Last year I had five cards. Now I have fifty.
A few years ago, I started a Facebook group . A simple concept, ripped off (with permission) from across the ditch. Stories collected from people, from news and autopsy reports, about people with disability being abused or neglected, raped or murdered. Stories transferred onto teeshirts or created by people who had been victims and who were now survivors. And most poignant of all, the stories of those men and women and children who had been murdered – often by their loved ones. It’s gruelling work. Each story is catalogued in an effort to look at where and when and how and why. Themes emerge. Repeated abuse, often sexual abuse, in residential care. Pregnancies in institutions, and women who are sterilised to ‘protect them’ from pregnancy, rather than rape. Unsupported carers, worn down by caring, killing their children and never, ever going to prison. What’s the point? They won’t do it again. And the unspoken words are never whispered, but always heard – ‘It was a blessi...