Survivor gives evidence to inquiry through art
Catherine Daniels became a workaholic at 9 years old. Keeping her mind busy was the only way to ‘‘keep the demons away’’, she said.
Through her beautiful and harrowing sculptures, Daniels found a unique way to express the childhood trauma and sexual abuse she experienced from a young age over many years.
As a child, she never fell asleep as herself. She imagined herself falling asleep as other characters, like Mickey Mouse, so she would not picture herself experiencing the abuse. Now at 54, she still falls asleep as other people.
As a result of the abuse, she lives with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative identity disorder, anxiety and paranoia.
She described living with dissociation as a blurry, spacey, fragmented life. ‘‘It affects every part of your day,’’ Daniels said. ‘‘I have had nightmares every day since I was about 4 years old . . . and that is hard to live with because of a lack of sleep, and you wake up and you are in the moment of being traumatised as you were as a child.’’
Daniels is one of many survivors sharing their stories at the Abuse in Care Disability, Deaf and Mental Health institutional care hearing from today to July 20. It is the first time art is being shown as a statement at a royal commission.
She is not the only survivor whose statement is not in spoken English. The royal commission has found accessible ways for survivors to share their stories. Some survivors provided statements via poetry, song, New Zealand Sign Language and through an augmentative communication device.
Daniels felt compelled to share her story because it might open up the opportunity for other artists to come forward to give statements about the abuse they experienced.
‘‘I could never verbally say what I wanted to out loud, I found it too hard. Whereas with art, I could speak through my art.’’
She has also authored a book, The Secret Keeper, which illustrates the abuse with photographs of her sculptures by New Zealand photographer Esther Bunning.
Daniels said the royal commission had been amazing to work with because of the way it was ‘‘thinking outside the square’’ to collect statements, like her art exhibition.
She said she could better express her feelings, thoughts and emotions about her sexual abuse through a three-dimensional object.
‘‘By showing these sculptures and doing these exhibitions, it starts more conversation, it gets more people talking and it destigmatises it’’. Daniels first became engaged with the royal commission when she was holding an exhibition of her work in Wellington. Two women visited and asked her about her story and if she would want to give a statement.
One of the women was Ruth Thomas, who is leading the Disability, Deaf and Mental Health institutional care hearing.
Thomas has worked as a counsel assisting at the commission for three years.
She said this hearing was important because it was ‘‘a piece of New Zealand’s history that has been invisible and has been shut away, sort of out of sight, out of mind, in the past’’.
Thomas said they had to actively go out to the communities to try to draw people in to share their experiences, something which differed from previous hearings.
‘‘There is no way they would have come forward to talk to us,’’ she said. ‘‘They wouldn’t even know that the commission was happening.’’
Recent statistics show disabled people are still disproportionately
impacted by violence and abuse.
‘‘I think a lot of abuse and violence directed at disabled people goes unnoticed and unheard,’’ Thomas said.
‘‘A lot of that would be as a result of the disabling barriers that exist within our society.
‘‘The lack of support for people to be heard and to communicate what is happening, and then if a complaint is made, the lack of real process or the lack of persistence in the complaint as real is a real problem.’’ In her 16 years working as a criminal prosecutor, she had only had one disabled complainant.
At the hearing, survivors will be sharing stories of overt abuse, such as physical, sexual, psychological and emotional abuse, and educational neglect.
But also covert abuse. ‘‘There were regimes and routines that saw people being herded from one place to the other,’’ Thomas said.
‘‘[From] the food eating room, then herded in to be washed like on a conveyor belt, and then left to sit in the day rooms for 80% of their lives. Staring, snoozing, sleeping, sedentary, with no real purposeful activity.’’
Based on all the evidence from survivors and other sources, the royal commission will publish recommendations next year, and it was important they were received by the Government and actioned to ensure this never happened again, Thomas said.