Ronan and Dorothy
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.
Dorothy, a senior Australian, is worried that some of the medical profession cross a dangerous line when dealing with people with disability and matters of life or death.
She told the Royal Commission about a young man she knows, Ronan. He was involved in a car accident that left him with a brain injury. Ronan’s guardian told her that hospital staff who treated Ronan ‘offered’ to end his life because they considered him ‘too young to go to a nursing home’ and ‘too hard’ to be cared for at home.
The guardian was told all she had to do was agree that Ronan would not be resuscitated, and that they would ‘take care of the rest’. The plan was to give him an anaesthetic ‘on the operating table’ but not bother to revive him.
‘This patient would simply have been murdered in his bed,’ Dorothy said.
Ronan’s guardian told the hospital staff they would be ‘held accountable’ and asked what current affairs program they would like to appear on.
‘They did not proceed with their plan,’ Dorothy said, but she wonders how widespread the practice is.
Dorothy thinks society should ‘dispense with the notion that young people are “better off dead” than in a Nursing Home'. The focus should be to ‘improve the facilities that such persons can be sent to, so they are not “better off dead”’.
Above all, Dorothy wants to see accountability.
‘If someone is involved in such practices, they are to be held criminally responsible … Such an offer as the one that was made is not Care. It is not Euthanasia. It is not Palliative Care. It is not kindness or consideration. It is Murder, plain and simple.’
Ronan is now being cared for at home. ‘He is doing well,’ Dorothy reports, ‘and leading a reasonably normal life, albeit with care support’.
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.