A young, sharp witted, softly spoken, Australian woman, Jordan, has contacted me from a metro area in Victoria, after seeing the project advertised through a Facebook group. Initially, she is concerned it may be triggering, as there have been recent experiences of abuse. Interactions with the medical, disability, DFV and housing sectors are also fresh in her memory. Some of the abuse is ongoing. I assure her, as best I can, that we will take breaks if needed and can stop at any time. She agrees to participate, collating images for the interview, and I meet with her several weeks after our first interaction. While the conversation is raw, it is clear Jordan feels it is important enough to push through discomfort and distress to speak for herself and others in situations like hers. She misses her dog, she tells me during our online meeting. She has joined me from the aged care facility where she now lives. That was one of the hardest things about having to leave the family home. Despite the losses, Jordan feels ‘a million times safer’. There are people around who are helpful; they smile at her in the street, ‘they actually know who I am and they smile and say “hi”. Um, instead of [looking] away and look disgusted.’ Like Jane, she is involved in advocacy work for people with disability, however, it is highly casualised. ‘If you calculate how many hours you’ve done, you’re actually earning way under minimum wage’. It is a meagre income, but the work has allowed Jordan to connect with like-minded young people. She feels like she can be herself there. This hasn’t always been the case.
Disability for Jordan can vary day to day, ‘it is kind of a constant battle. Some days I feel good and I do [advocacy work]. And some days I feel terrible and wanna hide.’ Jordan experienced being disbelieved and silenced, struggling to have her conditions recognised and treated by medical workers; ‘because diagnosis wasn't fast, it's now left me permanently disabled, whereas a lot of people can actually get better from it’. Jordan received a series of diagnoses in recent years; an infection following heart surgery led to an acquired braining injury (ABI), and a cascade of other health conditions. Jordan has used a wheelchair for 4 years. ‘It's still constant battle with doctors and things to recognise my condition as the neurological one, it said psychological um because I'm placed under a condition which is not actually mine. There's no name for my condition. Some place [my condition] under a different one which has difficulties trying to gain recognition or funding or anything. And the way in which I got the ABI is even more rare’. The experience of women with disability, to Jordan, is one of isolation and silence. She has created a mixed media piece to illustrate this, using an analogy of a rock in a wheelchair: ‘Don't move. Don't talk. You’re kind of treated just like a lump… it literally just sits there’. She highlights a contradiction; that as a woman with disability, you are treated like a pet, patronised like a child, expected to behave yourself and not do anything; ‘like the bottom of the bottom class’.
The struggle within and against the medical system mirrored abuse and discrimination Jordan experienced at home. Abuse by family members has had lasting psychological and financial impacts. Reminders are everywhere; ‘Anytime anyone's fighting, I just… shut it down and then. Depends how good the fight's going, or if I get away from it or something. The rest of my body just shuts down’. She shows me a mind map of the everyday items and situations which may trigger traumatic memories; including fighting, sitting in silence, missing meals, broken furniture, housing, and money issues. ‘My bed at one point got very broken. Um and anytime I see broken furniture now or anything like that. I just get this horrible reminder, it sits in my head and. Yeah, it's bad.’ There is the ongoing financial abuse. Living week to week off the disability pension. ‘Every time I have to pay money, I constantly get reminded that I've had this happen and I have to check my bank account. OK, how much have they withdrawn this time, this week.’ Her living situation and limited contact with family also serve as reminders of all that has happened in recent years. Jordan lives in an aged care facility where she had been for six months at the time of the interview. She made the impossible choice to leave her familiar but unsafe environment, experiencing homelessness and bouncing between respite carers after moving out of the family home; ‘if I hadn't been placed in [aged care], I would have been living officially on the streets. Sorry. They were, there's some major stuff ups.’ Major stuffs ups, to say the least. When she was in the family home, Jordan tried to access support from DFV services. She was rejected due to the complexity of disability, as services stated they were underfunded to offer the support she required. ‘They just left me… in the complete unknown. They left me in that house. They said, “Oh, you've got six different types of abuse going on but we don't, we can't help you. We don't have the resources to help you. We can't do anything to help you. You need a special disability resources for family violence to help you”, then they did nothing. [They] refused to give the report to my support coordinator so that the NDIS could see that I desperately needed to get out of there. They just completely left me. [They] even said that if I was under 18, I would have been removed by Family Services. But because I was over 18 and I've got a disability, we're just gonna leave you in an abusive household. It was horrible.’ Seeing no other option, Jordan tried to go back to her abusive family while experiencing homelessness. At the time, they were moving to a smaller house and could no longer accommodate her. ‘I think I tried committing suicide like four times during that month.’ The mental health worker at a major hospital assisted in finding the aged care placement, after Jordan had attempted to take her own life. After such a turbulent and uncertain time, being placed in her accommodation helped Jordan to feel safe again. ‘…all my therapists and everyone… about a week after I got settled they were like, “oh my goodness. You look a million times more relieved and just better in yourself.” Like, yeah, I feel safe finally. And it had been three and a half years of not feeling safe.’ Some barriers to housing were administrative. Jordan did not take out a DVO against her family members. Despite experiencing serious and continuous abuse, she was precluded from some services and funding which require DFV be reported to police to qualify for support. She highlights how, oftentimes, people with disability are ‘told they’re lying’, disbelieved and made to jump through hoops to prove their need for assistance; ‘But you shouldn't have to prove that you need help from domestic violence.’
Paradoxically, there is both the expectation to be silent and to tell your story in full to the world. This is captured in an image Jordan has chosen of a woman standing on stage under spotlights holding a microphone, her back in turned to the camera. ‘Abuse is Hard. We don't expect [survivors of] sexual abuse and things to constantly open up. Family abuse and domestic abuse is literally no different. You don't want to keep pushing them. You don't know what's happening.’ Jordan, exercising her choice and control, decided not to take out a DVO because she considered this may have a negative impact on reconciling with family in the future. Something about this gesture affected me in unexpected ways. Perhaps it was the very humanness of the urge to make good. To repair and heal the relationships with those who have perpetrated abuse. It speaks to the tricky reality that the people who perpetrate abuse are often still loved, despite what they have done. They are, after all, family. This leaves me wondering, what other mechanisms do we have to seek support and justice?
Jordan wants society to hold higher expectations for women with disability. She wants to study, work, and move around freely. In other words, basic human rights. ‘Just ‘cause I've got disabilities doesn't mean that I'm just gonna sit down and do nothing. Um I still wanted like study and have a job. Have a voice. Do things that I want to do. I’m allowed to move around. Um, I don't have to be treated like an object or baby or anything. I just want to be treated like a normal person.’ Previously, among family and old school friends, Jordan felt ‘you can't show your face in public. You can't leave the house. You have to stay in your bed… You can't study, you can't work. Um. You go out and you're treated which way I can object or a baby or something to be fawned over.’ Things are different now; ‘I live in aged care, but people have now accepted me here. Um. I get to go volunteer and I love it there and they show that they actually really care for me.’ Her community helps her to pay for where she is living and to afford food. They helped to take the tracking off her phone. Jordan feels she has now chosen her community though ‘it wasn’t intentional. It was forced’. But people accept her where she is, they show they really care. From the struggle to remain housed, be heard within the medical system, make and maintain connections, seek justice, access occupation; Jordan is fighting at every turn. But she is stalwart in her belief ‘everyone is the same and you just treat everyone the same’. The system, as we refer to it, is in fact a disjointed series of moving parts, of people, services, processes, policies that bump into each other and only occasionally connect in the ways that benefit those who use them. This is illustrated in the many examples Jordan tells. She wants better for herself. She wants access to funding so she can move out of aged care and live independently. While the accommodation is not age-appropriate, Jordan reports she has no desire to return to her family; ‘I never, ever want to go back. I have never felt so good’. But there is still uncertainty about the future. Will she get the support she needs to access paid employment and study? Will she be able to stay in her current area and maintain the connections she has made? There is a surgery coming up. I find myself hoping that she will get a win after all she has had to endure over the past few years. I wish this, as if it were a cruel twist of fate that put her there in the first place. It wasn’t.
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