Her home was supposed to be a safe spacexjmtzyw – but Chloe* has grown to fear being inside the rooms that now hold horrific memories of physical abuse, rape, and torture.
He was supposed to be safe, too. Someone hired to care for her, help her buy groceries, feed her dogs, and move from her bed to the shower, from her wheelchair to the couch.
He initially won her and her family over, convincing them to think she would be safe with him.
“He tricked me into thinking I was special, he used to tell me I was a princess, he promised me lots of things, he told me he loved me, he sucked me in with his charm,” said Chloe, who appeared before the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability on Monday.
“He stopped trying to charm me pretty quickly, he had his bad face for me and his good face for everyone else.”
It started when he took her on shopping trips, used her bank card to pay for his own personal items and her phone to make calls.
Chloe was living on her own after losing her Mum and needed constant support to move, due to cerebral palsy that affects her ability to walk or use her arms.
But his behaviour soon escalated to controlling everything she did, not letting her see family or friends, and ultimately descended into physical and sexual abuse.
“He threw my dinner on the floor and told me to eat off the floor – (when) I said no he picked me up out of my chair and put me on the floor and told me again to eat it,” she said.
“I didn’t and he dragged me by the hair to the bedroom, put me on the bed and raped me.”
The torture also extended to her dogs, who were physically tormented by her carer.
Chloe, who did not use her real name before the inquiry, said he made her take a pregnancy test that came back positive.
“He beat the crap out of me from head to foot, kicking me in the belly over and over again, trying to kill my baby,” she told the Royal Commission.
“The baby died inside, I bled all over the floor. He threatened to kill me if I told anyone what had happened, and I thought I was going to die.”
Chloe’s perpetrator was eventually caught out when her second personal assistant noticed bruises all over her face.
“It was the day he punched me in the eye ten times and told me he thought the bruise looked good on me,” she said.
While her experience with police was positive, she said the courts – where her abuser appeared on charges of rape, grievous bodily harm, torture, and assault – held a different view entirely.
After getting away with the abuse, the man who abused her now walks free in the community and faced no repercussions.
“He charmed the jury, they didn’t believe me – they saw me as a disabled woman and a liar, and he got off,” she said.
“I’m now scared to be in my own house because he raped me in my bedroom, my lounge room and the kitchen.
“I’m scared he’s going to come back to my house and kill me.”
Chloe’s story is just one of many appearing before the Royal Commission into the sector this week, that is recounting the stories of Australians with disabilities who have been let down by the system.
According to figures from the Australian Cross Disability Alliance, up to 90% of women with a disability have been sexually assaulted, and people with disability are three times as likely to die prematurely than the general population from causes that could have been prevented with better quality care.
The Royal Commission has been launched to better understand why people with disabilities are more vulnerable to abuse and assault, and hopefully improve the systems that have let them down.
Victorian woman Nicole Lee, who is known for her advocacy in the space, appeared before the hearings on Monday.
Ms Lee, a wheelchair user, was subject to physical, emotional, financial and sexual abuse at the hands of her husband of ten years, who was also her carer.
She told the Royal Commission her husband controlled the family’s finances and she lost all autonomy during the relationship.
She recounted a time she was in hospital when her husband showed up with a real estate agent in an attempt to get her to put her family house on the market.
“That was my family home and my mother had spent time making sure she could sign that over to me legally and that me and my children always had somewhere to live,” Ms Lee said.
“And he took that away from me in that moment.
“I don’t know what was going through the agent’s mind, nobody questioned what was going on.”
She told the inquiry her husband and bank manager were pushing for her to start a joint account.
“There’s this wider attitude of you not being able to make a decision,” she said.
“Carers are placed on this pedestal of being self-sacrificing, loving, caring people that take on these horrible burdens in the world.
“But we’re not burdens, we’re people. We’re individuals, we have dreams, we have hopes, we have feelings.”
