Abuse in Care: Survivor shares story of sexual abuse through sculpture to find freedom

Friday, 8 July 2022

[Trigger warning: Video discusses abuse] Catherine Daniels was abused by the state and now identifies as disabled due to the mental health conditions she has sustained because of the abuse. She was never able to express herself to her therapists un

People with disabilities experience higher rates of violence than nondisabled people. For the first time, a statement is being given through art at the Abuse in Care – Royal Commission of Inquiry Disability, Deaf and Mental Health institutional care. The hearing runs from July 11 to July 20.

Catherine Daniels became a workaholic at 9 years old. Keeping her mind busy was the only way to “keep the demons away”, she says.

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 wouldn’t picture herself experiencing the abuse. Now at 54, she still falls asleep as other people.

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Catherine 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.

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As a result of the abuse, she lives with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative identity disorder, anxiety and paranoia.

She describes living with dissociation as a blurry, spacey, fragmented life.

“It affects every part of your day,” Daniels said.

“I’ve had nightmares every day since I was about 4 years old … and that’s hard to live with because of a lack of sleep, and you wake up and you’re in the moment of being traumatised of what 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. It’s the first time art is being shown as a statement at a royal commission.

Catherine Daniels says she can better express her feelings, thoughts and emotions about her sexual abuse through a three-dimensional object.

She isn’t the only survivor whose statement isn’t 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.

Catherine Daniels is a self-taught artist.

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, titled The Secret Keeper, which illustrates the abuse with photographs of her sculptures by New Zealand photographer Esther Bunning.

Counsel Assist Ruth Thomas is leading the Abuse in Care Disability, Deaf, and Mental Health institutional care hearing. (First published July, 2022)

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 can 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 de-stigmatises it”.

Daniels first became engaged in 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's 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.

Counsel Assist Ruth Thomas is leading the Abuse in Care Disability, Deaf, and Mental Health institutional care hearing.

“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 communicate what's 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’s only ever had one disabled complainant.

Through her beautiful and harrowing sculptures, Daniels has found a unique way to express the childhood trauma and sexual abuse she experienced from a young age over many years.

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’s important they are received by the Government and actioned to ensure this never happens again, Thomas said.

“The hope for this particular investigation is that people learn what's happened and consider the systems, [and] the policies that enabled abuse to flourish unchecked, especially as we are on the cusp of quite transformational change in the disability sector right now,” Thomas said.

From her time as Counsel Assist, Thomas said her highlight had been engaging with the survivors themselves – amazed by their strength of character to get through the trauma they’ve been exposed to.

“Every time I've interviewed and spoken to a survivor, I've left that setting feeling that they've just gifted me their precious taonga,” she said.

“We owe all the survivors to do a good job in all the work that we do as a result of what they've given us.”

Back at the art studio, Daniels, like many others, said the mental health system was beyond repair – it’s “really broken”.

She said the Government needed to come up with new ways to support people, such as investing in creative avenues.

“The first time I made a sculpture, a lot of what I did, it ruminated round and round inside and I couldn’t see it,” she said.

“But it wasn’t until I pulled it out, and I could physically look at it and see it and touch it, that it made sense to me. It wasn’t just thoughts in my head, I actually put it into something I could physically touch.”

Daniels said when people visit her exhibition and can physically see a sculpture that they can relate to, they feel like “they’re not alone”.

“You think that you’re the only one it’s ever happened to because it’s always been kept a secret, and it’s now time for the secrets to be out.”