Emmanuelle and Wilma
Content Warning: These stories are about violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation and may include references to suicide or self-harming behaviours. They may contain graphic descriptions and strong language and may be distressing. Some narratives may be about First Nations people who have passed away. If you need support, please see Contact & support.
Emmanuelle was in her 80s and blind when Wilma met her.
‘She was the youngest of three spinster sisters with a very domineering father and a mother that had died when she was very young,’ her friend and former carer, Wilma, told the Royal Commission.
‘I think her disability came about because she hadn’t got the right care prior to her getting cataracts, which then led to blindness which then isolated her.’
Emmanuelle lived ‘in a very well-to-do area’, but ‘nobody seemed to notice her, to the point of [her] living in squalor’.
She was religious and belonged to the church.
‘But no one … was prepared to actually look out or do the neighbourly thing,’ Wilma said. ‘Somewhere in the system she got lost … [and] had become a bit of a recluse.’
Wilma worked for a company that was providing Emmanuelle with disability support at home.
‘I ended up resigning from my job to be able to care for her [privately] … because no one was really taking care of her.’
The NDIS service provider wanted to move Emmanuelle out of her home. But that was ‘against her wishes’.
‘It was a family house that she had lived in all her life from 16,’ Wilma explained.
One day, Wilma was driving past and went to check in on her Emmanuelle.
‘And I got in and there was no sign of her. And then alarm bells rang.’
She phoned Emmanuelle’s support manager, who said Emmanuelle had been taken to hospital after a fall. Wilma was ‘livid’ – the manager had agreed to inform her if an emergency arose.
Arriving at the emergency department, she saw Emmanuelle ‘being heaved around by these great big blokes, stripped and washed and, sort of, disinfected’.
‘It was such abuse,’ Wilma said. ‘[She] turned into a piece of meat. No value, no nothing, no person.’
The hospital moved Emmanuelle into its aged care facilities.
‘I just found the whole place so neglected,’ Wilma said. ‘I was just so upset.’
Wilma did her best to make sure Emmanuelle ‘was alright’.
‘[I’d] play her YouTube services by the Pope in Rome because I knew that would give her some comfort because she couldn’t do anything.’
But she was ‘angry and upset’ at the ‘abuse and neglect’ of her friend.
‘One day I walked in and she’d had a stroke, and they hadn’t even picked up on it. I was ropable. I mean, I just couldn’t believe these people, neglecting her so badly.’
Wilma said the mistreatment was widespread. She observed that women, in particular, were ‘invisible’.
‘They were so neglected these people … Little ladies there who perhaps had a fall … So, I decided that I will go around chatting to them all … because they were so scared because no one was really telling them anything.’
During her visits, Wilma would ‘paint their nails, or do something kind like that’.
‘I really feel … that if we could somehow bring in that sort of nursing approach into those wards in the hospital, there would be so much joy in those rooms.’
Disclaimer: This is the story of a person who shared their personal experience with the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability through a submission or private session. The names in this story are pseudonyms. The person who shared this experience was not a witness and their account is not evidence. They did not take an oath or affirmation before providing the story. Nothing in this story constitutes a finding of the Royal Commission. Any views expressed are those of the person who shared their experience, not of the Royal Commission.