This week included Elder Abuse Day (15th June), and so we have Freda Quinlan talking about her PhD study, in which she developed a new model of understanding filial coercive control.
By Freda Quinlan, Principal Social Worker (Adult Safeguarding) and PhD researcher
When we discuss Child-to-Parent Abuse (CPA), conversations usually focus on adolescents. But what happens when this dynamic tracks into adulthood, colliding with the inevitable vulnerabilities of a parent’s later life? At the recent ‘Reframing Professional Practice’ conference, I explored this through the lens of the FIL-CO Model (Filial Coercive Control). The reality I presented suggests that when abuse persists into adulthood, the dynamics may shift from overt behavioural outbursts to a quieter, less visible, and deeply complex form of domestic entrapment. To respond effectively, we may need to recognise the hidden layers of this ongoing family trauma.
1. The Trap of Silence and Wounded Identity
One of the greatest hurdles that professionals identified in my research is the profound silence of victims. It is dangerously easy for safeguarding systems to misinterpret this silence as a passive ‘lack of will’ or an unwillingness to engage. The FIL-CO Model invites us to look deeper. Many older parents seem to operate under a heavy belief that because they raised the person hurting them, they have forfeited the ethical right to speak out. This potentially creates a ‘dual entrapment’: a state of constant physical dread paired with an internalised shame that tells them their adult child’s actions reflect their own failure as a parent. When a parent stays silent, they may actually be navigating a wounded identity. Their silence is rarely passivity; it can represent an ethically-laden negotiation—a final attempt to protect what is left of their parental legacy.
2. Weaponised Care: Becoming Invisible Within Systems
In later life, a critical shift can occur in how control is maintained. Unlike intimate partner violence, where an abuser merely claims to provide protection, an older parent’s physical or cognitive care needs may often be objectively real. This can create a painful relational paradox. The adult child is the primordial being the parent is hardwired to protect. As social networks narrow with age, this bond often intensifies, repositioning the adult child as the parent’s primary ‘secure base.’ This biological drive for proximity may override the parent’s cognitive recognition of harm. Abusive adult children strategically exploit this by weaponising actual frailty. By tying control to real health needs, the abuser ensures their dominance is perceived by external observers—and sometimes by the parent—not as abuse, but as a dutiful response to failing health. This is precisely how parents can become entirely invisible within care systems.
3. Epistemic Injustice: The Theft of Reality
The psychological peak of filial coercive control is often reached through epistemic injustice—the systematic erosion of an older parent’s ability to trust their own knowledge and perceptions. Here, gaslighting emerges as a primary tool of entrapment. Abusive adult children may leverage a parent’s minor memory lapses to delegitimise their reality, countering their lived experiences with assertions like, “You’re just getting confused.” This can breed a profound cognitive dissonance that slowly undermines the parent’s sense of personhood. Crucially, this gaslighting appears to interact with structural vulnerabilities. Our institutional systems naturally tend to defer to the younger caregiver, sometimes giving them the benefit of the doubt over an older adult. The abuser may make strategic choices to secure compliance because they know the system will likely reinforce their narrative.
The Path Forward: Re-evaluating Autonomy
Ultimately, the FIL-CO Model frames a parent’s compliance not necessarily as weakness, but potentially as a calculated surrender within a very compromised family and societal context. For professionals, this suggests a fundamental shift in practice. When assessing an older parent, we can rarely simply ask what they ‘want’ on a surface level. If a parent’s will is a strategic response to an unbreakable, lifelong bond, our assessments must account for the painful internal processes they may be navigating. Moving forward, compassionate responses mean looking past the surface of ‘compliance.’ Only when we begin to understand the potential strategy behind a parent’s surrender can we hope to break through the walls of silence and offer true avenues for validation, safety, and hope.
It was great to hear more about Freda’s work in the Reframing Professional Practice conference. Freda is completing her PhD at University College Dublin.
HOLES IN THE WALL 