About
Donna-Marie Donaldson (Dee)
Clinical Psychologist | Former Police Officer | Coercive Control Consultant
Background & Credentials
Dee Donaldson brings to her consultancy work a professional background that spans both clinical practice and frontline law enforcement. As a Clinical Psychologist her over ten years, her work has focused largely on assessing and treating clients who had experienced significant psychological harm and distress associated with interpersonal relationships and workplace experiences. Dee also served as a police officer with Victoria Police for six years which she credits as having provided her an operational background that informed a distinctive and practically grounded understanding of how coercive control operates in a real world sense (frontline and systemically): how it presents to observers with limited understanding of the dynamics, how it's routinely misread, and where systemic and organisational responses consistently fall short.
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Dee holds a Master of Clinical Psychology from the University of Queensland and a Bachelor of Science (Psychology) with First Class Honours from the University of Southern Queensland, and is registered as an endorsed Clinical Psychologist with the Psychology Board of Australia (AHPRA), currently under the professional surname Thompson pending a surname update with AHPRA. She is a Board Approved Supervisor in the area of clinical psychology and a member of the Australian Psychological Society.
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Her professional background spans operational law enforcement, victim-facing justice work, and clinical practice — a combination that is uncommon and directly relevant to coercive control analysis in organisational contexts. She served as a police officer with Victoria Police from 1999 to 2005, and subsequently spent a decade working across the Queensland justice system, including as a Victim Coordination Officer and Senior Court Support Officer with Victim Assist Queensland. This sustained exposure to how coercive control presents to institutions, and how institutional systems routinely fail to identify it accurately, informs the analytical precision she brings to training and organisational risk assessment work. Her clinical career since 2018 has spanned public mental health, private practice, child protection, and supervisory roles with a particular focus on women's mental health in regional and community contexts.
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That same capacity for identifying structural gaps and building theoretically grounded responses is reflected in Dee's earlier work as the developer of a peer-mentored support framework for neurodivergent university students, grounded in evidence-based psychological and motivational theory. That program, A-Skills, was evaluated by Dee using both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, and those outcomes have contributed to peer-reviewed publications. Dee has used the same methodological approach in developing the Relationship Coercion Mapping Framework™ (RCMF) and the Relationship Autonomy & Coercive Control Screener™ (RACCS): frameworks developed not from theory alone, but from the intersection of clinical expertise, operational experience, and a clear-eyed assessment of gaps within existing systems.
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Dee is a highly capable training facilitator with the ability to develop training that meets organisational needs whilst retaining a focus on accessibility for a wide variety of professional learners. Her style is engaging, straight-talking, and interactive. Throughout her career, she has developed and facilitated training programs on a range of mental health topics both online and face-to-face for government, non-government, and privately funded organisations. She has also presented at conferences within Australia and internationally.
The Dual-Lens Distinction
This combination of operational expertise in law enforcement and clinical expertise in psychological systems and interpersonal dynamics — positions Dee Donaldson as an unusually credible voice in the coercive control field. Most practitioners operating in this space hold expertise in either the clinical or operational domain. The integration of both is rare, and it directly informs the analytical depth and practical applicability of her training programs, assessments, and consultancy work.
The result is a professional offering that is neither purely academic nor narrowly operational — but grounded in both, and oriented toward the practical demands of organisations that need to identify and respond to coercive control within complex, real-world systems.
Proprietary Framework Development
Dee is the developer of the Relationship Coercion Mapping Framework™ (RCMF) and the Relationship Autonomy & Coercive Control Screener™ (RACCS) — proprietary analytical and assessment frameworks developed from the integration of clinical practice, psychological theory, and operational experience. These frameworks form the intellectual foundation of her training programs, organisational assessments, and consultancy work. They are available for licensing by organisations seeking to embed rigorous coercive control analysis into their own practice infrastructure.
Sectors & Reach
Her work is delivered across the domestic and family violence, policing, justice, corrections, child protection, healthcare, and private sectors — to agencies and institutions that require specialist expertise grounded in contemporary research evidence, analytical rigour, and direct applicability to professional practice. Engagements span single-agency training through to systemic policy review and framework licensing for larger organisations and government bodies.