Tru and Jaylee
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.
‘There are children who need specialised schooling. There are children who are never going to fit, and their parents know.’
Tru is a First Nations autistic man in his late teens.
Jaylee, his mum, said Tru was diagnosed with global development delay when he was 18 months old.
‘I had a doctor tell me that my son was abnormal, looked abnormal and was probably never going to be normal,’ she told the Royal Commission.
But when he started school, following ‘wonderful early intervention’, teachers assessed Tru’s intellectual disability as ‘borderline’. As a result the school placed him in a class with no supports.
‘I knew he was never going to fit in a mainstream school,’ Jaylee said. ‘When you get touched with autism and have sensory issues, sometimes it can feel like pins and needles and people pricking you.’
If children were playing, and they touched him, Tru would react aggressively because it ‘was causing him physical pain’.
In kindergarten, Tru ‘pushed somebody and bit somebody’. The school suspended him.
Jaylee pressured the education department ‘really hard’ to reassess Tru, and he was diagnosed as autistic. That bought ‘some help’, but Tru’s classmates and their parents bullied him because of his disability.
When Jaylee dropped her son off at school, it felt like ‘dropping a lamb to the slaughter’.
‘We live in a rural area … It’s full of some red neck-y people who don’t see the value in people with disabilities … I call it the car park mafia, where all the mums sit around in the car park and they judge everybody who comes in based on their child.’
But the school had an ‘extraordinary principal’ who ‘stood up to everybody’.
In grade 7, Tru moved from ‘a school of 40 to a school of 1200 children’.
‘So, the noise – just everything about it,’ Jaylee said. Teachers ‘created a quiet place’ for Tru, but other kids came in and ‘bullied and harassed’ him.
‘They knew what his triggers were and how to upset him. So, they would tell him to do stupid things. They would make him cry. They would call him a retard … Then they would record him on Snapchat and video him and then share that to their stories and to their friends.’
Jaylee pushed hard ‘to get him out of that school’ and get him ‘the right help’.
She secured him a spot at a behavioural school in the middle of grade 8.
The school was on a farm and was all about teaching children ‘life skills’.
‘They did all of the stuff that kids love. They rode tractors, they mowed lawns, they had animals to look after, they were allowed to choose their activities.’
Tru stayed there until year 12.
‘That was where he finally found somewhere safe … it was about his needs.’
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.