What My Thesis Explores

This thesis begins with a simple but uncomfortable observation: family violence does not only operate within intimate relationships. It travels. It adapts. It extends into institutions.

Over many years of practice, I witnessed something that felt difficult to name. Women were describing not only the coercive control they were experiencing at home, but the ways in which systems — courts, agencies, schools, health services — were compounding that harm. Reports misread resistance. Risk assessments flattened patterns into incidents. Legal processes were used to continue control. Institutional responses, often unintentionally, reinforced the power of the predominant aggressor.

These were not isolated mistakes. They felt patterned.

This research asks:
How does institutional systems abuse operate?
Why is it so difficult to recognise?
And how can it be interrupted?

Moving Beyond Incident-Based Thinking

Much of our existing understanding of family violence focuses on incidents - discrete acts of physical or psychological harm. While important, this framing can obscure the patterned, liberty-restricting nature of coercive control.

Coercive control is not a series of isolated events. It is a strategy of domination. It is about governing another person’s life — their movements, relationships, finances, credibility, and autonomy.

When we fail to see the pattern, we risk misreading the response.

When we misread the response, we risk becoming part of the harm.

This thesis shifts the lens from individual incidents to patterned systems of power.

Identifying the Pathways

Through reflexive thematic analysis of composite memory fragments drawn from 17 years of clinical practice, I identified two key pathways through which institutional systems abuse operates.

Pathway One: Predominant Aggressor Manipulation (PAM)

This pathway traces how coercive controllers deliberately curate performances of credibility within institutional contexts. These performances are not random. They are strategically constructed presentations of self and narrative designed to influence perception, allocate credibility, and redistribute responsibility.

Through these curated performances, systems can be recruited into the dynamic of coercive control — extending domination beyond the intimate relationship and into legal, social, and professional spaces.

Pathway Two: Harmful Systems Responses (HSR)

The second pathway examines harm that arises not from deliberate manipulation, but from the structure of institutions themselves. Policies, procedures, processes, and practices — the “4 Ps” — can unintentionally produce outcomes that minimise coercive control, misattribute responsibility, or neutralise gendered power.

These responses are rarely malicious. They are often procedural, bureaucratic, or framed as neutral. Yet neutrality within unequal power structures can amplify harm.

Together, these pathways show how institutional systems abuse is both enacted and embedded.

Why This Work Matters

Institutional systems abuse is often spoken about informally. Practitioners recognise it. Survivors feel it. Advocates name it. But until it is structured and mapped, it remains difficult to address.

When harm is unnamed, it is easier to dismiss.
When it is dismissed, it becomes normalised.
When it is normalised, it persists.

By mapping the pathways of systems abuse, this thesis makes the pattern visible. It moves the conversation beyond individual blame and toward systemic accountability. It offers a framework that practitioners, lawyers, policymakers, and institutions can use to recognise vulnerabilities and interrupt harm.

A Methodological Stance of Resistance

This research is grounded in posthuman nomadic theory and informed by Response-Based Practice. It resists traditional individualised research frameworks that isolate harm within personal pathology or relational dysfunction.

Instead, it positions family violence within social, gendered, and institutional power structures. It honours subjective, embodied, and lived experience as legitimate knowledge. The composite narratives used throughout the thesis protect confidentiality while tracing recurring patterns across cases.

This is not research about individual failure.
It is research about social systems and power.

The Central Contribution

The central contribution of this thesis is the articulation of institutional systems abuse as patterned, structured, and interruptible.

It demonstrates that:

• Systems abuse is not incidental error
  
  
• It operates through identifiable pathways
  
  
• Institutions are vulnerable to manipulation
  
  
• Neutral processes can amplify unequal power
  
  
• Disruption requires awareness, accountability, and ethical courage
  
  

When we can see the pathways, we can choose differently.

An Invitation

This work does not claim to provide a final answer. It offers a map.

A map of how power travels.
A map of how harm is reproduced.
A map of where intervention becomes possible.

Because when systems can become part of the harm, they can also become part of the solution.