In Gear | Rotary in Southern New Zealand In Gear - Issue 3 | Page 16

“There are 300 men, two working toilets, and they were
all on the same drug … barely any staff, and faeces
everywhere, all over the walls, all over the ground.
They were lying, face down on the grass, naked, with
sores all over their bodies. It was like a psychiatric
horror movie,” Robbie recalls.
“That was a real eye-opener, because a lot of them
started out with physical disabilities, and, then, without
stimulation, without support, without medication, they
had developed developmental disabilities.
“If I had been born in probably 70 percent of the world
it would have been a totally different outcome for
me, too. In developing countries, only one percent
of women with disabilities are literate – 99 percent
aren’t.”
Newsbreaker
At the end of her six-month internship, Robbie
returned to New Zealand and something of a
new career direction, but still staying true to the
commitment she’d made to herself to shine a light
on disability issues. She became a journalist and
researcher for Attitude, TVNZ’s programme dedicated
to telling empowering stories of people with
disabilities.
“And, then, when you become ‘different’, there are no
facilities. They’re very poor, they end up on the street,
and, when you’re on the street, you’re considered a
misfit, and they want to clean up the streets. They
literally go around
“It was quite amazing to come to a job where
the streets with
my disability experience was valued, and,
vans to pick up
It was like a
compared to someone who didn’t have a
these people and
psychiatric
disability, I was actually more qualified,” Robbie
put them in these
horror movie.” says.
facilities, and,
then, once you’re
Tackling gritty issues like foetal alcohol
in there, you’re considered ‘crazy’, so you can never
spectrum disorder, Robbie was one of the first
justify getting out.
researchers to dig in-depth into the now-high profile
“Some of these people do have families and wish they
could leave, and families wish they could get them out,
but, then, the families don’t have the capacity or the
knowledge or the education or the money to buy the
medication.
“I was there. I saw it. I smelt it. I felt it. And, if I had
been born in a place where I had no opportunities or
support, it could have been me.
“A lot of them had had disabilities since birth and that’s
why they were where they were now. I just thought:
I was born in New Zealand, I went to a mainstream
school … I now see it as my responsibility; I have
to respond, or I have to forget about it, and I guess
forgetting about it was never an option because you
really can’t forget about the smell, particularly, and
people trying to reach up and hold your hand, knowing
that you could leave and they couldn’t.
story of Ashley Peacock, who has autism. Attitude’s
investigation sparked a blaze of publicity in the
mainstream media as to why Ashley, who also has
intellectual disabilities and mental illness, had spent
several years in care, secluded in a tiny room, with
living conditions the chief ombudsman went on to
call “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”. It was
recently announced, Ashley is due to be transitioned to
community care this year.
During her second year at Attitude, academia called
again, and Robbie began her PhD through Otago’s
National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, via
distance learning – the focus of her doctorate, true to
her discussion with Donna-Rose, the experiences of
people with disabilities in conflict zones.
“I decided to take an approach that looks at survival
and resilience, rather than just documenting the
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