Riley* was in her early 30s when she began combing through her late father’s medical records, searching for answers about a heart attack he suffered almost two decades earlier.
Instead she found evidence of the years of violence he inflicted on her when she was a teenager visiting him in hospital in the mid-1990s. Some of it had been documented by hospital staff from the beginning.
“I was shocked to learn, for the first time, that it had been known the whole time,” she says. “It was just a total slap in the face. I just couldn’t believe that.”
Last year Riley, now in her 40s, reached a settlement with the Austin hospital, in Melbourne’s north-east, over the sexual and physical abuse she says she was subjected to there as a child.
Guardian Australia understands the hospital did not acknowledge wrongdoing as part of the settlement, and no legal proceedings were commenced.
According to Riley, she was regularly sexually and physically abused by her father at the hospital from the age of 12, for more than five years. She also alleges other patients sexually abused her.
She claims the hospital system failed to protect her and almost 30 years later she firmly believes more needs to be done to ensure children are not at risk when visiting a healthcare institution.
There are few publicly documented instances of a child being abused when visiting a hospital. But experts say it remains a gap in child safety policies and that re-examining historical cases can help make improvements.
Delusions and outbursts
This month marks 29 years since Riley’s father’s heart attack, which left him with severe brain damage. He was hospitalised until 2012 and spent the final months of his life in an aged care facility before his death a year later.
The heart attack rendered him disoriented and experiencing delusions. His violent outbursts, often towards staff, was documented from admission. Sometimes, Riley says, her father remembered he had a daughter.
But he often misidentified Riley as her mother.
Riley says she feels as though when she was 12 she lost the father she knew as a doting and gentle man. His aggression meant the family faced an ongoing struggle to find stable and appropriate care for him and pressure to take him home.
He spent time on different wards run by the Austin, and two years at an external psychiatric facility. In 1998 he was admitted to a specialist brain injury facility run by Austin Health.
From the time of her father’s admission in 1994, Riley alleges she was abused by him once or twice a week until she reached adulthood. At times physical violence was witnessed by staff, according to written internal records.
But Riley stayed silent for years, fearing that speaking up would cause a deterioration in the care her father was receiving.
Despite hospital staff’s knowledge of his aggression, Riley was frequently allowed to visit alone and unsupervised.
She was 12 when her father first physically assaulted her on the hospital ward, in a room opposite the nurses’ station. Her grandmother and mother had left the room to have lunch and her father became frustrated Riley had not brought rollerskates – skating was a hobby they had shared before his heart attack.
He beat her.
“I had to crawl out of the room,” Riley recalls. “I ran straight down the hallway and I walked around the campus for ages while I calmed myself down.”
The assault was documented in her father’s medical records, viewed by Guardian Australia, the next day. It was noted that the father had “hit his daughter last night.”
“I was unable to speak to her as she had left,” it reads.
The next day, Riley’s father tried to assault staff and was placed in a straitjacket and arm restraints, the records show. His condition was described as “acutely psychotic”.
She remembers the horror of seeing her father restrained and tied to a chair for weeks. The proximity to her first assault crystallised in her mind a fear that if she spoke up about the abuse, her father’s treatment would worsen.
“It wasn’t his fault,” she says. “And I never ever blamed him for a second.”
After that first assault, Riley alleges her father began to frequently sexually abuse her. She recalls him often placing his hands on her genitals, inside her and fondling her breasts.
She also alleges three male patients at the hospital also sexually abused her in a similar way.
“The sexual abuse, I could rationalise in my mind that he thought I was my mum,” she says. “You get better at leaving your body.
“The physical abuse, I didn’t have a rationalisation and an excuse in my mind.”
There were times when hospital staff did intervene. At a Christmas barbecue held by the hospital one year, a visitor alerted staff to Riley being beaten by her father after hearing her screams.
The medical records, written by a staff member, say they walked in on Riley being held by the hair and punched in the back. The staff member separated the pair and escorted Riley’s dad to his room.
Despite this documentation, no formal report to government authorities was made.
Riley attempted suicide in 1997. This ignited her mother’s suspicion of her father’s abuse. When Riley’s mother reported the suspected abuse to the hospital, the Austin made a report to government authorities, instigating a case file.
The case file notes, viewed by Guardian Australia, show the case was closed in 1998 after Riley agreed not to see her father again. But she began visiting him again after a few months – and was left alone with him.
Medical records from 1998 suggest staff were aware of the “report of alleged sexual assault” and note Riley should “not be left unaccompanied” with father.
Under Victorian law, doctors and nurses were mandated in 1993 to report suspected child physical and sexual abuse. Riley is left wondering in adulthood why a report was not made earlier, when the physical violence was first witnessed.
A push to protect ‘invisible’ children
The impact of the physical and sexual abuse is still evident.
In 2018, during a prolonged hospital stint as an adult, Riley, now a mother of four, refused to let her children visit her.
“It’s just not an environment where I felt like my kids were safe,” she says. “And I wish that wasn’t the case.
“It was very lonely but it was necessary.”
Once discharged from hospital, she successfully applied to the national redress scheme, established in the wake of the 2017 royal commission into institutional to child sexual abuse.
But she remains unconvinced that changes have been implemented to prevent the abuse she suffered as a child.
Tasmania’s commission of inquiry into child abuse shone a light on the systemic failures of Launceston general hospital to protect minors from a paedophile nurse who spent almost two decades on the children’s ward.
Dr Joe Tucci, chief executive of the Australian Childhood Foundation, says his organisation has worked with children who have been sexually abused while visiting an aged care facility. Tucci says protecting child visitors from abuse in hospitals and other settings remains a “vulnerability and risk area in organisations” after the royal commission.
Associate Prof Tim Moore, the deputy director of the Australian Catholic University’s Institute of Child Protection Studies, conducted research for the Tasmanian inquiry and says it found children often felt “invisible” in hospitals.
“Young people told us that hospitals felt unsafe when adults there failed to see them, tell them what was happening and asked them what they needed,” he says.
Riley’s lawyer, Alyssa Lewis from Shine Lawyers, said while work had been done to improve child protection standards, “it can feel as though it’s sometimes treated like a problem of the past, which couldn’t be further from the truth”.
An Austin Health spokesperson told Guardian Australia that it was committed to the safety of all patients and family and carers visiting the hospital.
“We have actively implemented regulatory compliance of the child safe standards,” the spokesperson said.
“Employees are provided training to deal with these types of situations and we expect them to provide disclosure and report incidents that relate to allegations of child abuse of a patient or the child of a patient.”
The spokesperson says “reports of serious concern” were escalated to appropriate services including child protection and Victoria police.
* Name has been changed
In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. The crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International and befrienders.org
