Clancy and Amaia

‘I cannot tell you how angry I am. There is no justice for a man like [Clancy].’

Clancy is in his 40s, has cerebral palsy and speaks with the help of a communication device. Amaia is Clancy’s mum.

‘The severe communication impairment is what impacted him the most,’ Amaia told the Royal Commission. ‘He also has a visual impairment. They say that he’s legally blind, but he has a lot of useful sight and has learnt to read with glasses on.’

Clancy felt he couldn’t retell his traumatic experiences. ‘It hurts too much to make myself think about it,’ Clancy told the Commissioner. ‘Mum can tell them how much it hurt. Moving on is what I want.’

Amaia told the Royal Commission that it was only when Clancy started school that she realised he would never speak.

‘So, he had six years of life when we didn’t know what was going on except that he wasn’t speaking yet and was clumsy … He was placed in a school where signing is taught, and they tried to teach, but then the dyspraxia [a movement disorder] was diagnosed, and signing was clearly not possible for him.’

The regional town in which they lived had no speech or occupational therapists or physiotherapists.

‘[Clancy] was the only speechless kid in four primary schools. So, to get the support, we had to send him to [the city]. That was a very difficult four years.’

Unable to continue the commuting, Amaia decided to ‘have a shot at the local school’. Before starting school, Clancy had a holiday in a respite care centre where, unknown to Amaia, ‘one of the staff members repeated sexually assaulted him over a 10-day period’.

Amaia said that by the time Clancy started at his new school, his behaviour had changed.

‘He started grabbing everybody and everything and that became a really serious behavioural problem that determined his next 10, 15 years of life … we recognise it, after he disclosed [the abuse], as fear.’

Clancy was still a teenager when he tried to kill himself. Afterwards, he told a psychiatrist about the man who abused him over several years at holiday camps at the respite centre.

Amaia said Clancy told the police, but his allegations ‘went nowhere’.

‘When I look back at the hurt to [Clancy], what’s most salient to me, is his speechlessness has caused him to be a non-proof to people. People assume that he cannot understand them … and that disability has been a huge source of pain.’

When Clancy became an adult, he entered a government-run group home. At the time, Clancy had no means of telling people that someone was abusing him.

‘Nobody knew how bad it was. I utterly got hurt. My parents didn’t know. Mum didn’t know,’ Clancy told the Royal Commission in his statement.

‘I was bitten most days. I got no help. The community visitor never helped me. The staff just left the room. I couldn’t move. Dyspraxia and fear just made it impossible. The staff didn’t understand either. Never felt so nobody. But I’m not nobody.’

One Christmas, Clancy told Amaia that a support worker at the group home sexually assaulted him. Clancy and Amaia worked with advocacy groups and the police to take the case to court.

Amaia said the prosecutor wouldn’t accept Clancy’s statement unless he ‘had his intelligence, his cognitive ability tested and his communication tested’. Clancy’s psychiatrist said that would be ‘too damaging’ for Clancy, who was already traumatised.

‘I am angry at how hard we tried, and yet how much we failed,’ said Amaia.

Clancy now needs regular counselling, but the NDIA is considering cutting his funding.

‘How do you compensate for what has happened to [Clancy]? This is impossible. But recovery is possible, and counselling is needed to make it possible.’