When I was 10 years old, I spoke up about sexual abuse for the first time.
I believed that telling the truth would make the adults around me protect me.
Instead, the foster care system was used to displace, criminalize and disorientate me.

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From Victim to “Displacement”

After my first disclosure to my respite care, and a social worker, at age 10 years old. My long-term foster mother did not report it to anyone after being informed by the respite career, and the social worker’s manager would not support her to follow procedure.

My long term foster mother in fact began to blame me for the sexual awareness, that she had had documented since I was age nine years old – when I first was sent to live with her.

A Doctor asked for the sexual awareness to be investigated for suspected sexual abuse at age nine – nothing was done. Had an investigation been done, it would have uncovered that I was sexually assaulted by the teacher in my previous placement, at the primary school I attended, when I was 8 years old.

I was sexually assaulted again at age 10, while living with my long-term foster parents – when they needed respite care for a family emergency. The “awareness,” only became an issue, when I pointed at a child abuser, who was sexually abusing foster children – at the respite short term foster placement – my first disclosure.

I was called a liar, blamed and despised by those paid to care for me, because I spoke up. My Long term foster mother turned on me, and felt my “sexual awareness, ” and the “lie” I had so called told. Meant that she wanted me to be removed, and I was removed.

What this really meant in reality is that because the respite foster mother “lied” to hide her lodger was sexually abusing foster children. My foster mother took her lie, and ran with it, and used it as a reason to attack my character and my future care. She then spread the lie to multiple professional third parties, and foster families. So she could have me removed, for her own agenda of wanting a adoptive son now, because girls were a “threat to her husband.”

Social care sent me to the friend of the long-term foster mother – only to be rejected after four weeks. I can’t remember her feeding me, or talking to me other than to call me names and chastise me. She openly told me that my long term foster mother told her I lied on the respite care assault. She called me names until I mentally shut down, because I did not have the vocal words or understanding to defend myself.

Trying to comprehend being blamed for sexual abuse, when you didn’t even understand consent and were forced, is very confusing as a child victim. You internalize the abuse – you wonder what you could have done and what were you supposed to do – you blame yourself for not knowing what to do.

From displacement to “Offender”

I was then sent to a remand centre for teenage offenders — a secure home for children who had committed crimes.
I hadn’t committed any crime. I was a traumatised 12 year-old who had not long told the truth about being hurt. I was being punished for disclosure by, disbelief, rejection, displacement and hidden agenda.

Inside the centre, I was surrounded by older teenagers — many addicted to drugs and already deep in criminal behaviour. Such as theft, robbery and violence. Staff encouraged me to “socialise” and “mix in.” What that really meant was being sent out with these young people into dangerous situations I didn’t understand.

One day, they took me with them in a stolen car. I didn’t know what “stealing a car” even meant at the time — I was a child trying to survive in an environment where refusal led to violence.
When I tried to resist, they on one occasion ripped out my hair, stripped me to humiliate me. I learned quickly that the safest thing was to stay quiet and go along.

When the police chase in the car ended, I was arrested along with everyone else. That day, my criminal record began — not because I was a criminal, but because I was placed in a setting that guaranteed I would be treated like one.

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Ignored Warnings and Deliberate Neglect

My social worker’s notes from that period show that she knew I was struggling. She wrote that I was “having a hard time in the placement,” yet no action was taken to move me. She also wrote “unable to talk to me and offer support due to deterioration,” which was an outright lie. There was four years to speak with me before any deterioration – which was a trauma response – and in direct correlation with being abused, silenced, disbelieved, punished, rejected by foster parents – then displaced by my then social worker.

I was told by staff, I wasn’t supposed to be there, that it was a place for teenagers not children under age 13 years old. Every adult around me at that time was aware rules were being broken to place me there – yet no one acted.

Numerous reports talk about me being depressed, self harming, and not doing well.
Yet I was left in that remand home for months — bullied, abused, and eventually criminalised.

Another record has a picture of me, taken by a woman at an event arranged by social workers. The event was to put make up on young girls, and then they took pictures of us, to remember “how nice we looked” with makeup.

In reality, social workers dressed us young girls as adults with makeup, then took pictures of us, and then gave it to the police. So that police had recent images of us, if we went missing. The event was to obtain records of us, with makeup dressed like adult women – using coercion, lies and make up they provided.

When I think back to the lies and manipulation, and see that picture of my first time ever wearing makeup. How I am smiling nervously, as ordered to by staff in the photo – that was then uploaded to a data base – third parties – Unbeknownst to me at the time.

It shows me that there was intention, and knowledge of the danger I was in while within the care system – and that there was a data base, and system for this knowledge. That girls were literally turned into trafficked girls for photo shoots, just in case while being told it is for fun.

It also presents a false inaccurate narrative of foster girls – all wearing makeup, made to look like a certain way, when that was not their real character. However would be the image circled to society in the event any girl goes missing, which presents them as more mature, and less vulnerable – therefore not as important as an innocent child.

Blurred Boundaries: When Personal Friendships Impact Professional Duty

During my time in foster care, this particular social worker who knew I was struggling. Had a close personal friendship with the foster parent to whom was informed about my disclosure. I attended my social workers wedding because they were friends. This relationship appears to have influenced how my disclosure was handled. It also influenced how records were written, and the narrative told. Incidences were manipulated to omit information that would put foster parents in question.

For instance, prior to the remand type centre. I was sent to another foster mother for a few weeks as previously mentioned. She turned on me in the first week, because she was personal friends with the other foster parent I had just left. She began to neglect, and emotionally abuse me on a daily basis. My abuse was turned into my own character and, and my social worker watched it unfold and participated in my character assassination.

Rather than investigating or taking action, the two of them recorded my account as untrue, which shaped my treatment in care afterwards. A total of 7 people colluded. All affirming in records that I had lied, or did not act on the disclosure information. Even though there was knowledge within the fostering system, that there were complaints from previous children – about the respite placement.

It’s hard not to see it as intentional. I had not long ago disclosed sexual abuse in foster care, and I had documented behaviour – related to trauma. The response was to label me as “trouble,” dictate no investigation, and send me away to a place designed for punishment.
It felt like being silenced — not just through neglect, but through strategic placement in an environment that would help to destroy my credibility.

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Racism, Violence, and Community Hostility

The remand home was notorious — it had been the subject of several media reports for violence, neglect, and community unrest. Local residents hated the centre and the children placed there, especially the Black and mixed-race children. I am mixed race.

When we went to the local shop on Banjo Island, groups of racist men would shout abuse and threaten us. One day, A group of grown men came at us with threats of violence. The shopkeeper had to lock the doors and call the police to protect us.

I remember standing there, wondering why I was being targeted when I hadn’t done anything. I hadn’t even been there long, yet that brief time left a mark that lasted decades.

At the same time, I was rejected from the black community, for pointing out a child abuser, and placed back with white families – as a mixed race girl I also was vulnerable to invisibility within other cultures, who saw my skin tone, hair texture or facial features before anything else.

At times, I also felt like a specimen that could be examined up close, without any personal accountability. A lot of adults reciprocated their own racial bias’s upon foster children, which shapes futures, as children absorb. I experienced it from both black and white cultures, and on small occasions from other cultures – but mainly from the black and white sides of the spectrum of racial ideologies.

I absorbed the racial chaos in foster care, and it confused me as a mixed race child – living around so many different racial mentality’s – on opposite sides of the spectrum – who often shared a dislike of race mixing, and the product of that mixing – aka people like me.

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Silenced by Systemic Design

Looking back now as an adult, I can see the patterns, and the chaos by design.
Children in care who disclose abuse are often labelled as “liars,” “troublemakers,” or “unstable.” Then they are placed in environments that make those labels look justified. When personal bias, self-preservation, and financial gain is added into the equation…
It’s a self-fulfilling cycle of institutional betrayal.

By criminalising vulnerable children, the foster care system ensures that when we grow up and tell the truth, our voices can be discredited. “Look,” they say, “she has a record, ”
But that record was written by the same hands that failed to protect me.

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The Hidden Truth of Care

What happened to me wasn’t an accident — it was the consequence of a system that protects itself before it protects children.
I wasn’t given therapy. I wasn’t believed. I wasn’t safeguarded.
I was silenced through displacement, fear, and systemic criminalisation.

To this day, some of the adults responsible for those decisions are still linked in social care — still shaping the lives of vulnerable children.
Meanwhile, those of us who survived are left with the lifelong impact of their choices – trauma, mistrust, and the constant fight to be heard.

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Final Reflection

When you look at how the foster care system responds to disclosure, you can see that silence isn’t just encouraged — it’s engineered.
Children who speak out are made examples of.
They are placed in harm’s way, labeled as “problems,” and erased from their own stories.

I was never a criminal.
I was a child who told the truth — and was punished for it, by people who benefited, and had their own personal agendas.