Conducted by Scottish Women’s Aid (SWA) and commissioned by Stop Loan Sharks (Scottish Ilegal Money Lending Unit) and Trading Standards Scotland, a new report reveals a “small but significant” number of women have been “pushed towards illegal money lenders, often due to extreme financial pressure.”
This research, believed to be the first focused insight into the problem in Scotland, studied the coerced debt, where an abusive current or ex-partner builds up debt in their victim’s name, either without consent or knowledge or through force, threat or coercion.
Dr Jenn Glinski, author of the report and the national policy lead for economic abuse at Scottish Women’s Aid, said:
“Coerced debt is trapping women and children in abuse across Scotland. This report makes clear that it is not a side issue but a central part of how perpetrators exert control.”
Key findings:
1.Coerced debt is a hidden but widespread form of economic abuse
The report shows that coerced debt is not rare or exceptional; it is a common and deliberate tactic of coercive control used by perpetrators to trap women financially, restrict their choices and undermine their ability to leave or rebuild their lives. Survivors consistently describe debt as something done to them through abuse, not something they chose or had any control over. Critically, there is no coherent, practical or impactful support currently available for women experiencing coerced debt.
2.Economic abuse disproportionately affects women and children
The findings reflect what Women’s Aid services see daily: women and children bear the long-term consequences of domestic abuse, particularly its economic impacts. Gendered inequalities such as lower and insecure incomes, caring responsibilities and engagement with public services mean that women are more likely to be left with debt, enforcement action and financial insecurity created by perpetrators.
3. Abuse and debt continue long after separation
The findings of the report challenge the assumption that the end of the relationship means the end of abuse. Survivors and advocacy workers described an array of post-separation economic abuse, where debt, joint finances, mortgages or rent, child related costs, and legal proceedings are used as tools to continue control. For many women, coerced debt becomes a lasting legacy of abuse that follows them for years.
4.Public debt is especially punitive and system-driven
Coerced debt linked to council tax, rent, energy and other public debts emerged as particularly damaging. Survivors face aggressive enforcement, legal action and barriers to housing for debts accrued through abuse. These impacts are not accidental but arise from systems that fail to recognise economic abuse and continue to treat survivors as liable and responsible.
5.Survivors are forced into impossible financial choices to survive
In the absence of effective support, women adopt financial survival strategies to manage coerced debt, such as relying on family, going without essentials, selling possessions, taking on further debt, returning to abusive partners or engaging in unsafe or exploitative work. These are responses to crises within systems that offer no safe alternatives.
6.Illegal money lending is used as a last-resort survival strategy
A small but significant number of survivors described being pushed towards illegal money lenders, often due to extreme financial pressure. This exposes survivors to further intimidation, fear and escalating debt, highlighting the intersection between domestic abuse, poverty and financial exploitation and the need for safe, practical and non-punitive routes to support.
7.Current systems compound harm rather than enable recovery
Across financial services, public bodies and statutory systems, survivors encounter fragmented, inconsistent and often re-traumatising responses. High evidentiary thresholds, repeated disclosures and a lack of understanding of economic abuse leave women carrying the burden of proof and the debt. System designs, such as being held ‘jointly and severally liable’ for coerced debt, only serve to exacerbate survivors’ financial insecurity and hardship. Therefore, rather than enabling recovery, existing systems often compound harm, leaving women and children carrying the long-term consequences of abuse with no meaningful route to resolution or justice.
8.Survivors want economic justice, not just crisis management
The report makes clear that what survivors need is not short-term fixes, but systemic change: understanding of economic abuse, recognition of coerced debt, survivor-centred debt relief, trauma informed public services, and accountability for perpetrators. Without this, women and children will continue to experience long term financial harm that undermines their safety and equality.
Recommendations
The report finds that current responses across financial, public and institutional services are inadequate. Survivors frequently face disbelief, victim-blaming and rigid systems that fail to recognise the abuse underlying the debt. It says that addressing coerced debt requires coordinated, cross-sector reform: trauma-informed frontline training, flexible debt relief, recognition of illegal money lending as coercion, and improved prevention and public awareness.