Bill would create world-leading domestic abuse legislation in Scotland
Women’s groups have hailed plans to criminalise psychological domestic abuse.
A bill is currently being drafted which will create a specific offence of abusive behaviour in relation to a partner or ex-partner.
It means controlling and psychological abusive behaviour will be treated the same as violence.
Dr Marsha Scott, the chief executive of Scottish Women's Aid, said the move was long overdue.
She said: "Women have been telling us for 40 years that it is psychological and emotional abuse that is the most traumatic for them and the hardest to recover from, yet for such a long time we had absolutely no tools in legislation to take their stories seriously and hold abusers accountable for the untold harm that they wreak."
If it becomes legislation Scotland will be the first country in the world to create "victimless prosecutions."
Scott said: "It does not blame women and it does not mean women have to come into court and prove how harmed they have been by the abuse.
"In fact it is all structured in looking at the behaviour of the perpetrator and asking 'would a reasonable person think that this could be harmful?'."
The new legislation says abusive behaviour can be violent, threatening or intimidating if it makes a partner dependent or subordinate or isolating a partner from friends, relatives or other sources of support.
However Grazia Robertson, a criminal solicitor in Glasgow, said it could be difficult to secure prosecutions.
"How would you gather sufficient evidence to successfully prosecute in a criminal court?" she said
"I think there will be problems."
She said the bill acknowledges that prosecutions may not be able to rely on evidence from the person who has been abused.
"You may be relying on the evidence or perceptions of other people and that will make it more difficult," she said.
Scott added: "There are a lot of myths out there that somehow it will be hard to get evidence to support prosecutions.
"Actually it is much harder to corroborate a threat to someone that is a one-off.
"This law will take an incident and look at it as a course of conduct.”
