Hashem

‘Disability seems to them like a great luck in life and they are convinced that disabled people are scoundrels. I experience constant abuse at disability parking spaces. But if I open my mouth and they hear my accent, the bogans simply go ballistic … I hear racist slur constantly.’

Hashem is in his late fifties. He lives with psychogenic chronic pain, chronic fatigue, anxiety and depression. For almost a decade, Hashem told the Royal Commission, he has experienced violence and abuse by three individuals in his community. He has also experienced systemic abuse and neglect by the institutions and organisations he has gone to for protection and justice.

On a daily basis, the three individuals have humiliated and harassed Hashem in his neighbourhood and in his own home. They have assaulted him verbally and physically in public places, spread defamatory rumours about him, stolen from him, trespassed and urinated on his property, thrown bottles and rocks at his house, and broken glass windows and doors. They have cut the brake hose on his car several times and made countless death threats.

Hashem has gone to the police many times, to no avail. In fact, he says, the police are ‘not only useless and unhelpful but outright dangerous’.

‘First,’ Hashem said, ‘police disclosed my disability and vulnerabilities to perpetrators. That made the attacks more targeted and sophisticated’.

‘Second, police blatantly refused … to take any action against perpetrators thus convincing them in their impunity.’

Initially, the police would tell Hashem they could not do anything about the abuse because they did not have any evidence. But they would also make fun of Hashem, telling him to ‘harden up’ and calling him a ‘nutter’.

‘Stigma of the “nutter” is present everywhere. You can see straight away that people who are paid to help you using their position to have fun of you, provoke you …’

One police officer suggested that Hashem install security cameras. He took this advice and over time he took to the police countless video and audio recordings of abuse, death threats, trespassing and property damage.

It became clear to Hashem that the police were still ignoring his complaints. One police officer told Hashem they could only take action against the perpetrators if he had an intervention order against them. However, the police told him he couldn’t get an intervention order as ‘it is not for those who lost their marbles’.

‘So I had to obtain this order at my financial expense and at the expense of great stress, pain and suffering,’ said Hashem.

The perpetrators continued to abuse Hashem and he made more than 30 complaints about breaches of the intervention order. Still the police were reluctant to do anything.

Then the police began what Hashem described as ‘a phase of active abuse’.

‘One day I was stopped by police twice, having travelled only 75 metres from home. The result of the second stop (after 2 hours of harassment) was the defect notice for no valid reason.’

Then there was another incident of abuse from one of the known perpetrators, who used a metal pipe to smash Hashem’s windscreen. The police response was to issue a new defect notice for the car.

‘Then after half an hour they changed their mind and added fraudulent infringement notice for alleged parking in the hydrant zone.’

Hashem said, ‘I have seen in the court many disabled people who were charged with “false complaints” against abusers’.

Hashem would like to see greater penalties implemented for abuse against people with disability, removal of the police 'monopoly' on commencing criminal proceedings, and compulsory pro bono work for all law practices to assist clients with disability.