Presley

‘I was diagnosed with a personality disorder, which was kind of in vogue back then, because it wasn’t recognised that females could be autistic.’

Presley was only diagnosed with autism recently, in her early 30s.

‘It wasn’t picked up, and that led to some significant disadvantages for me – the worst of it came when I was a teenager,’ she told the Royal Commission.

‘I was labelled lazy or defiant or manipulative. At the age where my peers were getting jobs and entering the workforce or going into further study, I was very isolated … I had very significant social anxiety, which kept me from going outside and participating in life in general.’

Presley was ‘eventually admitted to a psychiatric hospital’.

‘I was treated for a mood disorder … That was the beginning of many diagnoses, essentially.’

Psychiatrists later diagnosed her with borderline personality disorder and she spent a lot of time ‘locked’ in seclusion and ‘heavily sedated’ over the next three years.

‘There was more time spent diagnosing and medicating people than actually looking at the root causes of the problem and helping them belong in society. I became institutionalised, without a doubt.’

Presley said another patient raped her when she was on an open ward. Despite ‘plenty of DNA evidence’, a court found him not guilty on the basis he did not understand ‘that consent was not given’.

‘Being diagnosed with a personality disorder, there was plenty of ammunition to attack my character, to say that I was at risk of engaging in behaviours which would entice people to want to do that to me.’

Over the years, Presley said she had been discharged a few times, but ‘just ended back up in these psychiatric institutions’.

‘Because still the anxiety, the social phobia, my communication hadn’t been treated, or supported.’

Once, when she was allowed to go interstate to live with her father, she said he ‘molested’ her when he was drunk. Two days later, Presley overdosed on her prescription medication and was in a coma for several days.

‘I’m lucky to be here and to have survived that experience. And it’s not that I necessarily wanted to die, I just didn’t really know how to live in any way, shape or form.’

When she was about 20, she said she was ‘released’ to go and live with friends on a farm.

‘And it was probably the first time I just had the basics of what every human needs – stable relationships, food, fresh air and good activity.’

She came off all the medications and within a few months was living independently for the first time.

‘I had the confidence to get my first flat. I had to really build up very slowly some skills … I did some study and got a job. From there, essentially it was onwards and upwards.’

Presley got a certificate of education and today works in TAFE. A few years ago ‘a psych review’ found all the other diagnoses, including schizoaffective disorder, were wrong.

‘And had they been true, I wouldn’t be able to function as well as I am right now.’

But Presley said the ‘label’ of a personality disorder sticks.

‘There’s a piece of paper that follows me, and the way people treat you or speak to you is different. So you are often just disregarded or not believed … And all those times of not being believed when I did speak up for myself affects me to this very day.’

As an advocate for people with autism, Presley is determined to put that right for others. She was inspired by a female support worker who helped her when she was at her lowest moment.

‘What I remember is the way she made me feel. She picked me up from the hospital and took me to the beach for a walk, side by side, and just talked to me like a normal person. And that in itself was more than anything anybody had ever done.’