whole relationship and had no idea what it was.
CHAKRABARTI: Kiesha Preston was in an abusive relationship for 14 years.
She was physically, verbally, and psychologically abused. Her husband also subjected her to economic abuse. He ruined her credit score, coerced her into massive debt, and forced her into financial dependence.
PRESTON: When you think about it, like, that is the most, in my opinion, one of the most insidious forms of abuse. Because if you want to completely destroy somebody's life, all you have to do is ruin their finances.
You literally can't do anything without it. You can't access medical care if you have bad finances, because you can't afford it. You can't find housing. There are some jobs that won't hire you if you can't pass certain credit checks and things like that. You can't access food, quite literally everything that you need to survive.
Your finances are central to that.
CHAKRABARTI: Kiesha had married her high school sweetheart when she was 19 years old. Shortly after, her husband was deployed to Iraq. When he came home, everything was different.
PRESTON: I didn't really realize that what was happening to me was abuse in the beginning, just because it didn't look like what I had envisioned in my head that an abusive relationship looked like. I think a lot of times when we think about, you know, abuse, we think, you know, extreme physical violence and things like that, but that's not what was happening to me, at least not in the very beginning. We would get into really heated arguments about a lot of things.
Most of the time it was about finances, and those arguments would escalate to the point that he's like, right in my face, like nose to nose, shouting at me, threatening me with physical violence. But at the time, like not actually hitting me, there was one incident where I had, you know, a large, heavy object thrown at me.
And at that point, I think that was when like the alarm bells kind of started going off in my head, like, this is not okay. And I want out, but I had no idea what was going to happen if I tried to leave. So I stayed and just kind of endured it and hoped that things would get better.
Finances were probably one of the number one methods that he kind of used to control me. If I would say or do things that he didn't like, he would take money from our joint bank account and move it into accounts I didn't have access to teach me a lesson. Things like that happen pretty regularly. So we had a conversation and we mutually decided that, you know, I would take a break from working so that I could focus on school.
And the minute that I was no longer working, like, that was really when the financial abuse kind of ramped up. There would be a bill that we needed to pay, and I go to pay it, and I can't. Because the funds are not there. Because he decided to go out and buy a bunch of new video games, or he decided that he wanted to trade in a perfectly good car to get a new truck.
Or things of that nature. So it was consistently him doing things for himself that was impacting my ability to do what I needed to do for myself and for the kids. You know, if I speak up and voice that I'm not happy about that, now it turns into a fight about, well, it's my money, I'm the one that's working, I can do whatever I want to with it.
There was a part of me that like believed everything that he was saying, you know, he was the one who was working, he was the one who was generating the income, it was his money, so like maybe I am wrong for having these expectations that it be spent this way. I really got kind of manipulated into feeling like I was the controlling party in the relationship for simply having a voice and speaking up about things that didn't feel okay to me.
And so it really did gaslight me into minimizing what was happening, and I didn't feel like abuse was a word that I was allowed to use to describe what was happening to me. So for me, sitting in a therapist's office and like hearing that word abuse come from somebody else. It really was when the lightbulb went off and it was like, I'm not crazy.
I'm not imagining what's happening. Like, this is real and it's not okay.
The minute people realize what's happening to them as an okay, there's like a sense of empowerment that you feel. I started standing up for myself more. I started speaking up for myself more. And the fights got a lot more violent, like verbally, but also physically. And so, the night that I finally, you know, ended things, called the police, took out a protective order.
I woke up the next morning, and our bank account had been completely wiped out. Every single dime that was in it, he had removed, put it into an account that I couldn't access. So I quite literally had zero dollars, three kids, and no job, and I had to figure out, what am I gonna do next?
CHAKRABARTI: Kiesha Preston lives in Roanoke, Virginia. Of course, there is much more to her story, and we will hear it. A little later in today's episode, Adrienne Adams joins us now. She's a professor in the Department of Psychology at Michigan State University, and she has researched economic abuse on domestic violence survivors for 24 years.
Professor Adams, welcome to On Point.
ADRIENNE ADAMS: Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here with you.
CHAKRABARTI: How familiar is Kiesha's story?
ADAMS: Very familiar. As I was listening to it, it sounded very much like many of the survivors that I have talked to in the interviews that I've done for my research. I want to get into the specifics of what exactly economic or financial abuse is, but a little earlier I quoted a number, which, when I first read about it, astonished me that 94% to 99% of intimate partner violence survivors may have suffered also from economic abuse.
I mean, how do we know that number?
ADAMS: That number comes from research that I and others have done talking with survivors who are receiving services for domestic violence and doing interviews and surveys with them to ask about experiences of economic abuse.
CHAKRABARTI: And so almost all of them reported some form of economic abuse, is that what you're saying?
ADAMS: Yes, exactly. And in the first study that I did years ago now, we surveyed or did interviews with survivors who were receiving services from a domestic violence shelter program and counseling program and found that 100% of them had experienced psychological abuse. 98% had experienced physical abuse, and 99% had experienced economic abuse.
So it was just as common as the other forms of abuse in their relationships.
CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. And when you think about it, in a way, it makes logical sense, right? Because an abusive partner may very quickly see that financially controlling their partner is another way, right, to exert power in the relationship.
So let's talk a little bit about how economic abuse is defined. What would you say it is?
ADAMS: Yeah, absolutely. Economic abuse is a specific and unique form of domestic violence. It involves using abusive behavior to control a person's access to and their use of economic resources. And economic resources can be things like income, cash, credit.
Financial information and assets, and assets are things like property and savings.
CHAKRABARTI: Now, I'm about to ask a question which many people might object to, but I have to, right? Because in terms of a marriage, a formal marriage, where people very often have commingled financial lives. I mean, is there any argument that some of this is simply just, you know, the risk that you take?
When you get married, or, I mean, how would you define the specific harms that are done through this kind of economic abuse.
ADAMS: To the question, Is this just what you should expect in a marriage? My answer is no. I mean, this is not just a couple making a decision together that one partner is not going to have a job, while the other person works outside the home.
It's usually an abusive partner saying explicitly and through their actions that you're not going to have a job or else. It's not a situation in which a couple decides together on a budget for spending. This is an abusive partner saying. This is how much you will spend and what you'll spend it on or else, or you're going to buy this TV, on your credit, or else. And so this isn't just typical financial management decisions being made together in partnership in a marriage.
CHAKRABARTI: I see. So those are some of the ways in which this economic abuse is manifested, right? Like, you're not going to get a job or else, or you're not going to, you know, spend this money or else. There must also be sort of covert ways in which finances are abused in an abusive relationship. Like, what are some of those?
ADAMS: Yeah. So, I can say that there's kind of two buckets that we can put economic abusive behaviors into, the ways that it manifests. First, there's restricting a partner's access to economic resources. And so what this can look like is preventing a partner from having a job or causing physical injuries so that they miss work.
So that might be a covert way, causing physical injuries so that they're missing work. Locking them out of a shared bank account by not giving them the password or other information that they need to access it. Or moving all the money out, like Kiesha described. Dictating and monitoring exactly how money is spent.
And then there's exploitation, which is unfairly using a partner's personal economic resources for one's own advantage. So that can be things like refusing to contribute financially to the household, leaving the partner to pay for everything, or stealing a partner's money and spending it without their permission, or creating debt in a partner's name.
CHAKRABARTI: Creating debt in a partner's name. Tell me more.
ADAMS: Yeah, so creating debt in a partner's name, that's what we refer to as coerced debt. So, it's the result of non-consensual credit transactions. And so I can explain what I mean by that. My research with law professor Angie Littwin from the University of Texas, Austin, shows that there's two main ways of creating debt in a partner's name.
First, there's fraud, which is paying for things on credit in a partner's name without their permission. So this would be something like taking a partner's credit card to buy clothes online or in a store for oneself, without their partner's permission or using a partner's personal information to take out a loan in their name.
And then in addition to fraud, there's coercion, which is getting a partner to take on debt by threatening to hurt them in some way.
Part II
CHAKRABARTI: So, Professor Adams, you were beginning to tell us more about a specific subset of this abuse called coerced debt. Now, you're beginning to say that partners get the person they're abusing to take on debt with threats of violence or psychological abuse. But the final outcome of that is the abused partner signs their name to take on this debt.
Is that correct?
ADAMS: Yes. In the case of coercion, and I'll explain a little bit more about what coercion looks like, it's getting a partner to take on debt by threatening to hurt them in some way if they don't do it. So, examples that we heard in our interviews with survivors include their partners using verbal cruelty or the silent treatment to get them to agree to sign for a mortgage or a vehicle loan, by using physical violence or the threat of physical violence to get them to agree to sign.
To pay for something or buy something with a credit card. We also heard about partners threatening to withhold money for necessities. Like keeping their partner from having money they need for food or bills, so that they'll buy something on credit or sign for a loan. And when I talk about threats, the threats can be explicit or implicit based on the abusive partner's past behavior.
So it may not be that they're explicitly saying, you're going to do this or else. Sometimes it's more covert, implied, because economic abuse is part of a wider landscape of abuse that can involve physical violence or the threat of physical violence, verbal, emotional, and other forms of psychological abuse, sexual violence, and other forms of mistreatment.
So the survivor knows what can happen if they don't do what their partner wants or questions their actions. That's what makes these behaviors abusive. It's really important to keep in mind the wider landscape of abuse, that the economic abuse and coerced debt is happening within, as we talk about this.
CHAKRABARTI: Absolutely. I mean, the survivors have every reason to be terrified of what could happen if they don't do what their abuser is saying. I'm just going to presume, and correct me if I'm wrong, that in the majority of these cases, when the survivor signs to take on that debt. They're also not being given the cash for the loan, right?
The abuser takes most of that cash, right?
ADAMS: Yes. So in our research we looked at the kinds of things that were purchased with the coerced debt and we lumped them into kind of six groups. They were purchasing things, like items for their household, like furniture, cable services or groceries, lifestyle purchases, so eating out, trips, home electronics, for transportation, to pay for their partner's own personal wants and needs like clothing, sports equipment, weapons, other women.
They used it to pay financial obligations, like other debts that they had, business expenses and taxes, and then items for other household members like kids or pets. What was really interesting was that among these things, they were typically either exclusively for the abusive partner or portrayed as for the household, but primarily for the abusive partner's enjoyment.
So, or I guess they were either that, or unilaterally the abusive partner was deciding that their spouse needed to be responsible for the item. They should be the one paying for things. So this was things like stuff for the kids or furniture for the house. So either for the partner's enjoyment or things that the abusive partner said, these things are your responsibility.
CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. So, I'm thinking of the word mortgage, right? Its etymology is from the French mort, which is to die. The idea being, you cannot escape this debt unless you pay it off, or you die. Or in, you know, modern day nations, you declare bankruptcy. It's just one form, it's perhaps the one form of a long-term obligation, which is nearly impossible to get out from underneath, without paying it back.
So, you know, at first when I heard Kiesha tell her story, and she had been saying that the financial abuse she suffered was even worse than the physical and psychological abuse she suffered, that was like a little hard for me to wrap my head around. But then when she said, you know, it impacted the rest of her life and her kid's life.
So can you tell us a little bit more about that? Like how are survivors, how does it continue their struggle, even after some of them are able to get out of these relationships?
ADAMS: Yeah, coerced debt is an expensive problem to have. It saddles survivors with debt and damages their credit, which makes it difficult to leave an abusive relationship if that's what somebody wants to do, or to rebuild in the aftermath of an abusive relationship.
You know, in our study of 187 women who recently divorced an abusive husband, Angie Littwin and I found that survivors can end up with a substantial amount of coerced debt. Among the 116 of those 187 that had coerced debt, they had a combined total of $12.5 million in coerced debt. Just a huge number, and the median was $22,000 and a full 25% reported owing nearly $100,000.
And these were women from all walks of life, lower income households to high income households. And an implication of being liable for all of that extra debt is that you have to figure out how to pay for it. So, for survivors living paycheck to paycheck, or without an income, they're having to think.
They're having to make sacrifices and tradeoffs to pay for the debt. So they're thinking, do I have to, am I going to be able to put food on my table or pay my utility bill, or am I going to pay this credit card bill, or this mortgage payment that was put in my name? And then if a survivor can't pay that debt, because they can't afford it, or maybe it was fraud and they didn't even know about it, then it can hurt their credit.
And as Kiesha had said, with damaged credit, survivors can be turned down for jobs, for housing, for vehicle loans, for other things that they need to rebuild their lives. And having bad credit ... people with poor credit pay more for the things that they need in the form of higher interest rates.
They might be required to pay a deposit to set up utilities for a new place to live. And that's a deposit that they maybe can't afford to pay.
Right? And so these kinds of problems continue. There's this economic ripple effect that happens after somebody, after this kind of debt is put in somebody's name.
Where you can't pay, your credit is damaged, you can't get the house, you can't get the job, right? It's just this continually ripple of economic hardship.
CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, I mean it sounds like it becomes this horrible, endless negative feedback loop, right?
ADAMS: Absolutely.
CHAKRABARTI: Because of the credit impact. I also wonder if the extreme fragility that a survivor faces without financial independence makes a lot of them, forces a lot of them to stay longer in their abusive relationships.
ADAMS: Yes, absolutely. We, in a study that Angie Littwin and I did with the National Domestic Violence Hotline, we found that 73% of callers to the hotline that we surveyed had stayed longer in an abusive relationship than they wanted to, because of financial concerns, for concerns about how they're gonna support themselves and their children.
And this is a finding that has been in the domestic violence literature for decades. It's consistently found that financial dependence is one of the main reasons that survivors end up staying longer than they want to. And economic abuse and coerced debt are contributing factors. Huge contributing factors to that.
CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. They feel like they can't leave. They would have nowhere to go and nowhere to support themselves and their children, right? Okay. So Professor Adrienne Adams, hang on for just a second. Because I want to bring Carla Sanchez-Adams into the conversation. She's in Austin, Texas, and she's a senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.
She's helped write a petition to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that spurred a recent rulemaking process about economic abuse, which we will talk about in just a second. And before that, she represented domestic violence survivors for 13 years at Legal Aid. Carla Sanchez-Adams, welcome to On Point.
CARLA SANCHEZ-ADAMS: Hi, Meghna. Thanks for having me.
CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So, you know, the government views financial entanglement, if I can put it that way, in relationships, as such a key indicator of the health of the relationship, that it makes me have a lot of questions about how do you untangle yourself from that. And I'll give you an example.
When my husband was applying for his green card here, the Immigration and Naturalization Service said it didn't matter how many kids we had, what they really wanted to see in terms of proof of the health of our relationship was that we had joint accounts, right? So that's how the legal system and the government looks upon joint financial accounts, or financial lives.
So given that though, like what are the laws around someone saying, well no, I didn't actually empty our joint checking account, that was done under coercion, or that was done fraudulently by my abusive partner. Do people have any protection against that?
SANCHEZ-ADAMS: Yeah, so that question is complicated, because it depends on the type of financial transaction and the law that applies. More broadly, when something happens without your consent or without your authorization, there are protections, you know, for credit cards, for, you know, bank accounts and things like that.
But it depends on whether or not that partner, that abusive partner, is an authorized user or on the account. If they're a joint account user then you don't have any of those protections, unless you're a victim of identity theft. And the law defining identity theft applies to your scenario. And that is challenging because identity theft is defined by state, and so it varies, and there is a civil form of identity theft and a criminal form.
And so, you know, what is considered something that someone can be, you know, penalized for in the criminal system versus something in the civil system where they don't get any, you know, criminal charges against them, but you could sue them to try to get some kind of order saying that they defrauded you or you're a victim of identity theft.
But the way that identity theft is defined across most states, doesn't include coercion, which is the part of coerced debt. There is one exception, and that's something here in Texas, actually, that we helped, and it was the basis of the petition that you mentioned earlier.
CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So we're going to talk about that in just a second.
But for a moment, I'm wondering if I can ask a sort of a legal, philosophical question, right? I mean, does law enforcement or the broader legal world in the United States even tend to believe that things like fraud can happen? Financial fraud can happen within a marriage, for example?
SANCHEZ-ADAMS: Not really. I mean, if you think back to the 1970s, before the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed, women couldn't even take out credit cards or open a bank account without their husband.
They had to sign everything. And so that law that was passed in the '70s guaranteed that you couldn't discriminate against someone based on their gender. But in the vast majority of cases, you know, as you mentioned, I represented victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking for 13 years while I was at Legal Aid.
And so many times, the first step to trying to get any relief is to get a police report to say you're a victim of identity theft. And when my clients would say, you know, was my spouse or not even my spouse, but my abusive partner, when they weren't married, they wouldn't believe them or they would say, in one instance, he said, well, I'm going to call your husband right now and have him come into the station and see if you're lying.
Or if I pull up the video for all the stores where the purchases were made, am I going to see you there? Because I'm going to charge you with a crime. And in many of these cases, you know, our clients had protective orders and some of them, they didn't, and the police were endangering them by attempting to contact their abusive partner.
CHAKRABARTI: So it sounds like barriers to getting help for this kind of abuse, for economic abuse, are right there at the beginning of the process of a survivor trying to get any help at all.
SANCHEZ-ADAMS: That's right.
CHAKRABARTI: Professor Adams, do you want to just respond to that? Or share your thoughts on this?
ADAMS: Yeah, completely, my experience is aligned with what Carla's sharing, that it is really difficult to get help from law enforcement and others when it's believed that, potentially, believed that these kinds of things can't happen in a marriage, you can't fraudulently put debt in a partner's name if you're married to them. And then, you know, there's reaching out for help from, you know, domestic violence service organizations.
And now those groups are doing a tremendous job of being able to identify and respond to economic abuse. So the community response is definitely greater than it has ever been in that space for survivors. And, but for, I think, marginalized survivors from marginalized communities, it can be still particularly difficult to get help from their community.
Because the help might not be available in the communities that they live in, due to structural barriers and discrimination. Or the help may not be particularly helpful, based on their past experiences with the kinds of help they've received. So we have to keep in mind also that not everybody's experiences are the same.
That we have different groups of people who have different experiences in this country.
CHAKRABARTI: So, Carla, tell me a little bit more about what has been changed in Texas, and let's do it through this question, that, you know, I can imagine, or, let me rephrase. Like, what kind of evidence does a person have to bring to say, Look, this shows that I have been economically abused, that I was coerced into this debt. Because I can imagine that some, you know, accused abusers would say, Hey, look, my partner's just trying to pin this on me.
I had nothing to do with it. She just regrets taking that loan, right? I mean, I imagine that that's a very common response when law enforcement finally does decide to question the partner, if at all. So take me a little bit through the changes that have been made in Texas to deal with those complications.
SANCHEZ-ADAMS: So in Texas, the way that identity theft is defined is using someone's personal identifying information without that person's consent. That's how it was defined prior to the change in law in 2019. And the way that it was updated to add in a phrase or effective consent. And effective consent was already defined in the law in other places.
And essentially one of the things I said is, consent is not effective if induced by force, threat, or fraud. So that covers the coerced piece, right? The act of coercion. If you're forced, if you feel like you have to do it because of threats, then you have not given consent. It is not effective. And thus, it would be identity theft.
Now, even with that definition to your earlier question of how do you take steps to show that you're an identity theft victim, even if you fit within that fact pattern, you do have to, at least here in Texas, to get some of those protections. You have to either get a police report. Or you have to get a court order, saying you're a victim of identity theft.
So you do have to come forward. And, you know, under penalty of perjury or, you know, the same, if you lie to the police, you could be subject to criminal penalties. You have to say you're a victim of identity theft and identify all of those pieces.
Part III
CHAKRABARTI: Now, at the beginning of the show, you heard the story from domestic violence survivor Kiesha Preston, and she described to us how her ex-husband had abused her physically, verbally, psychologically, and economically for years. But in 2016, as she shared with us, she had had enough. She filed for a protective order and a divorce, and she left her husband.
But that's when the economic abuse only got worse. As she told us, her ex-husband immediately withdrew all the money in their joint banking accounts. And that left Kiesha with nothing. No financial resources. No job and three kids to care for, aged three, four and eight. As Kiesha puts it, he wanted to destroy me financially.
PRESTON: I immediately hopped online and started Googling, like, you know, financial resources for survivors of domestic violence. Like, just trying to see if anything even existed. Like, if there were grants or like anything that would, like, put a few dollars in my pocket to like kind of help me squeak by. And I did all the things that were told to do, I applied for assistance.
I applied for food stamps; I applied for, like, all the things. And I was actively applying for jobs, and it still was not enough for me to be able to provide for myself and my family. The protective order that I was issued had provisions in it that required him to pay child support and required him to also continue paying half of the household expenses until we had a divorce agreement in place.
Unfortunately, he refused to comply with any of that. And the only thing I could do was continue reporting it to the courts. But as I'm sure you know, the courts move very slowly. And in the meantime, I had bills that needed to get paid.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do at the time, while I was actively job hunting. I had absolutely no financial resources, but I had good credit. So I ended up opening up a whole bunch of credit card accounts and basically using those for survival, because I had quite literally nothing else to my name.
I'm using my credit cards to pay rent. I'm using my credit cards to pay the electricity. I'm using my credit cards to purchase groceries. I want to say I opened up like probably six different credit cards. And maxed out every single one, in addition to the fact that the house ended up going into foreclosure.
So, you know, there was the debt from that, that I'm trying to pay to keep from losing the house, and I wasn't successful in that. My credit got completely destroyed. Like, I went from having, like, amazing credit to I mean, it was probably as bad as it can probably get. Like, whatever that worst number is, I believe.
I looked at it and it was like in the 300s at some point, and after like a year and a half, the courts finally decided to hold him in contempt. And they were basically like, listen, you have 30 days to pay this to her or you're going to jail. And so he finally did end up producing those funds and paying them to me.
But of course, by that point it was too late. There was already an active foreclosure happening.
When you need somewhere new to live, one of the first things they do is run your credit, and if you don't pass those credit checks. They decide that like, Oh, this person is not a safe renter. We can't be certain that we're actually going to be able to collect the rent from them. So we're going to deny their application.
I'm like, you know, this will be fine. I have a good job. I'm fairly stable now. And then every single place that I went, for almost a full year, consistently getting denied because of my credit. Literally, we had two weeks left before we were going to be on the street. I had absolutely no idea where me and my kids were going to go.
And at the very last minute, my mom ended up finding a landlord who didn't require credit checks at all. And it was, you know, it was a last effort for us, and we applied, and we got approved. But it ended up being like very substandard housing. I mean, I actually think the roof to that house fell in completely like a week after we moved out, it was all we could do, because no one else would even give us a chance.
I remember after I got out of it, I did research, and I found out how common this is. And that the majority of people in abusive relationships experience some sort of financial abuse, and that that abuse often leads to people's credit getting destroyed.
Which keeps people from getting housing, which ends up leading to homelessness And I just really felt like I had a responsibility to do something to make sure that at least in Virginia It was not continuing to happen to people. So I actually ended up reaching out to my state delegate and we worked together to write a bill in the state of Virginia that actually passed in 2020.
So now in the state of Virginia, if you're applying for housing, and the only thing that's keeping you from getting approved is your credit. And you are a victim of domestic violence, they're required to take your victim status into consideration and waive that particular requirement for you, so that you can find a place to live.
By the time I actually relocated again, that bill was already in effect to the point that the next time that I applied for a place, and they were like, yeah, I know your credit is not up to par. I was able to kind of, you know, provide them documentation and say, well, actually, you know, there's a law in place now.
And they were able to overlook it and go ahead and rent to me.
CHAKRABARTI: So now, not only is Kiesha Preston in a much better housing situation, there's more good news. She has been able to restore her credit. But it took a huge amount of work. Kiesha is also officially divorced from her ex-husband and has sole custody of her three children, they are now 12, 13, and 17. And Kiesha has two jobs. So an incredible story of how much work it took to get out from the long terms of effects of economic abuse.
Professor Adrienne Adams, let me just turn to you quickly, because, of course, I'm sure many people are just wondering now, well, what remedies are there within the law? And I was wondering if, you know, the highest-level federal legislation or one piece of it that maybe a lot of people have heard of is the Violence Against Women Act, which was reauthorized in 2022. And I understand that economic abuse was added to the text of the act as a recognized form of abuse.
Has that helped victims of coerced debt?
ADAMS: Yes. So in the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, there was the addition of a definition of economic abuse. So for the first time, and in terms of how it's helped, I think, first and foremost, it gives a name to an experience that most survivors are having.
And it's something that then can also be used to direct funding, for services, to address that specific form of abuse. So it's naming it and saying, okay, we've named this, now let's do something about it. And so I think it's an avenue for both of those things.
CHAKRABARTI: Well, Carla Sanchez-Adams, let me turn back to you about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, because as I mentioned earlier, you've done work petitioning the CFPB to do something about greater regulation, to have remedies for economic abuse.
The CFPB is now looking into a new potential proposed federal remedy. You wrote the petition to get that rolling. What did the petition to CFPB ask for?
SANCHEZ-ADAMS: Yeah, so one quick clarification is that the petition addresses coerced debt, which is more narrow than the broader economic abuse. And what it does is that there's a federal law called the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and that governs all the rights that all of us as consumers have when creditors use our consumer reports, you know, our credit reports to screen for things like credit and housing and employment and the accuracy of those reports. And under that law, the CFPB has the authority to define identity theft and identity theft report.
So, what we did is we requested that they expand the definition of identity theft that's currently in the statute, to include these types of coercive behaviors that we've been describing this whole hour. And essentially to consider adding in that identity theft is any type of debt or credit that's obtained without somebody's effective consent, and then to further describe when consent is not effective.
So kind of following what we did here in Texas, and then furthermore to expand the definition of identity theft report. So it's not just police reports that are required in order to show that you're a victim of identity theft report.
But that it could be more broad, to include things like the Federal Trade Commission's identity theft report or you know, a court order. Or another type of attestation like a statement under oath from a qualified third party that could be, you know, domestic violence, shelter advocate or a member of the clergy, or a licensed social worker, therapist, et cetera.
And then the last thing we asked is that there's a provision in the law when you are a victim of identity theft, you get certain protections. One of those is a block. But in order to get the block, you have to have that identity theft report. You have to say you're an identity theft victim, and you can't have received the goods or services that you are disputing.
Right? So if you have a credit card or an auto loan, you can't have possession of the car or you can't, you know, have possession of whatever you purchased with that credit card. And so what we requested is for them to say, if somebody is a victim of coerced debt and if they've, you know, stated that and shown that, that can't be the reason for denying the block.
Because as you meant, you know, as we've been listening to all of these stories, somebody doesn't have agency, they don't have a choice in what is purchased and what is in their house.
Because, you know, their abusive partner bought video games or bought a gaming chair or what have you, and that the survivor never used or benefited from. And yet, you know, if that's the basis for denying the block, that identity theft protection, then it's going to screen out a whole bunch of people.
CHAKRABARTI: I see. Now we did reach out to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to join the show or provide a statement.
They were unable to do that. But just quickly, Carla, with the change in administration, do you know if, like, this rulemaking process is under threat?
SANCHEZ-ADAMS: That's a great question. So technically, it's an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking, which means they're just gathering information right now. Comments are due March 7th.
And after that, they would take in all the comments and then from there decide whether they're going to put out a proposed rule that then again would have another open comment period, before they finalize the rule. So right now, as with any new administration, generally rule makings are for the new administration to come in and, you know, review and reconsider, but because this is just a request for information, there's nothing to put on hold, right?
They're still going to be accepting comments. Now, the question is, what will happen after that date, after comments are accepted, will they then put out a proposed rule? I think one of the broader questions is, will the CFPB maintain its authority? Will it be defunded? Will it be quote-unquote deleted as what, you know, Elon Musk has proposed?
And so one of the biggest things is to protect the CFPB so that they can continue to do their good work. And then we hope that this administration, because domestic violence is not a partisan issue, that it would continue its rulemaking. And one more note is that this is broader than just domestic violence, though.
You know, we're highlighting that in this story. Coerced debt happens in all types of abusive relationships, and that includes elder abuse and child abuse. So a lot of my clients were also those who had been coerced into transactions to like their caretaker that was taking advantage of them when they were older Americans, their foster biological parent, if they were, you know, a child in the foster system.
So it's broader and it protects more people than just, you know, those that we've been highlighting.
CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, no, that's a really good point, actually, Professor Adams, I'm going to give you the last word here in just a second. But Carla, I have one more question. I mean, because a lot of these changes that you're seeking, would have to do with the credit agencies.
They are very, very powerful, not only in our individual lives, but politically. I'm wondering what kind of pushback you've been hearing from credit agencies. We did contact their trade association, but they weren't able to provide an interview for us. But just quickly, have you been hearing some pushback from them?
SANCHEZ-ADAMS: I haven't heard anything yet. My hope is that they would support it. There was a bill in Maine that was a credit reporting bill, and it would protect victims of economic abuse more broadly. And the CDIA, which is that trade association for the credit reporting agencies, did challenge that law based on, you know, preemption by the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
So we're hoping that because this is a change to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, they would be supportive of it, instead of challenging it.
CHAKRABARTI: Well, Professor Adams, we just have a minute left here. For people listening now who are experiencing this, I imagine, I mean, it's so pervasive. There are definitely some, there's definitely someone out there who's living this right now.
I mean, is there anything they can do right now to protect themselves at all, even under the current laws we have?
ADAMS: Yeah, if a listener is experiencing economic abuse or knows someone who is, first I would say, know that it is not okay to be treated this way. It's not okay. And if you want to talk to somebody, if you want to find out what options there are, if you want to talk about your specific experience, specific situation, and what kinds of options you might pursue, I highly recommend calling the National Domestic Violence Hotline and talking to one of their advocates.
Everybody's situation is unique and complex, and there's not a one size fits all, here's what you do if you're experiencing this, because what it looks like for any given person and what the safety concerns are, and what resources are going to be available to them, really varies so much. And so to have that one-on-one help is truly important.
And to talk to somebody who's going to believe you and who's going to help you figure out the next step.
CHAKRABARTI: I wonder if, just briefly, would something like freezing your credit help?
ADAMS: Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's the kind of step that an advocate could help with, right? How talking through that as an option, you know, but freezing credit may not be safe for everybody, right?
If somebody's partner is actively creating debt in their name and they want access to their credit, freezing credit may not be the smart thing to do, because they could make that person very upset, right? And so that's why I say it's important to have a conversation with an advocate about your specific circumstance.
And for some people, freezing credit, freezing your credit might make sense, and for others it might not.
This program aired on January 27, 2025.
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