Abandoned in Mexico, this may be one of the most extreme cases of domestic violence connected to the Australian Defence Force. That is not an exaggeration or a headline — it is the reality I lived. I was an army wife for nearly two decades, moving every four years, raising children alone during deployments, and holding everything together while the institution looked the other way. Then, through a chain of events no one could imagine unless they had lived it, I found myself engaged to a man with past ties to organised crime in Mexico.

My ex‑husband — a retired ADF officer with longstanding mental‑health issues, exposed to trial antimalarial drugs during his East Timor deployments in 1999 and 2001, and the father of our four children — left us in Mexico with no support, no protection, and no way out. Overnight, I became responsible for four children in a country I barely understood. That vulnerability made me an easy target, and I was drawn into the orbit of men operating inside cartel‑adjacent systems in Nayarit — environments shaped by fear, poverty, and power.

The only person who could corroborate what happened was someone whose own life had once been entangled in organised crime. In the eyes of authorities, that meant my truth was never going to be simple, clean, or easily believed. The systems that should have recognised the pattern — injury, misdiagnosis, coercive control, abandonment, cross‑border risk — instead treated it as chaos, instability, or personal failure.

This is the context in which the quinoline era collided with military family life, institutional blindness, and the violent systems that shaped the aftermath.

Jacqualine Roche is a writer and lived‑experience researcher focused on digital violence, coercive control, cross‑border harm, and the collapse of institutional response. Her work blends forensic clarity with literary restraint, offering a rare perspective on the psychological and structural dynamics that shape modern danger.

She documents the human cost of the quinoline era, drawing on years inside Australian Defence Force family culture, the fallout from East Timor deployments, and a decade of cross‑border survival in Mexico’s cartel‑adjacent borderlands. Her research examines patterns of injury, misdiagnosis, coercive control, institutional blindness, and the violent systems that shaped both the harm and the silence around it.n

I lost my children because of domestic violence. They were used as leverage — not out of love, but as a means of control. What unfolded was not a custody decision but a calculated act of coercive power, where the children became instruments in a conflict they never chose.

The systems meant to protect us instead amplified his reach, mistaking manipulation for parental concern and silence for stability. In the end, the cost of leaving was measured not in possessions or safety, but in the distance forced between a mother and her children.

If you believe you have lived through something similar, or your partner was part of the quinoline antimalarial drug trials — or you are still inside it — my work may help you recognise the patterns. Not because our stories are identical, but because the systems that enable this kind of harm often behave in predictable ways.

You are not imagining the complexity. You are not alone in the confusion. And you are not the only one who has been misread by institutions that should have known better.

If you would like to get in touch — to share your experience, to ask a question, or to connect with a journalist — you are welcome to send me a message.

I welcome contact from journalists, researchers, and editors seeking clarity on the quinoline era and its long‑term human impact. My work draws on lived experience, cross‑border documentation, and a decade of research into the misdiagnosis of quinoline‑induced neurological injury as PTSD, depression, or domestic instability.

I can speak to the patterns that were missed, the systems that failed to recognise the harm, and the consequences for military families navigating injury without language, diagnosis, or institutional support. My perspective is grounded, evidence‑based, and informed by both personal history and the broader scholarly record on quinoline neurotoxicity.

If you are reporting on military health, misdiagnosis, coercive control, cross‑border survival, or the structural gaps that shaped this era, I can provide context, documentation, and lived‑experience insight. I engage with media in a measured, factual manner, with an emphasis on accuracy, restraint, and the public interest.