When Catherine Dunn went to tell a university wellbeing officer she had been sexually assaulted, a lack of appropriate services left her feeling like she was "talking to a wall".
Ms Dunn, who is deaf, was assaulted as a teenager at a party and at a university, where she was a resident.
She told the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, which is holding hearings in Hobart this week, of the barriers faced by deaf women when reporting sexual abuse.
"I felt like I was just talking to a wall when I went to access services," she said of her university experience.
"I also didn't have an interpreter there, so I was forced to speak.
"The wellbeing officer that I spoke with had no understanding of my cultural history of being a deaf woman and it really wasn't worth pursuing."
Ms Dunn told the commission she didn't report her assault as a teenager to police.
She was living away from her family's country Victoria home and was attending a school in Melbourne.
"When the assault occurred I thought:,'Where can I go? Who can I tell?' My parents live very far away from me. I use Auslan to communicate'," she said.
"At the time I also didn't have the words or the language to describe what occurred and who I was as a person. For me, wellbeing just wasn't supported or acknowledged.
"And the support at school was not enough."
The royal commission, which will this week hear from female survivors of abuse, has previously been told almost half of all women with disability will experience physical violence during their lives.
About 48 per cent will experience physical violence, compared with 27 per cent for women without disability.
Ms Dunn, who works in an advocacy role with Deaf Victoria, has called for greater support for deaf people in mainstream services.
"As a deaf person, a deaf woman, there's always layers of disadvantage. I want to call a support service but I have to make sure that I can access them with SMS," she said.
"Have they worked with interpreters before? Will be I persecuted by the community that I live and breathe in?"
She said she had limited sex education as a child and was signing at a seven-year-old standard compared with her 15-year-old deaf peers.
"The experiences of sexual assault occurring amongst my peers was prevalent," she said.
"And there was no way to really detail what was going on and what was happening."
