Matilde, Elio and Lindsay

‘The trauma our children are experiencing and the way that trauma is manifesting is heartbreaking … Every day I hear a story and I think, “That’s the worst I’ve ever heard.” And the next day, the story is worse.’

Lindsay worked as teacher and assistant principal for many years.

When her grandson was a toddler he had some behaviours that were ‘red flags’.

In preschool, her daughter asked to have a field officer observe him in class. The preschool refused even though it was his right. They said her son wasn’t autistic. ‘What is happening here is a child from a broken home,’ they said.

In year 1 he had a good teacher, but year 2 was a disaster.

‘He was the young boy who was climbing up trees … He got caught under the fence trying to escape school, digging his way out. He was hitting in frustration.’

Lindsay approached the principal and started advocating for her grandson.

‘We built a team around my grandson. He’s now in year 7 and is doing extremely well at school.’

Lindsay changed careers and became a disability education consultant.

She told the Royal Commission about Matilde and Elio – two young autistic people she has worked with recently.

In year 5 students started bullying Matilde, posting photos with derogatory comments on social media.

‘They would say things to her like, “I wish you would get COVID and die. Why don’t you go and kill yourself?”’

Students would wait outside her classroom and taunt her and tell others not to play with her.

Matilde’s parents made complaints, but the principal said it was ‘an out-of-school issue’. Lindsay met the principal but he was defensive, deflective and refused to act.

The bullying continued.

Matilde self-harmed and was admitted to hospital.

The education department became involved and forced the school to develop a support plan for Matilde. The principal was absent from all the meetings.

Matilde stopped using social media, but the students continued to make nasty comments online.

One day Matilde came home from school, managed to climb up and get her medication from a cabinet, and took an overdose.

‘You promised me I would be helped,’ she cried, throwing the empty box at her mother.

Matilde required medical treatment.

She changed schools and, for a while, was happy.

But when Matilde started high school the bullies were there and they started bullying her again. Eventually she refused to go to school.

‘She is now in a flexible learning centre. She’s very angry. She’s very anxious. She’s traumatised … The learning gap between her and her peers is growing.’

Elio’s year 6 teacher was ‘quite aggressive in her language’.

Some students in his class thought she was unfair to Elio. They covertly recorded her talking about him, ridiculing him and calling him terrible names.

Despite not being involved in making the recording, the principal told Elio he had broken the law. He threatened to ring police to take him to juvenile detention.

Elio started having night terrors and couldn’t sleep alone. He became terrified of the police.

Lindsay and Elio’s parents reached out to police and told them what had happened.

The police were terrific. They invited him to the station and they all said hello. They explained he hadn’t broken the law and they weren’t going to take him away. They showed him around the station and let him sit in the car and put the siren on.

'He is no longer terrified of police but he still won’t sleep alone … He’s absolutely traumatised. The mum’s traumatised.’

Meanwhile, the school placed Elio on an internal suspension. He couldn’t participate in interschool sports, which he loved and was good at, and couldn’t attend the end-of-year excursion and graduation.

Lindsay involved the department of education and the school lifted the internal suspension.

‘Consequence to the teacher? Nothing,’ said Lindsay. ‘It was all on our young person.’

The director made a phone call and Jaxxon’s funding was increased by nearly five times. It was a generous package that meant Jaxxon could have support at home and beyond. But it didn’t last.

‘We were just starting to get somewhere at the end of the two years and then our funding got done again last November and his got cut basically in half.’

Audie believes the NDIS planner’s lack of understanding is partly because Jaxxon’s EDS is invisible. Audie’s EDS means they have to use a wheelchair, but Jaxxon can manage without.

Audie says the funding treats the family as a single entity rather than three individuals.

‘There seems to be an issue that as a family we only need one [support worker] at a time. And it’s like, yeah, but we’re doing different things, we have three different lives ... A lot of it seemed to be, well, you know, you can share and whatnot. And it’s like, that’s not how our lives work.’

For example there is an expectation that the children can share a support worker when out in the community.

‘I mean, yes, they’re siblings,’ Audie said, ‘but they already live with each other. When they go out they want to, you know, go out separately and do their own thing.’

Audie wants to see people with disability treated in a way that respects their dignity.

‘I’ve gone from having a normal life to being stuck at home and having nothing for such a long time. Now I’m finally getting out and it’s hitting me very hard how badly we treat disabled people on an everyday systemic basis.’