Lockdown Kids: Dad’s heartbreak after daughter gripped by eating disorder dies

In the final moments of her life, the teenager shared how this one cruel comment from classmates was to blame.

• Watch now: Lockdown Kids Episode 3

When Robb Evans thinks of his daughter Liv, a few memories come to mind. Her nudging him out of the way so he wouldn’t step on a snail is one.

“She loved animals so much,” he smiles.

Her dry sense of humour, and her ability to always make him laugh. The deep love she showed those closest to her.

Those are the good memories. There are a few dark ones he also can’t forget.

Her small body strapped to a stretcher, surrounded by police and paramedics, with a six-point restraint as she thrashed and screamed.

Or the time she begged him to let her die, to let her find peace.

“Liv was just 13 when anorexia got its claws into her,” Evans explains. “Just 15 when she died. I miss her every day. Her mum and sister miss her every day.”

Father of two Robb with his daughter Liv

Liv was one in a rise of young Australians who developed an eating disorder during the pandemic.

Dad-of-two Evans, who lives just outside of Melbourne in Pakenham, says thateven now, almost two years on from her death, he feels like there were two versions of his daughter.

The Liv he knew before the pandemic: “An adventurous, loving little girl,” he says.

Then a year into the pandemic, a very different Liv came to life.

One who would hide food in her bedroom, would lie about eating and who was prone to tantrums due to severe hunger.

“It’s hard to remember how many lockdowns we had during that first 12-month period, but one of the things that happened was Liv was in a good routine at home, and then at some point, for various times, she and her sister returned to school.

“They went back to school and Liv had some interactions at school and they were very detrimental.”

When asked what was said, Evans shakes his head. “They food shamed her for eating a banana,” he says with tears in his eyes.

“I realised that lockdown changed people,” he explains. “And I think one of the things that really affected kids at school was kindness – or lack of it.

“And I think the way that kids were talking to each other and treating each other during the pandemic and post-pandemic, it really changed.

“Liv used to tell me some of the things that some people would say to her, and I was just blown away that I thought she was making it up, because I couldn’t believe that people would be so nasty to her.”

Robb Evans' daughter Liv was a vibrant young girl before the lockdowns. Picture: Supplied

She enjoyed gymnastics and the great outdoors. Picture: Supplied

Lockdown respite

For the Evans family, the start of the pandemic offered a respite from the daily juggle.

School uniforms were pushed to the back of the wardrobe, school bags and lunches no longer packed, and the morning routine was a lot slower.

“Certainly for Liv, it was much easier for her, because the social interactions with school, those friendships and so forth, were really challenging for her,” Evans says.

“So not having to worry about that anymore, and she could just focus on school, certainly at the start of the lockdowns, it was a positive experience, I think, for all of us.”

But it was the lifting and reimplementing nature of the lockdowns, especially in Victoria, that affected Liv, Evans says.

“I think the in and out, the change in people’s personalities, the change in people to become shorter tempered, or just nastier, for various reasons, as a result of the in and out of the pandemic, and that really weighed heavily on Liv, because she was a really sensitive child, and where most people might be able to have things like water off their back, it didn’t happen that way for her. It really affected her quite deeply.”

By the end of the first year of the pandemic, Evans noticed his daughter wasn’t eating as much as normal.

A trip to the GP not only discovered that Liv was underweight but dangerously underweight and needed to go immediately to the emergency department.

“Our GP popped her on the scales, did a few things, and said, ‘Yeah, you’re drastically underweight,’” he says.

“And I didn’t realise he was going to do this part. He said: ‘You need to go to the emergency department to get some more testing and assessments done’.”

The pair had a close bond. Picture: Supplied

It would be the first of close to 50 hospital admissions, and each one would become more traumatic for both Liv and the family.

Long stretches in hospital where she was force-fed and would return home, only to once again refuse to eat and spiral further into the disease.

Then it turned into full-forced admission, physically pulled from her bedroom, laid on to a stretcher and restrained as she would wail over and over, “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.”

“The ambulance can’t touch her unless the police are there,” Evans says. “The police can’t do it unless the ambos are there.

“And unfortunately, it was nasty, because I would have to physically drag her out from under her bed.

“I’d have to put her onto the stretcher. I would have to hold down her top half. I’d get the police officer to hold down her legs.

“She’s kicking and screaming at this point. She’s biting me – that’s why I was at the top end – screaming her lungs out, and six-point restraints over her shoulders, around her chest and arms and on her legs as well.

“Very, very distressing, but that was the only way that we could get her safely to the hospital for that treatment. And then once she was in hospital, she was getting her brain fed.”

The process was often so distressing that paramedics would have to leave the house, take a moment to breathe and compose themselves, before returning to help.

Evans adds: “It’s horrible to see your daughter go through that.”

And this process – police, paramedics and Evans dragging her into an ambulance – happened a total of 30 times until, on the final visit, doctors told Evans that his daughter was “terminal”.

A future stolen

There’s no rule book on how to react when your child is in pain and gripped by disease. For Evans, he says optimism was his fuel.

Each time his daughter was admitted to hospital, he kept telling himself that this time might be the time it worked, that fixed his daughter.

But hearing the words “terminal” broke him.

“I remember we were sitting in a hospital meeting. Liv had been in for the longest days. I think 31 days, which is a long time for the poor girl to be in hospital,” Evans says.

“And so we would have weekly meetings with the doctors. And I remember sitting there and the doctor had said to us that this is terminal for her and, to be honest, it was a real shock to hear that, because at no point did I ever think that this was going to end my daughter’s life. And that wasn’t being naive.

“It’s just that I knew that she had it within her, and that we would support her to do whatever it would take to achieve an outcome, and maybe it would take years to achieve that, but we never gave up hope.

“So hearing a doctor tell you that this is terminal for her, it did. It did really hit home, but I still didn’t give up.”

For Robb, it feels like had two versions of his daughter. One before the eating disorder took grip. Picture: Supplied

And one after. Here’s Liv during one of her 50 hospital admissions. Picture: Supplied

For the next 12 months, the journey had more downs than ups. And in April 2023, Liv was set to be readmitted to hospital once again after failing to eat at home.

Instead, just hours before her planned admission, she started acting strange and disoriented. Evans immediately knew something was very wrong.

“I told her mum, ‘Call the ambulance straight away and tell her that we don’t know what she’s taking, but she’s taking something.’

“We got her to hospital and you have to imagine what the scene looks like. It’s so intense. She’s screaming her lungs out. There are two police officers, there are two paramedics, there are three to four security people.

“There’s about three doctors, four nurses. There’s … I don’t know, at any point there can be 13 to 15 people in the room, plus me.

“And from that moment, there was just a whole bunch of tests and waiting.”

Over the next 12 hours, Liv initially stabilised, looked to improve but then her liver started to fail before doctors told the Evans family that their daughter, their 15-year-old daughter who before the pandemic had dreams of saving the world or working with animals, was brain damaged.

“She didn’t want to be here anymore. She was in so much pain so we made the decision to switch off the machine,” Evans says, tears rolling down his face. “She passed 10 minutes later.

“And the sadness and frustration in it all, that she would rather take her own life than go through the treatment for the illness. And it just makes you think about how flawed our system is.

“If the treatment is so bad and so horrible that they would rather kill themselves than get better. It’s something that you can never get over.”

Watch episode 1 below.

Not alone 

Robb Evans shares his story in The Advertiser’s new docuseries Lockdown Kids: How to Break a Generation, which this week has delved into the long-term impact of placing the nation’s children into covid lockdown. A rise in mental health issues, school refusal and youth crime.

When it comes to eating disorders, Professor Tracey Wade, an expert in the field from Flinders University, says there had been a 15 per cent increase in anorexia diagnosis during the pandemic.

Studies are still under way to look at the multiple trigger points for this increase but already there are two firm themes – uncertainty in isolation mixed with increased social media use created the “perfect storm” for eating disorders.

Worryingly, Wade admits it will take services a staggering 10 years to play catch up – and young Australians, mainly teenage girls, will die in that time, just like Liv.

“The pandemic, really, I guess, showed the limitations of our health services, particularly for mental health and in particular for eating disorders,” Wade says.

“It was difficult to get into hospitals because, you know, the beds were not so available, and when the waiting list blew out over that time, we really weren’t very good at trying to think about how to decrease.”

But Liv is so much more than a statistic, declares Evans. She’s a reminder that lockdowns were perilous to a younger generation and that the current system of treatment and care, when those with eating disorders finally receive it, is deeply flawed.

“I get reminders every day about her with all my photos that could come up. And there’s sadness, there’s anger, there’s frustration at so many different levels, and it’s not one simple solution to it, but I miss her,” he says.

“And I want to play a part in trying to help the conversation around the eating disorders change so that we can get better solutions and more treatments, so we shouldn’t lose anyone, particularly our children, to something as insidious as an eating disorder.

“I know it has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. We need more funding. We need to research more, we need to just get way better outcomes. No one should have their life destroyed like Liv’s. No one.”

If you or someone you know needs help, call Lifeline on 1311 14 or visit lifeline.org.au

If you or a loved one needs support, reach out to Butterfly Foundation on 1800 ED HOPE (33 4673)

Originally published as Lockdown Kids: Dad’s heartbreak after daughter gripped by eating disorder dies