Structural abuse

Structural abuse is the process by which an individual is dealt with unfairly by a system of harm in ways that the person cannot protect themselves against, cannot deal with, cannot break out of, cannot mobilise against, cannot seek justice for, cannot redress, cannot avoid, cannot reverse and cannot change.

Every system contains at least one level at which structural abuse occurs, when the actions of the system takes over the actions of individuals within that system to create structures by which abuse of others occurs.

Structural abuse should not be confused with structural violence. Structural violence refers to action committed by a larger society, such as racism or classism in an entire society. Structural abuse refers to actions that are not necessarily endorsed by the broader society.

There are three kinds of structural abuse:

Structural abuse is indirect, and exploits the victim on an emotional, mental and psychological level. It manifests itself in specific situations within each cultural, social, corporate and family framework.

Structural abuse is also called societal abuse. It has four permanent impacts upon the individuals subjected to it:

An example of how surface-level structural abuses are accepted by the community is where a political journalist in Australia presented a review of the day's work within the Australian Parliament in August 2011. During the one-minute presentation, consisting of 18 points, she began eight new points with the word "Now". "Now" is a fixation cue for viewers to forget about the past and the future, but to concentrate only on the "now" time frame. The use of the word was surplus to the data she presented, and even contradictory to it. The regularity of the word "Now", its placement at the front of each point by which the interpretation of each point is shaped, and the later repetitive use of the word by the anchor journalist steering the news program, who does not normally use such a control habit, showed that the word was a verbal dissociative cue by which hypnotic states are induced.

Other examples include:

Cues indicating a Structurally Abusive Corporate System

Structural Abuse Indicators include the inability of an outsider to make contact on a personal level with the people who work within an organisation. Cafe meetings turn discussions into plagiarisable events, while lack of agendas for high performance meetings create heightened levels of feeling threatened which impacts on how such meetings are approached. Being kept on hold with music blaring down the earpiece is structural abuse because by listening for the resumption of the discussion there is no escape from the sound.

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