Institutional systems abuse within systemic coercive control : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Doctor of Philosophy PhD in Psychology at Massey University Manawatū, New Zealand

Abstract

This research emerged from two decades of frontline family violence practice and from the practitioner’s ethical anguish in witnessing and enacting harmful system responses that compounded violence and systemically entrapped those seeking safety and protection. The research centres on the lack of recognition or definition of Institutional Systems Abuse and its tactics, which obscures the full pattern of Systemic Coercive Control. Examining how Institutional Systems Abuse materialises reveals the profoundly systemic nature of coercive control and the ways responders and institutions may act as either disruptors or agents of complicity. Existing scholarship has established coercive control as a gendered system of interpersonal domination, while Social Entrapment Theory and Response-Based Practice provide critical foundations for understanding how violence is socially produced and resisted. This study extends these frameworks by tracing how institutional systems and actors can be co-opted into the abuse strategy, demonstrating that coercive control operates through interpersonal, social, and systemic assemblages. Guided by posthuman nomadic feminist theory, the research employed memory work with embodied practitioner memories as relational and ethical material drawn from practice. Memories were (re)imagined as figurations and assemblages, and reflexive thematic analysis traced entangled patterns across them to construct a sociopolitical cartography of harmful system responses. Two interconnected pathways were identified that offer insight into how systems abuse occurs: Predominant Aggressor Manipulation (PAM), showing how perpetrators co-opt systems and responders, and Harmful System Responses (4Ps), revealing how institutional policies, procedures, processes, and practices enable compounding harm and systemic entrapment. Posthuman feminist analysis exposes how gendered power is reproduced through systems claiming neutrality and how neoliberal and Eurocentric logics sustain systemic complicity. By naming Institutional Systems Abuse as a discrete and under-recognised tactic of Systemic Coercive Control, the research establishes a shared language to describe and disrupt it. A central contribution lies in articulating ethical anguish as embodied practitioner knowledge and a signpost for resistance, recognising forced positions of complicity that responders may be co-opted into when systems reproduce harm. The study offers an original methodological contribution through a sociopolitical cartography constructed from affective practitioner memories. It advances theoretical, methodological, and practice-based understanding of institutional complicity, positioning ethical, safety-oriented, and dignity-driven responses as essential sites of resistance and systemic reform.