Kirsten, Ensley and Mitch

‘It cost an incredible amount of money to go to through the courts. That money could’ve been so much better spent providing appropriate services to [Kirsten].’

Kirsten, now in her 50s, has an intellectual disability. Her parents Ensley and Mitch have spent most of her life trying to keep her out of jail.

‘From the moment she was born she was a difficult child,’ her mum Ensley said. By the time she started school she was ‘troublesome … always into mischief … stealing other people’s things’.

When Kirsten turned 18 she ‘demanded to leave home’. Ensley didn’t believe she had the skills to be independent and wanted her to wait. ‘From that moment, the stealing escalated, challenging behaviour escalated and her relationship with me deteriorated.’

After much persistence, Ensley and Mitch were able to find Kirsten a place in a mental health unit for ‘behaviour monitorisation’. But after a few weeks Kirsten escaped. ‘She was a very determined young woman,’ Ensley said.

Kirsten then moved to a group home managed by house parents. But when the house parents’ marriage broke down the house ‘fell apart’.

One day Kirsten ‘just walked out’ and moved in with her boyfriend, sleeping on his couch. She lived with him for 14 years. Ensley and Mitch tried to support Kirsten and her boyfriend but it was a ‘very stormy unpleasant situation’.

During this time Kirsten’s stealing escalated. She couldn’t use the things she stole, ‘she just had to steal’. Ensley felt she was trying to please her boyfriend. The relationship was very violent and ended when Kirsten’s boyfriend tried to kill her.

For the next few years Kirsten moved between different disability service providers, at one stage having more than 12 managers in a few years. One provider told Ensley that Kirsten ‘was a burden’ and another said she was ‘a waste of their time’.

‘There was no consistency, no continuity and there was no transfer of information to the next person, so we had to reinvent the wheel every time.’

During this period, her stealing continued and police would often detain her. On several occasions her support services would ring police and ask them to keep her in the watch house to ‘teach her a lesson’.

Kirsten’s behaviour did not change but she became ‘terrified of the police’.

From the mid-2000s to the early 2010s Kirsten appeared in court more than 50 times. Lawyers advised her to plead guilty. The judge – often it was the same judge, with ‘no understanding’ of disability – showed no mercy. One time the judge made Ensley and Mitch stand in front of him and promise they would make Kirsten behave. This was despite knowing Kirsten lived more than 100 km away from them at the time. They were not allowed to speak.

Another judge ordered state disability services to provide substantially more support to Kirsten. But disability services ignored them. ‘There’s a real disconnect between the courts, the disability services and it was just unacceptable to us,’ Ensley said.

Through a chance encounter, Ensley and Mitch found a criminal barrister who ‘had a passion’ for seeking justice for people with disability. He told them Kirsten didn’t need to plead guilty. He successfully managed to have Kirsten’s matters referred to the mental health court. However, this applied to only some offences and Kirsten considered the punishments, such as packaging food, more a reward than a punishment.

Despite these setbacks, Ensley and Mitch successfully advocated to have Kirsten’s criminal record expunged.

For the past few years Kirsten has received NDIS funding. She has 24/7 support, lives in her own unit and hasn’t been back to court.