Margarita and Tomaso
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.
Margarita is in her teens and is autistic.
‘I didn’t really understand the point of school,’ she told the Royal Commission. ‘Back then I didn't know I have, like, a disability.’
Her parents knew Margarita had developmental problems, but teachers kept saying ‘she will grow out of it’. At high school, she felt lonely and found it ‘a really scary place’.
‘I think it was just social anxiety … I found it hard to speak to people and stuff. I kind of, like, freaked out a lot.’
Teachers weren’t providing any supports.
As Margarita increasingly struggled with learning difficulties, students – especially the boys – bullied her. They began touching her ‘in bad places’ and spreading ‘very mean’ rumours about her.
‘My mum would come home and she would tell me off for things I didn't even do because someone would make it up.’
One kid in particular was teasing her and she had several breakdowns, her father Tomaso said. The school did nothing to address it.
Margarita made a note in her diary that she ‘planned to get this boy … to kill him and then to kill herself’. On discovering this, her mother took her to child mental health services, who found her to be ‘just a normal teenage girl’. Unhappy with this assessment they went to an autism association, which made a similar assessment.
‘But we knew something was wrong with her,’ Tomaso said. He took Margarita to a paediatrician who diagnosed her with autism.
‘But still we didn't get any help.’
Several weeks later, Margarita tried to harm the boy.
‘She was charged with attempted murder and put into [a youth detention centre] straight away.’
Margarita spent more than six months in solitary confinement. ‘I went mentally crazy because of it … I just became this bad person,’ she said.
‘As soon as I had gone into jail, I developed this violent behaviour that I had never had … I just, I just gave up ever behaving.’
Margarita said the prison psychologists ‘didn't know what they were doing’.
‘I was telling this one woman how I was feeling … she was just drawing, she wasn't even listening.’
Tomaso watched his daughter ‘go downhill very quickly’. She was ‘angry and sad’, locked up in ‘a small cell’ with a ‘caged outdoor area’.
‘For adolescents who commit an offence, why are they put into a mainstream detention centre and not a facility for their disability or mental condition?’
On her release, community services placed Margarita in her father’s care. He tried to get her a volunteer job but, as Margarita explained, after ‘11 months of complete isolation’ she ‘wasn't mentally stable’. The government assessed her as ‘not able to be out in public’ and ‘put full restrictions on her’ and ‘forced’ her to move into a community house.
‘She didn't have any proper therapy for nearly 12 months,’ Tomaso said.
Eventually she was allowed to move home.
Margarita feels if she’d had support at school, received ‘some sort of proper therapy’, none of this would have happened.
‘My life is back on track now, but only because I started going to church. And ever since I have been doing that my life has been good.’
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.