The Best True Crime to Stream: ‘Dirty John,’ ‘The Puppet Master’ and More

The concept of “coercive control” entered the lexicon about a decade ago and has become an increasingly prevalent theme in the true crime genre. Pioneered by Evan Stark, a researcher and expert on domestic abuse, it refers to a pattern of abusive behavior and manipulation — including isolation, humiliation, financial abuse, stalking and gaslighting — used to dominate a partner. Men are most often, but not always, the abusers.

Coercive control “is designed to subjugate and dominate, not merely to hurt,” Stark, who died in April, said in a London court in 2019 while testifying on behalf of a domestic abuse victim who’d murdered her husband. She, appealing her conviction, was subsequently released from prison.

Here are four picks across television, film and podcasting that show how this form of psychological abuse, though hard to prove as a crime, ruins lives.

Podcast

‘Sweet Bobby’

Because I’ve watched every episode of the MTV show “Catfish,” I thought that this six-chapter investigative podcast from Tortoise Media, which explores a true story in which coercive control overlaps with catfishing (tricking others, often into a romantic relationship, using fake digital profiles), was unlikely to shock me.

But the saga — about Kirat Assi, a woman from London whose life was turned on its head for nearly a decade after she fell for “Bobby” via Facebook — still managed to test my tolerance for how little legal recourse the deceived parties have. The story also speaks to why the damage caused by coercive control and by the proliferation of catfishing should not be minimized.