Caitlin
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.
‘I was a lost person in there.’ Caitlin is speaking of her experience in a mental health unit. ‘I don’t want this happening to other people.’
Caitlin told the Royal Commission that before getting myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) about 10 years ago, she had been ‘living a full life’. She had a career, she travelled and had a social life. But the disease saw Caitlin become first confined to her home, then to her bed, and she spiralled into poverty. Her partner had left her and she was becoming homeless.
It got to the point that Caitlin didn’t want to live anymore. ‘It was not a good life now. I made peace with my life. I made a conscious, well thought out decision, my decision, my life.’ Caitlin took what she believed would be an overdose of sleeping pills.
‘I then remember waking up and I was being walked somewhere in the dark. I remember coming to in hospital grounds and a man was walking with me … He wouldn’t talk to me and wouldn’t tell me where we were going … I was put in a room that had no windows, the door was locked … I could see the shadow of a man …’
Caitlin had ‘woken up in hell’.
‘I was sitting in a dressing gown, no idea where I was. I was told to sit down. I asked where I was and why I was locked in. There was a TV on the wall, the room was very bare. I get claustrophobia …’
Caitlin wanted to leave, but when she tried she was ‘held down by four or five big, brutish security guys’.
‘I’m a 5 foot 1 woman who hadn’t walked in months, why did I need to be held down? This was brutal and violent on every level.’
Still pinned down, Caitlin saw that they had a big needle. They wouldn’t tell her what was in it or listen when she tried to explain that ME could ‘interact badly’ with certain drugs.
‘Another time I was pinned down by five to six people …They yanked my dressing gown up over my head which was very violent. My underwear and pyjama pants were pulled down to my ankles … My bum was off the bed and my bum and genitals were showing, my knees and legs were on the floor. Then I was injected in the bum. They enjoyed it, it seems like this kind of treatment of people was normal … ‘
Caitlin thinks these injections were chemical restraints, as she has no recollection of what happened after either of them or for how long she was out.
When she woke, Caitlin talked with office staff and tried to call her family and her doctor to get her discharged. She waited three days to be seen by a psychologist and get out.
When Caitlin told her doctor about the abuse she experienced in the unit, he said he was ‘sorry it had happened’, but did nothing.
‘We need this to be out in the open,’ Caitlin said. ‘These people working in these places have a sickening hold over others … I felt there was zero care of me. The violent abuse of me as a human being that I experienced occurred for no reason whatsoever.’
‘There is no basis for violence or deprivation of liberty.’
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.