Aarya
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.
‘I had been involved with child safety all my life and I can’t seem to escape from them. I feel like I am being punished for being a child in care.’
Aarya is in her 40s and has an acquired brain injury that causes gaps in her memory.
‘I sustained two head injuries in foster care,’ Aarya told the Royal Commission. ‘They don’t know how that [first] head injury was sustained, but with the second one … I didn’t want to be removed from this orphanage [and] they just picked me up by the legs and smashed my head against a floor.’
Aarya is also deaf.
‘I became deaf from my head injuries that I sustained … By the time [I was] in foster care, the people that was raising us, they kept calling me a spastic.’
Aarya said she was sexually abused in foster care and later in life.
‘All my children were conceived by sexual abuse, rape … [But] the worst thing for me is that my children were removed from my care.’
Aarya said that when she was pregnant with her first child, child safety officers told her they would remove her baby ‘because [she] was a person with disability’.
‘I was a safety risk to my child. This was the same department I was sexually abused by as a child … It gives me trauma to remember what happened to me in my childhood and I am still seeing it happen until this day to my children.’
A few years ago, when she was pregnant, her partner beat her and ‘left [her] to die’. Her baby was born with disability.
‘Child safety said it was my fault for not protecting my unborn baby. I was tied up, so I couldn’t protect her.’
To escape her partner, Aarya lived in a refuge with her baby. One day, shortly after a hospital appointment, child safety officers arrived with police.
‘The child safety officer stated that they were removing my child as I had not answered their phone calls that morning.’
Aarya said she showed them her hospital documents, but was told they ‘looked fake’.
‘They took my … child roughly from me. They did not allow me to hug her or give her a kiss or comfort her.’
A judge later returned the baby to her. During another pregnancy, doctors warned her stress was putting her unborn baby at risk of disability.
‘Child safety stressed me so badly.’
Aarya told the Royal Commission she worries the child safety department is still putting her children at risk of developing disability.
‘It gives me trauma to remember what happened to me in my childhood and I am still seeing it happen until this day to my children … I am worried about the injuries my children are getting while not in my care.’
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.