Lee-Anne and Selah
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Lee-Anne, now 10, was diagnosed with autism as a three-year-old.
Her mum Selah said that as a little girl Lee-Anne was ‘bubbly and just full of life’, unafraid of anything.
‘She was just happy – like, really happy … She enjoyed life just so much.’
Her parents could tell she was ‘really clever’.
‘She had the quest for knowledge … and she just wanted to know more and more, so she was very, very interested in learning,’ said Selah.
In preschool, Lee-Anne spent three days a week in a mainstream classroom and two in a special class. At the end of the year, the report from the mainstream class said she was doing well. She could count to 20 and was working towards 25. Selah was concerned.
‘I knew [Lee-Anne] at two years could count past a hundred, so …’
Hoping for a more engaging learning environment, Selah enrolled Lee-Anne at a different school, one with a special learning program (SLP). Staff promised Selah that Lee-Anne would be in a mainstream classroom most of the time and, if at times she couldn’t cope, could learn in a ‘home room’ with other autistic kids.
The school promised, but didn’t deliver.
‘They said it was fully inclusive, it was supported, it was emotional support. Yeah, and it wasn’t.’
At a parent-teacher night, Selah asked Lee-Anne to show her the main classroom. She discovered Lee-Anne had no desk or place to sit, none of her work was displayed and she didn’t know any of the other children. Staff told her Lee-Anne couldn’t cope in the classroom so had been spending all her time in the home room.
By year 3, Lee-Anne had hit ‘rock bottom’.
‘This is a kid that came from an early intervention – she had her independence, like packing her bag, putting her homework in her bag, going to library, getting a library book, going to assembly,’ Selah said. ‘[At school] they taught her helplessness.’
‘“Oh no, she can’t get through an assembly.” “No, she’s not capable of getting a library book out.” “She doesn’t want to do sport.” Like, it was all these things that [Lee-Anne] couldn’t do – not, “Oh, she’s finding that difficult – we’re going to support her through this by doing this, this and this.” … All her independence went, all her spark went. She was no longer a happy child.’
One day the coordinator of the SLP complained to Selah about Lee-Anne’s ‘disgusting’ behaviour. Selah asked for details and the coordinator showed her videos of Lee-Anne in the home room.
Selah was shocked by what she saw. The educational aides were escalating Lee-Anne’s behaviour, handling her roughly when she became distressed, evicting her from the classroom and showing no kindness or softness towards her.
‘I just thought, “They don’t care about my child. I don’t think they even like her.”’
Selah organised for Lee-Anne’s psychologist to observe the class. The psychologist thought Lee-Anne was being mentally abused.
‘Every behaviour that she exhibits is her surviving, is her, like, just trying to cope with what she’s going through,’ she told Selah.
Selah asked the school to modify its approach with Lee-Anne, but the SLP coordinator refused.
Selah made a formal complaint to the education department. Investigators never interviewed Selah or asked to see the videos they knew she had. Nearly two years later, the department told her they did not find evidence to support her complaint.
Lee-Anne is at a different school now, mostly doing well in a mainstream class with a teacher she likes and respects.
‘There’s a lot of deficits she has because of what she’s been through … Not because of her autism, but because of the way she was treated.’
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.