Terra and Fenella

Terra is a primary school student. She is autistic.

Her mother Fenella told the Royal Commission, ‘[Terra] was a really happy-go-lucky kid, enjoyed going to school, looked forward to going to school.’

A couple of years ago she noticed Terra’s behaviour ‘had really significantly changed’.

‘She was doing things she hadn’t done for many years, like smearing poo, weeing on the floor, self-injury.’

Terra was ‘in complete distress’ when dropped off at school.

‘She would get to the gates and she would hold on for dear life. She wouldn’t want to enter. She would vomit at the gate. She would start banging her face on the metal bars.’

Terra’s parents spoke with a psychologist.

‘[We] felt that it was something to do with school because she wasn’t doing this at home.’

They discussed strategies with Terra’s teacher, who ‘refused’ to cooperate.

‘They kept sending her home saying, “She’s too disruptive. She doesn’t want to be here.” … The school flat-out refused any offer of help from us.’

One day Terra came home ‘extremely distressed’.

‘She was biting her arms, hitting her face, banging it into the wall, kicking holes in things … She went a whole night with no sleep just doing stuff like that.’

Fenella went to the school to try and identify what ‘triggered’ this behaviour. The head teacher said she had no idea, but Terra needed to be punished for ‘poor behaviour’.

‘That was a bit of a red flag,’ said Fenella. ‘Because what she deemed as poor behaviour was in fact a way of [Terra] communicating something was seriously wrong at that point in time.’

Fenella and the psychologist developed a ‘protocol’. Terra ‘was not to be belittled by the teachers’ or yelled at.

‘You don’t mock people, you don’t belittle them, you don’t yell at them, especially if you’re a teacher supporting a child with a complex disability!’

But then Terra started coming home ‘with big bruises [like] eggs on her head, marks on her chest, scratches on her knees’.

Teachers said she ‘had done them herself’, but Fenella learnt another child ‘had hit [Terra] in the head constantly with a rock’.

She again met with teachers.

‘That’s when it all started to fall apart,’ Fenella said. ‘Because they kept saying, “Well, you know, see, the problem is [Terra]. She’s just naughty. You need to discipline her, give her some rules.”’ Fenella told them, 'She’s clearly needing more support.’

The meeting turned into ‘a slagging match’ and Fenella walked out.

Fenella found out that Terra was retaliating when ‘bigger male students’ bullied her, and that teachers were responding with ‘really punitive approaches’.

Another student let on that Terra ‘was being physically dragged around the classroom’. When she was seated ‘her legs would be kicked out from underneath her’, and teachers would ‘shove her to the ground’.

Fenella accompanied Terra to school. Terra was ‘shaking, trembling’ as they approached the teacher and teacher aide.

‘And she just started screaming and crying, and I took her home.’

Fenella said Terra’s ‘reaction was so enormous’ she could no longer ignore it.

The education department said there was insufficient evidence to pursue Fenella’s allegations of abuse.

‘They literally said … that because of [Terra’s] disability they wouldn’t believe her.’

Fenella finds it ‘heartbreaking’ that the teachers ‘will never be held accountable’.

A couple of years ago, Terra started at a new school. On Fenella’s urging it opened a special education unit for children with disability, which regularly consults with parents.

‘[Terra] has found a good, loving, safe place, and her teacher is amazing now ... I feel supported. She feels supported.’