“The Orbit of Domestic Violence, Life on "5" Planet's

Some years ago, one of our Co-Founders came across Professor Marianne Hester’s Three Planet Model, a framework describing how families experiencing domestic abuse can encounter dramatically different responses depending on whether they are interacting with domestic abuse services, child protection systems, or the family court system. Hester’s work illustrates how each of these systems can function almost like a separate “planet,” with its own professional culture, terminology, priorities, expectations, and understanding of responsibility.

For survivors, moving between these systems can be confusing and, at times, deeply contradictory. What one system recognizes as coercive control or domestic abuse may be interpreted differently by another. Expectations placed on a survivor may change depending on which agency, professional, or court is involved, and responsibility for addressing the abuse may shift from one system to another. These inconsistencies can leave survivors and children attempting to navigate multiple systems that do not always communicate effectively or operate from the same understanding of domestic violence.

Hester’s model particularly resonated with our Founder because it reflected many of the systemic problems she had encountered through lived experience and later through advocacy work with other survivors. Survivors were often expected to move repeatedly between agencies, courts, child-protection professionals, victim-service providers, and other institutions while trying to keep themselves and their children safe. When systems operate independently rather than cohesively, gaps can develop in which abuse, coercive control, manipulation, institutional misunderstanding, and victim-blaming may continue without being fully recognized.

Through her own experiences and years of working alongside survivors, our Founder began to recognize that the original three planets did not fully capture every system survivors were being required to navigate. She identified two additional “planets” that frequently play significant roles in the lives of victims and their families. From that observation grew Survivors Outreach Ministries’ expanded framework, The Orbit of Domestic Violence: Life on Five Planets.

The concept examines domestic violence not simply as an isolated relationship problem, but as an experience that can intersect with multiple institutions and systems simultaneously. Survivors may find themselves navigating different standards, terminology, procedures, expectations, and decision-makers while the underlying abuse continues to affect nearly every area of their lives. Our framework focuses on those intersections, the systemic gaps between them, and the need for greater communication, accountability, survivor-informed practice, and consistency across the systems entrusted with protecting victims and children.

The Orbit of Domestic Violence: Life on Five Planets reflects a central principle of our work: survivors should not have to become experts in five different systems simply to obtain safety, stability, accountability, and meaningful access to justice.