Make a Change World - When the System Becomes the Abuser

Laura Love, host of Make a Change Wild, discusses the misuse of the New South Wales Mental Health Act to silence abuse victims. She shares her own experience of being pathologized instead of protected when reporting abuse. Laura highlights the systemic issues, lack of trauma-informed training in law enforcement, and the need for better laws and systems. She also recounts a friend's similar mistreatment under the Act. Despite facing trolling and character attacks, Laura remains steadfast in advocating for mental health reform due to her personal experiences with grief and loss. Hello, and welcome to Make a Change Wild, where truth isn't just spoken, it's demanded. I'm your host, Laura Love, and today I'm going to be speaking about something that's raw, it's personal, and it's critical. It's about how the very systems meant to protect us are sometimes used to silence us, and how the New South Wales Mental Health Act, where I live today in Australia and Sydney, as it stands, can be weaponised against those who are simply trying to survive. The episode is called, When the Systems Become the Abuser, and this isn't just my story. This is happening to others, and it's happening right now. But what connects us is this, when we speak the truth, the system doesn't listen, it diagnoses. So my story, in 2025, I started documenting the abuse that I received, stalking, gassing, digital surveillance, and repeated intrusions into my home in 2024. I started to use Instagram, a bit like a journal, like a raw emotional expression of what was happening, and what had the events that had unfolded. I wasn't hiding anymore. Someone close to me, out of concern for what I was posting, contacted police. I don't believe he acted out of malice, but the system that followed, well, it simply left me floored. On June the 3rd, 2025, three officers from the local police station came to my door. Two female officers started the investigation. They weren't there to report this, they weren't there to investigate my previous reports and statements of abuse at the hands of people in the local community. They were there to assess me. I was in shock. The first few police officers on the scene, both women, they arrived and sat with me for a while. I tried to remain calm, articulate, and coherent. I answered every question, no matter how absurd or invasive it was. They kept pressing, are you a danger to yourself or to others? No. I knew what was happening. They weren't assessing the danger around me, they were assessing me, and I was the one that was on trial. After about 30 minutes of patiently explaining the timeline of events and defending my sanity, a more senior male officer arrived at my home. He didn't ask for background, he didn't sit down, and he spoke to me for about three minutes before saying, I have the right to call an ambulance and I could detain you under the Man to Health Act. I asked him, is that a threat? He just replied to say, I have the power to. Well, he didn't detain me, but he did call an ambulance anyway. So when these two lovely but rather wasted resources of paramedics arrived at my home, I explained to them that I was in fact going through a divorce with a disgruntled ex-partner who was about to meet me in mediation for breaching our parenting plan. The male officer claimed that he had spoken to three neighbours to justify the intervention, but that simply wasn't true. It was a lie. The female police officers had done that, and here's actually what they found. One neighbour had expressed concern for me, not about me. Well, no shit, Sherlock. I'd just been through six months of living hell at the hands of my neighbour. Another lived with a man who is known for his alcoholism, suicidal tendencies, and who takes medication daily to deal with his depression. The third said that she was worried about me because I seemed to genuinely believe the abuse that I had received. Well, I did genuinely believe the abuse that I received because it was in fact true. So let's be clear. Not a single credible source said that I was unwell, but under the outdated New South Wales Mental Health Act, which was written in 2007, concern was all that they needed. And that's the weapon. They didn't protect me. They pathologicalised me. They used the law to discredit my trauma and to write it off as mental illness. But here's the truth. I wasn't unwell. I was simply unsafe, and I was finally speaking up. They didn't want to hear the truth because it was inconvenient, and they tried to sedate it. So what happens when you report abuse? Well, that's what survivors are often told not to do. So what did I do in my situation? I reported their police actions. On June the 12th, I submitted a formal complaint to the New South Wales Police Force. I outlined everything. How the Mental Health Act was used to suppress me and not support me. How the two police reports that I'd made earlier in November 2007 against my abusers were simply ignored. The first one in November was dismissed without follow up. The second escalated into another mental health assessment of me rather than a criminal investigation. They contacted my ex-husband and asked for me to be assessed under the Mental Health Act, and I declined. At no one stage did any of the police officers take five minutes to even have a conversation with me about the abuse that I was receiving. They went straight to mental health. I named the pattern. It was negligence in investigating abuse, weaponisation of outdating laws, and lack of trauma-informed, survivor-aware training amongst officers. So yes, I called it out, and this is what I also want to say. I want to say thank you to the police officers who are now, as a result of the mental health call, taking these reports seriously. Thank you to those who are actively investigating the abuse that I received. This is not a condemnation of all law enforcement, but this is a call for better training, better laws, and for better systems. We are all humans first, but our systems just simply forget that. Our laws don't reflect it, and the governance just doesn't protect it. What's time that we changed. So what happens when you then start to see this happen to someone that you know? So this isn't just my story. I'm watching it unfold again right now. A friend of mine in her mid-70s, a strong, intelligent, brave, charismatic woman, walked into hospital less than two weeks ago. She was terrified, vulnerable, and no longer safe in her own home. She didn't go there for treatment. She went there for protection, and whilst in hospital, she did something very brave. She reported the abuse that she was receiving to the police, and I was there. I witnessed her fear, and I shared what I could with the officers too. But instead of support, what we got was silence. The police didn't write down a formal report, and when I asked what happens next, they told me nothing. She would have needed to have met a certain threshold to receive police protection. So now, instead of being believed, she was entertained. As of today, she's locked inside a psychiatric ward. She's medicated. Her trauma, her real lived-in trauma, is now being rationalized as something like schizophrenia. Her memories are dismissed as delusions, and her fear is rewritten as instability. She's been denied visitors, officially due to a COVID diagnosis, but what this really means is no one can see her in her hour of need. No one can witness. No one can protect her, and no one can hold the system accountable. And once again, just like what happened to me, her truth is being erased. I do not believe that she is mentally ill. I believe that she is traumatized, and she is not in danger. She is not a danger. She is in danger. And under the current New South Wales Mental Health Act, every part of what is happening is currently legal. But that's not the only layer of harm. In standing beside her, in using my voice to support her as a citizen, I have come under fire. I've been trolled by a person who claims to be her friend. I won't name them, because I believe that behavior might be rooted in unprocessed trauma. But here's what they've said to me. What's in it for you? You're an unfit mother. You're an embarrassment. Everyone in the community knows you're crazy. The police, the nurses, they're all talking about you. You're making her worse. You're being banned from seeing her. You're feeding her delusions. You need psychiatric help. They've mocked my spirituality, my mental health, my mothering, and my faith. This wasn't just a disagreement. This was a complete character assassination on me. An attempt to isolate me, humiliate me, and to silence me. Now, I just want to say that I'm really proud in how I responded. I did not respond to them in hate. I responded in love, because that's what I feel that this world needs. And because I recognize that this is a trauma response. She is a past victim of domestic violence, and she told me that in conversation recently. When we live in a world that constantly gaslights us, silences us, and shames us, some of us learn to internalize it and to project it. So I sent her love, and I chose not to retaliate. But I also won't be silenced. Because just a few days ago, I bumped into the man that my friend reported. The one that she said made her feel unsafe. What did I do? I approached him. Not in anger. I did it in courage. And I asked him for the truth. And I let him know, if anything untoward has been happening, it is no longer happening in silence. Because this is where abuse thrives. In silence. In systems that turn victims into patients. In communities that shame women for being too much, rather than asking them why they had to carry so much for so long. Now, you might be wondering, why am I such an advocate for mental health? Why do I care? Why am I even doing this? Why am I fighting so hard for change in the mental health space? Well, this isn't just political for me. It's so personal, and it's so lived. Over a decade ago, my life really cracked open. Within the space of two weeks, I lost my former partner to suicide, and a dear friend to cancer. Grief came at me from both sides. It was horrendous. It was violence, slow, sudden, suffocating. I completely lost myself in that moment. What I did is I ended up quitting my job, and I walked away from everything that no longer made sense to me. Some might call it a bit of a spiritual reset. I backpacked through India for six months. It was my own kind of eat, pray, love journey, except it wasn't glamorous. It was raw. It was a refuge, and I sought healing in ashrams. I meditated with yogi, and I stripped my life back to silence and to soul. But healing doesn't happen overnight. When I returned to London, I then embarked on intensive kinesiology, and worked with a psychologist for over three years. I lived with someone later in life who then struggled with depression, and I learned how to hold space for another's pain whilst growing stronger inside of my own. I became someone I needed to be, not just for me, but for my children, because I'm a mum to two beautiful boys, and I made a vow that I will be the strongest, most present, most spiritually intimate mum that I can be, not despite what I've been through, but because of it. And that's why today I lead mental health initiatives in my workplace. I'm the mental health lead for a network of over 500 people across Australia and New Zealand. I create safe spaces. I advocate. I educate. I remind people that vulnerability is not weakness. It's wisdom. And still, I'm not finished healing. After the abuse that I received at the hands of my neighbours, the surveillance, the stalking, the gassing, I began having flashbacks. Trauma doesn't always scream. Sometimes it seeps in quietly in the middle of the night or while you're pouring your child their breakfast. And that's why I've started to embark in trauma therapy by the name of EMDR, and I've got my first session next week, because I know that healing is not just about surviving. It's about unlearning what broke us. It's about reclaiming what still belongs to us. And I share all of this not to centre myself, but to be transparent, to say I didn't wake up one day and decide to be an advocate. I became one because the world kept breaking in places that people don't seem to want to talk about. I have lived the grief. I have sat with the suicidal. I have stood in the fire, and I am still here. So what have I learned through all of this? Well, the mental health blueprint is, in fact, broken. The New South Wales Mental Health Act was written in 2007. That's 18 years ago. In that time, we've had the Me Too movement, widespread recognition of coercive control, and a new understanding of gaslighting and trauma. Survivors are finally being believed, but the law just hasn't kept up. It still gives us too much unchecked power to police officers, not doctors, to decide whether someone should be detained for treatment. It ignores context, it ignores trauma, and ignores how easily this law can be manipulated by people with bad intentions, or even just misunderstood by people with good ones. And that's why I'm petitioning for urgent reform. We need survivor-informed revision of the Mental Health Act, independent advocacy for every detained person, trauma-aware, gender-sensitive police training, and accountability, not gaslighting. So, to every survivor who's been pathologicalised for telling the truth, I see you. To every officer who's dismissed trauma as instability, listen again. To the officers now investigating abuse and taking survivors seriously, thank you. We need you. We need more like you. To the decision-makers still clinging to outdated laws, it's time to change. We are not broken. We are not crazy. We are brave and we are human. And when the system becomes our abuser, the only way forward is revolution. I'm Laura, Laura Love, and this is Make the Change World. I will not be silenced. Not by the system, not by the sticker, and not by the fear. Please sign the petition, share this episode, and report the wrongs you see. Because every story matters, and silence is never where justice begins. Thank you.