Faris
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‘Many people thought I was a bit slow, so I became a target of discrimination,’ Faris said of his high school in the mid-1980s.
‘I was often told by people at [the school] that I was stupid and would be on the dole for the rest of my life. I was often called a dumb wog, retard, brainless twit, and other derogatory insults.’
Faris describes himself as the son of migrants who had poor English skills and limited knowledge of Australian culture. ‘These deficiencies were a significant disadvantage to my upbringing and education.’
Faris said that some teachers would see and hear the bullying from other kids but just ignore it. Feeling that there was no point – that he couldn’t achieve academically – he stopped making an effort.
He described being the target of a cruel and nasty joke in which both students and teachers were complicit. Each year more than 800 students and teachers gathered in the school hall to watch the end of school concert. It was a tradition to have a joke at the end of the concert: ‘What do you call a year 9 with half a brain?’ Faris told us he sat in dread throughout the concert, feeling that his name would be called out. It was – by most of the school.
‘After the joke was played,’ Faris said, ‘I just sat there wondering why the teachers allowed it to go ahead’. He knew that the concert rehearsals were supervised by a teacher. The teachers would have known that a name was going to be called out by the students. Yet they allowed it.
After the incident, no-one offered Faris any support or counselling or even an apology. For a long time after leaving high school, he felt ‘directionless’ and lonely. He experienced low self-esteem and low self-confidence and had little self-respect.
Faris said he now feels that if, when he started high school, people had just told him why he was a target of discrimination and what he could do about it, things might have been different.
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.