Blaise and Frieda
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.
‘He was never not black across his arms, he was never not bruised. He was just fighting to survive until he got to come home again.’
Blaise is in his 30s and has ‘profound intellectual disability’.
When he about two, Blaise ‘lost all his speech’ and began having ‘aggressive outbursts’. ‘He's howled in frustration all of his life,’ his mother Frieda told the Royal Commission. ‘[He] just explodes, and he hits.’
This has made it hard to find Blaise supports. Children’s respite centres were ‘ill-equipped to take him’.
At an early intervention centre he attended for about six hours a week, Blaise spent most of the time in isolation. When he ‘overloaded’, staff locked him in a room alone until he calmed down. ‘They found him unmanageable, so that was the way they dealt with it,’ Frieda said.
From there Blaise went to several government-run respite centres.
‘With the hitting and the smacking and all the locked doors and the locked food. That's the only option we had … It’s what you now call restrictive. But it was abuse – emotional and physical – for my son.’
When Blaise was four he attended a day care program where he was ‘getting smacked a lot’.
‘It came to a head one day when I walked in to pick him up, and the worker was lifting her arm as high as she could and hitting him repeatedly, and he was cowering on a chair.’
At the next respite home, staff were locking him in his bedroom and ‘under the house in the storage area’.
Blaise started self-harming, but management ‘treated it as a joke’ and ‘refused to meet’, while disability services ‘wanted it brushed under the carpet’.
When Blaise was about seven, he started going to programs at a centre for autistic people.
‘This was a period in his life where it really worked … It was a really good education, and a really good culture for him to be in.’
With the right care his behaviour was ‘manageable’. Each time he was back in the public system, Frieda noticed a ‘total deterioration in his capacity’.
‘If you stop delivering an intensive support around him, he loses skills.’
As a teenager Blaise moved into community housing with disability supports. His support workers asked Frieda if they could ‘build a courtyard for barbecues’ at the house.
‘It wasn't for barbecues, it was for lockdown. And it became a cage for [Blaise].’
They’d either ‘drag him out’ there or throw his ‘treasure bag’, full of his favourite possessions, so he would ‘chase after it’.
‘Rain, hail or shine, he was locked out … The abuse that went into getting him out there is horrendous. Basically, they'd employed thugs.’
Blaise used to come home with ‘a big, fat belly from the psychotic medication’ and bruises from being smacked and ‘hit with a wooden spoon’.
Police told Frieda they couldn’t do anything. ‘He’s not a credible witness, he's non-verbal,’ they said.
Since then Blaise has lived independently with NDIS supports. He still has ‘separation anxiety from Mum and Dad’ as a result of the abuse.
‘I suppose, we've been the only safe place, really … We truly believed in [him], and we still [do] today.’
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.