Brooke

‘Across my lifetime I had lots of things happen that I didn’t understand.’

Brooke is in her 40s. She describes herself as ‘one of those late-diagnosed women who was missed as a child’.

‘I’ve always wondered why people don’t like me,’ Brooke told the Royal Commission. ‘Now that I know … it’s because I’m autistic.’

Over the years people labelled Brooke a drama queen, over-sensitive, a hypochondriac, precocious and obsessive.

At school, teachers called her stupid and yelled at her. She found it hard to sit still and focus. She would fidget, look out the window and sing to herself. Brooke remembers three male teachers cornering her and shouting at her which was confusing and terrifying.

As she got older she didn’t understand ‘the girl world’ and the other girls bullied her. She found it hard to manage big friendship groups and didn’t like to go out.

In year 10, Brooke had a breakdown. Her mother was so worried about her she moved schools. Brooke is an excellent musician so they found a school that focused on music. She met other neurodiverse people and felt safer. The new school was much more supportive but she wasn’t able to pass year 12.

The first time Brooke was sexually assaulted she was a child. ‘Socially I didn’t know when someone was being a predator, I probably still don’t get it.’

At university, Brooke was raped by an older man. ‘I woke up one night and thought I was suffocating. He was on top of me, I was terrified.’ She had another breakdown, became non-verbal and couldn’t look at people. She wasn’t able to continue her studies.

Despite these setbacks Brooke qualified as a music teacher. She said students love her and she has ‘always delivered’. She has run departments, staged great school musicals and put together wonderful bands.

Yet she’s been ‘bullied in every job’.

Staff rooms are too noisy and Brooke prefers to ‘hide’ in her office. She explained there is a lack of awareness of what ‘that noise’ does to autistic people. She described the sensation as feeling physically drained, ‘like there’s a cloud around my head’. It is debilitating and affects her work. One workplace said she was ‘insulting them’ by not going to the staffroom and told her ‘it’s too bad, everybody has to go’. They made her attend the staffroom every morning before school and at recess. She ended up leaving.

In Brooke’s last job, she let them know that she has autism. The school liked to hold staff meetings in a café. She told them she couldn’t participate because she couldn’t hear and it made her physically sick. They refused to change venues.

Brooke ended a ‘very unhappy’ and abusive marriage, and now lives alone with her teenage children. She can’t afford to buy a house and said rental managers take advantage of her. The last house she lived in had mould, was infested with insects and falling apart. ‘They continued to take the money off us and then they took my bond … it was horrible.’

Brooke’s oldest child was flagged as autistic and attended school part time. Brooke didn’t want him diagnosed because she didn’t want him labelled. In hindsight, she said, she ‘should have got it properly sorted’. He has anxiety and ‘went through a lot of shit at school’. He’s been waiting to see an autism specialist for six months.

Brooke’s daughter was diagnosed with autism when she was young. She is non-verbal and uses Auslan to communicate which ‘opens up a whole new world’. Brooke loves that her daughter is able to tell her to get out of her room.

Brooke said ‘it would have been amazing’ if her parents had known she was autistic. They would have understood her behaviour and she would have understood herself.

‘I think I had a potential, and I think I still do have the potential to do what I want to do,’ she said.

‘I just feel like I haven’t been looked after in the system.’