Gerard and Calissa

‘My son is a business commodity. That’s what he’s become, to be bought and sold by service providers … But his life never changes, the abuses never change, the restrictions never change.’

Gerard, now in his late 30s, acquired a brain injury when he was five.

After the injury he began to run away, and Calissa had to frequently call police to find him.

When his seizures increased, the family moved to the city to get better medical support.

But things got worse. Gerard was on 12 different seizure medications. They reduced the seizures, but he developed increasingly aggressive behaviours.

Calissa wanted the hospital to investigate what was going on, but ‘over the years [she] found out there is no knowledge in hospitals’. ‘They don’t research disability,’ she told the Royal Commission.

The department of family services advised the only way to help Gerard was to ‘hand him over’ to the public guardian and ‘walk away’.

‘There starts … the downfall of my son,’ Calissa said. ‘He’s been pushed from pillar to post, service provider to service provider.’

Although Gerard was only a child, the public guardian placed him in secure accommodation for adults with mental illness.

Staff physically and sexually abused him.

Gerard wrote about the abuse, describing one of the men. Calissa and Gerard made several complaints to police, but ‘there were no repercussions’ because Gerard ‘can’t articulate’.

‘Every night for years, he wore clothes – layers and layers of clothes. Surrounded himself with 10 pillows, had every blanket in the middle of summer, so that he wouldn’t get abused.’

Gerard had never committed a crime, yet for a period of two years the institution had him living ‘in a cage’. ‘No activities. No social stuff. No training,’ said Calissa. According to the institution he had to be locked up because he was ‘so dangerous’. But not ‘so dangerous’ they wouldn’t let Calissa take him home on the bus – a four-hour commute.

Calissa lobbied government bureaucrats and ministers to see Gerard’s living conditions.

‘And when they did come down, they saw nothing. They saw nothing about the people in the cages.’

Gerard was eventually released in the early 2010s and lived with Calissa for several months.

Since then he’s moved from home to home, provider to provider.

Gerard’s NDIS package is more than $1 million per year.

He’s been on the same care plan for years and Calissa says the funding only benefits the provider.

‘The latest care plan is the absolute abuse and fraud in this system.’

As an activity, support workers ‘trained’ Gerard to find coins by throwing them in the backyard. When they take him out they keep him occupied by making him look in gutters and bins for coins.

The provider hired a dietician to help Gerard lose weight. She charged thousands of dollars to advise support workers to stop giving Gerard cola.

‘I have, in the last two years, been fighting bitterly to get my son under the care of [a neuropsychiatrist] and his team of specialists.’

The neuropsychiatrist says Gerard’s behaviours are linked to his medication and more could be done to improve his quality of life. But the guardian and provider refuse to allow a medication review or for the specialists to work with him.

‘There are ways out of this. There are doctors who really want to help. Genuine doctors … But he’s locked into a system that’s so inflexible, so lacking in innovations, so lacking in research … and he will never improve because [he’s] not intended to improve.’