Annick and Soraya
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.
‘What she needed was medical treatment, not mental treatment.’
Annick was in her teens when she was placed on an adult mental health ward.
Her mother, Soraya, also ‘spent time in a psych ward’ as a child. ‘Our legacy is part of the Stolen Generation,’ Soraya told the Royal Commission.
Annick ‘lost the plot’ after traumatic events in the family.
‘My daughter had gone walkabout, which is cultural. They'd be trying to medicate her saying she was bipolar. They made her bipolar. They took away my daughter’s spirit.’
At one point, Annick was hit by a car and was ‘in a bad way’.
‘Because she was conscious, they sent her to a psychiatric ward … She was that terrified, they took the baby off her, don't tell the mother, and fly the baby back here. Put the baby in foster care and lock her up in the ward. Hello!’
Soraya believed Annick had a brain injury from the accident, but doctors disagreed and sent her to the adult psychiatric ward.
‘It was like a cell where she couldn't breathe … They wouldn't tell me anything … She hardly even knew who I was, she was that sedated.’
Soraya said Annick was detained with ‘some pretty dodgy people’, including known sex offenders, and was sexually abused.
‘This guy figured out that she was hanging for a cigarette, so he took her into the toilet and told her to suck his dick.’
Soraya ‘jumped up and down’ for doctors to release Annick. But they put her on a community treatment order and took out a guardianship order.
They told Soraya, ‘We don't really think that you can make any decisions on her behalf, so we'll make the decisions and you be her mum.’
‘For two years, they just played bat and ball with my daughter ... They had her right where they wanted her. Terrified.’
Annick kept getting ‘locked up in some psych frigging ward … in the pretence it will keep her safe’.
‘And it would terrify the life out of her.’
Once she walked almost 80 kilometres in 40-degree heat ‘trying to get away’. Police arrived and were ‘baseball tackling’ her ‘because she was a runaway’. At another facility, staff ‘crucified and labelled’ her as an alcoholic and ‘handcuffed her to the bed’.
‘You know, there were times when my daughter was seen to be staggering. They just assume she's drunk. We since found out that was a result of the Clozapine dose they had her on, which could have killed her.’
Soraya says that, given community treatment orders are ‘literally taking away people's rights’, there ‘seems to be very little independent kind of oversight’ of them.
‘There's no-one you can call on to represent your legal rights in that kind of situation. Financially, you can’t afford them.’
After more than a decade of being ‘messed up’ and ‘let down’ by the system, it turned out Annick had an acquired brain injury after all.
She’s now receiving support from the NDIS and is ‘in a place where she will do things to better herself’.
‘[But] she will not ever get back her teenage years. She won't never get back what was taken. The damage has already been done.’
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.