Spencer
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.
Spencer has mental health problems and is currently in a correctional centre.
He was abused at a boarding school when he was a child, he told the Royal Commission.
‘I got sent off to a Catholic school … One particular brother asked me to go with him up to an alter room and that's where the abuse started.’
He says the abuse and the fallout have been ignored for 40 years.
‘I had a voice in my head from that incident right up until now … I've never been diagnosed with anything cause I've never seen any psychologist or anything.’
Spencer feels that led him to commit the offences that put him in jail and left him with a psychosocial disability.
‘Because I was abused when I was a minor … Yeah, I can't stand people around me. I've got to be by myself, I can't interact with people properly … It’s basically – has destroyed my life.’
Spencer has no support services in prison. He told a counsellor about the abuse.
‘And they said they can't help me.’
He recently talked to a prison psychologist, but there was no follow-up.
Currently he’s doing some rehabilitation.
‘But it's just bringing back everything, what's happened to me. And I don’t know what I can do about it.’
The voice in his head is ‘always there’. He never sleeps more than two or three hours.
‘And that's why I want to get some help, to – get a break from it. I don't want to take any medication.’
Spencer says the abuse ‘stole something’ from him.
‘If I got this sorted when I was younger … the impact it's made on my life, I haven't had a life. I've just gone through emotions and done everything I’ve done, just to survive away from people as much as possible. And you can't literally live a life like that, because a human being is to be around people. Not to be isolated.’
He’d rather be around people and ‘out in the community’.
‘But I – it just freaks me out too much. The feeling I have is to get away from everyone and go on a deserted island.’
Spencer decided to deal with it himself by contacting the Royal Commission.
‘I just took it as you rip a band-aid off one day.’
He’s hoping he will now get access to psychologists. But he still doesn’t know what the future looks like.
‘Honestly, I don't see myself anywhere. That's what it is … I see myself in a corner, in a dark corner.’
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.