I never met Peta Doig.
That's not surprising. Most people never met Peta Doig. Peta was autistic and had an intellectual disability, but that's not why I'd never met her. I'd never met her because I had never been a resident of (or worked at) the Nathaniel Harper Home, Heathcote or Graylands, where Peta Doig lived for over forty of her fifty nine years.
I 'met' Peta last weekend, when I read her 'biography'. Her biographer was a WA Coroner whose name is Evelyn Vicker - she was the Coroner who sensitively presided over the death of Andrew Allan, a young man from a neighboring town. Vicker's findings are often startlingly insightful as well as compassionate, and Peta's findings were no exception.
It is impossible to read the harrowing account of Peta Doig's life without blenching. A child, institutionalised at the tender age of eight. Healthy, autistic, with a low IQ - and a life that reflected everything that is wrong with our system. A young woman, caught in a psychiatric hospital for too many years, unable to leave because of lack of funding and attention until it was too late. There are mysterious references in the account of Peta's life to injuries and sexual exploitation, but no explanation to how she was injured so severely that it rendered her permanently unable to walk. There is evidence that staff and advocates tried, over and over, to get Peta out of permanent care, but all attempts failed.
Peta was not someone who any person on the street would easily meet. There is evidence that people who live in institutional settings are often deprived of developmental safeguards - the presence of other people in their lives, those who are not paid staff. Members of the community, family. Peta is one of thousands of other Western Australians who is in the care of the State and who is not someone any of us would get to know, even on a casual basis.
That is what made me wonder what it would be like to write the biography of a woman who was hidden behind doors for a lifetime - someone who was better known in death than in life. Someone who rarely spoke a word, but had many written about her - not letters or emails or diary entries, but clinical notes and observation charts and diagnoses and referrals. A woman who might have been a Judith Scott or another person whose potential was realised, if only she'd had the chance.
I wondered, also, how hard it would be to write an account about a woman whose life was so fiercely guarded by gatekeepers that it was impossible to break in, let alone out. For her own protection and safety...but at what cost?
I started looking for Peta. And as all missing persons' investigations start at the point where a person was last seen, I started looking for her at Karrakatta Cemetery.
That's not surprising. Most people never met Peta Doig. Peta was autistic and had an intellectual disability, but that's not why I'd never met her. I'd never met her because I had never been a resident of (or worked at) the Nathaniel Harper Home, Heathcote or Graylands, where Peta Doig lived for over forty of her fifty nine years.
I 'met' Peta last weekend, when I read her 'biography'. Her biographer was a WA Coroner whose name is Evelyn Vicker - she was the Coroner who sensitively presided over the death of Andrew Allan, a young man from a neighboring town. Vicker's findings are often startlingly insightful as well as compassionate, and Peta's findings were no exception.
It is impossible to read the harrowing account of Peta Doig's life without blenching. A child, institutionalised at the tender age of eight. Healthy, autistic, with a low IQ - and a life that reflected everything that is wrong with our system. A young woman, caught in a psychiatric hospital for too many years, unable to leave because of lack of funding and attention until it was too late. There are mysterious references in the account of Peta's life to injuries and sexual exploitation, but no explanation to how she was injured so severely that it rendered her permanently unable to walk. There is evidence that staff and advocates tried, over and over, to get Peta out of permanent care, but all attempts failed.
Peta was not someone who any person on the street would easily meet. There is evidence that people who live in institutional settings are often deprived of developmental safeguards - the presence of other people in their lives, those who are not paid staff. Members of the community, family. Peta is one of thousands of other Western Australians who is in the care of the State and who is not someone any of us would get to know, even on a casual basis.
That is what made me wonder what it would be like to write the biography of a woman who was hidden behind doors for a lifetime - someone who was better known in death than in life. Someone who rarely spoke a word, but had many written about her - not letters or emails or diary entries, but clinical notes and observation charts and diagnoses and referrals. A woman who might have been a Judith Scott or another person whose potential was realised, if only she'd had the chance.
I wondered, also, how hard it would be to write an account about a woman whose life was so fiercely guarded by gatekeepers that it was impossible to break in, let alone out. For her own protection and safety...but at what cost?
I started looking for Peta. And as all missing persons' investigations start at the point where a person was last seen, I started looking for her at Karrakatta Cemetery.