Brooks
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.
Brooks is a First Nations teenager who lives with mental health issues.
His stepfather sexually abused him when he was a baby and he has had bowel surgery to repair the damage.
Brooks went to live with his father. But when he was about seven, his dad went to prison and the government placed Brooks into a foster home. Initially he had ‘a really good time’.
‘They bought me stuff, they took me to the movies … They were so kind to me … it was like a perfect family.’
But Brooks started to ‘give backchat’ and get ‘cheeky’, and things ‘just went downhill from there’. His foster mum got her sons to ‘bash’ him, he told the Royal Commission.
‘They started flogging me … then they just used to do it for fun. It became amusement for basically the boys and their friends … They used to duct-tape me to, like, the treadmill and put it up to the highest speed.’
They also put an electric dog collar on Brooks’s neck.
‘And they try and chase me around with that shit on my head.’
They also threw firecrackers at Brooks’s feet. Once he took the explosives to school and ‘blew up the boys toilets block’. The school expelled him.
A couple of years ago the brothers took Brooks out with a friend, supposedly to go to McDonald's. Instead they took him to a farm and used him as ‘target practice’. All of them were armed with shotguns and rifles.
‘And then they will tell me to run out on the field … They used to have things like little orange discs and I had to throw that and they’d shoot it. And they would shoot at my feet too. They always missed purposely, but yeah, it made me cry.’
Brooks said his foster brothers and foster father sexually abused him.
‘I don't know why people rape these days. It's frigging disgusting …’
He felt they were punishing him for his behaviours.
Meanwhile, his foster mum ‘dosed’ him up ‘morning, afternoon and night’ on a cocktail of drugs used for depression, schizophrenia and autism. A couple of times she gave him an ‘overdose’ of an antipsychotic drug, causing him to lose consciousness.
‘When I woke up … she just injected me some more.’
The physical and emotional abuse went on ‘for a period over six years’. Brooks said his child support officer was aware, but she accused him of lying.
Child protection services are ‘stuffed’, Brooks said.
‘They don't give people a voice … I'm sick of the system. I actually hate it. It doesn't work and it's never worked. They took me off my dad and now he's, you know, at home struggling.’
Brooks feels children like him shouldn’t ‘be taken away from their families in the first place’.
‘Like if they're not junkies and if the people are trying to start their life round and actually look after their children, then why remove them?’
At least, he says, child protection services should foster children out to ‘people who give a damn’.
‘I've been trying to get back to my dad … [They] just won't allow that. There's no reason for them not to … My dad has done so much just to try and help me.’
Brooks is currently in a youth detention centre. He’s trying hard not to think about his foster family.
‘The thing I’m angry about, is they have a nice happy life now. But what do I have? I'm in here, crying every single night because … I just don't know how my family are.’
Brooks wants to ‘get out of frigging jail’ and live with his dad.
‘That's all I want. The support with my family.’
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.