Child abuse survivors rally behind call for Loud Fence Lismore revival

After a childhood of displacement and sexual abuse across states and institutions, this North Coast woman has called for the revival of a powerful movement.

Picture: Supplied

When Debra Lowe recently visited Lismore’s Loud Fence – a place to acknowledge child sexual abuse survivors like herself – she was devastated to see the damage.

Fencing partially removed, ribbons taken off, solar lights stolen and a rose bush she had planted destroyed.

“It just broke my heart,” she said.

The 62-year-old Goonellabah resident, who rather than having the carefree childhood that kids deserve, suffered “abuse everywhere” in institutions and homes from state-to-state.

Her way of acknowledging her past, and honouring others, was to tie a ribbon for herself and her brother at the Conway St site.

Picture: Supplied

For Ms Lowe, the fence was a sense of place after a displaced childhood of “many different homes”, she told The Northern Star.

Despite receiving a file kept on her by government departments under the Freedom and Information Act, she still yearns to understand where she fits in.

“There is basically a lot of correspondence between several different departments asking ‘where does this child belong?,” she said.

Loud Fence Lismore organisers in 2014. Picture: NewsLocal

Known across the region as Aunty Debra, she was just two years old when she was removed from their mother’s care. This began a lifetime of insecure attachments as she was moved between institutions and homes in the states of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

Her mother, who had six children removed, took her own life, with the tragedy making it difficult for Debra to confirm whether she is an Indigenous Australian.

Debra Lowe, a survivor of child sexual abuse, wants Lismore’s Loud Fence to be restored. Picture: Supplied

“I get called Aunty round here by the elders but I don’t know if I am or not,” she said.

Debra is a Forgotten Australian, children who were in institutions or state care, but prefers the term ‘remembered Australian’ after meeting Kevin Rudd at the National Apology for Forgotten Australians and Child Migrants in 2012.

Maureen Hatcher, founder of Loud Fence at Ballarat. Picture: Peter Kervarec/Supplied

Loud Fences was founded by childhood sexual assault survivor Maureen Hatcher in 2015 in Ballarat, as a response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

In support of survivors who had spoken out, ribbons were tied to the fence of the former Christian Brothers St Alipius Boys School in Ballarat.

“The ribbons were bright, bold and loud because there had been too much silence,” Ms Hatcher said.

From there the community went on to tie ribbons everywhere and this action has been replicated all over Australia for all child sexual abuse survivors, including Lismore.

“The ribbons help survivors because they are a visual reminder that they have been heard and a reminder to the community that this should never happen again.”

Dassi Erlich and her sister Nicole Meyer are Loud Fences Inc ambassadors.

Loud Fence founder Maureen Hatcher with Nicole Meyer, Dassi Erlich and Elly Sapper outside Adass Israel School in 2020.

For Ms Erlich, a sexual abuse survivor of Malka Leifer, former principal of Victoria’s Israel Addas School, the loud fences are a statement that “survivors should be seen, they should be heard and they should be believed.”

While Leifer was found guilty of sexually assaulting Ms Erlich, the charges brought by Ms Meyer were not upheld. Ms Meyer found being able to tie a ribbon around the fence at her old school was “extremely validating”.

She drove there every single day until it was taken down.

“That’s how much it meant to me that I was willing to drive past the place where I was abused every day just to see those ribbons. It was taking a story that was so pushed down and secret and putting it out there in the open,” Ms Meyer said.

Ms Erlich said what has happened to the Lismore Loud Fence was “shocking” and hopes the community of survivors will help Ms Lowe resurrect the fence.

It is also a heartfelt wish of Ms Lowe’s, not only for herself and others, but “for everybody that we’ve lost”.

Are you able to help Debra restore the Lismore Loud Fence? Got a story tip? Email [e-mail]