A British woman resident in Australia speaks up about restraint and enduring years of abuse
‘I’m a British citizen and australian resident. My experience was in Australia where I was lunged at by a psychiatrist where she appeared to be going to grab me around my wrists.
I did nothing to warrant her behaviour and the psychiatric services that allowed this abuse to occur refused to uphold my formal complaint despite many other failings.
They also put my serial domestic violence abusing husband (six failed marriages with many other police and court records detail of incidents of family violence) as my carer, and didn’t tell me the serious mental illness diagnosis despite my requesting it a number of times (got it from FOI), which just happened to be the one he was accusing me of having when abusing me and he then assaulted me with a stranglehold, which they considered a legitimate restraining hold because he was once a psychiatric nurse.
The fact that he had a history of violence and had been in prison for assault didn’t make a difference and they also let him subpoena the mistake riddled case notes to the Family Violence court, which quickly ended my attempt to get an IO against him.
The diagnosis is also not true but I do now suffer from PTSD as result of years of domestic and authority abuses in Australia because I dared complain and they decided to discredit me in my complaints.
I now can’t go to health services owing to legalised defamation and very hostile and abusive doctors.
It is extremely frightening and I did nothing to deserve such illegal treatment. My formal complaints have come to nothing even though I was able to provide clear evidence of authority discriminatory rule breaking against me in legal document.
I recently contacted my local MPs office (Aus) but I was refused help there too. I know my husband (separated) has already contacted them and now I suspect this is why he gets so much help from local service providers while I get rejected everywhere despite having plenty of evidence as to my bad experiences at the hands of my ex and many individuals in service provision in the region where I live.’
This first person account was privately shared by a member of NSUN via Facebook. Preferring to keep her identity confidential, this member allowed us to publish her message as part of blogs. For the sake of authenticity and respect for her voice, we have not modified her text.