Zahra
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.
Zahra is in her 60s and is on a Disability Support Pension. She told the Royal Commission her anxiety and depression are ‘a hangover’ from the abuse and neglect she experienced as a child with vision impairment.
Zahra said that at school she and her vision impaired friends were abused and ostracised.
‘The nuns belted the crap out of me … They were bullies, they were nasty, they picked on all these kids with disabilities. The teachers boxed and tied you, threw you overboard. We were judged … and given very, very low expectations.’
Zahra said her ‘mental health issues’ stem from similar mistreatment at home. Her adoptive mother never took her to an eye specialist.
‘Dependence was encouraged. The more she could present me as her blind child that she had to do everything for, the more she sort of spring-boarded her life off me.’
Zahra’s adoptive mother told her she ‘was ugly’ and ‘a horrible child’.
‘Appearance was very important to her. I wasn’t supposed to look blind, but everybody was supposed to remember I was. I was made to feel very uncomfortable most of my life.’
When Zahra went to an eye specialist to get glasses in her teens, her parents told her ‘it was a waste of time’.
Zahra said health professionals also treated her cruelly.
‘One doctor told me people like me should never have kids, think what I’d do to them.’
Zahra later worked in a bank and ‘fought’ her way up from the switchboard to financial services.
‘There was a lot of negativity, discrimination and judgment against what we could and couldn’t do, and mostly it was what we couldn’t do according to them.’
Her employer treated her as ‘a charity case’ who was ‘taking up the place of somebody who really needs a job’.
‘They were forever trying to get rid of you and the wages were so low it wasn’t funny. And then if you complained, it was like, “Blind people can’t do that.” We were supposed to be grateful that we were given a job and just sit there. All of us ended up leaving because we were just bored to death.’
Zahra still struggles to get the right health care. One eye specialist recently made her feel like she was ‘a waste of time’. She has had many GPs ‘who don’t understand disability’.
Zahra is trying to get a support worker through the NDIS, which she described as ‘a minefield’. She wants to self-manage her plan.
Her greatest fear is having her hard-earned independence ‘taken away’ and ‘going backwards instead of forwards’.
‘There’s so much stereotyping and assumption that we can’t do things … I consider myself as having a mild disability. I still want to be able to go out and get on public transport and walk by myself and things like that.’
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.