‘It’s dirty hush money’: Victim-survivor abused as a foster kid slams National Redress Scheme

“I don’t have five years worth of fighting in me anymore. So I sold out – I took the money and I ran. It’s dirty hush money.” AZRA’S STORY>>

IT WAS just before Azra Beach’s fifth birthday when her foster mother broke her arm, then slapped her face when she wouldn’t stop crying.

“She didn’t care. She was very abusive,” she said.

“I at times remember feeling like she hated me.

“(She said) she wished I’d go out and play in the middle of the road.”

Speaking before Tasmania’s commission of inquiry into child sexual abuse on Thursday, Ms Beach said during her early years as a foster kid, she was also molested by two separate men.

She trusted them – thinking the abuse they unleashed upon her was love.

“I genuinely felt loved – they were telling me what a good girl I was,” she said tearfully.

“I know it was wrong love but it was the only affection and the only love I was shown throughout my younger years.”

Ms Beach said another child who was abused by the two men had a very different experience.

“She describes complete monsters,” she said.

“I sung their praises. I made (the other victim) out to be a liar, all because I wanted them to love me.”

She said the state government didn’t investigate, with allegations of the abuse dismissed as Ms Beach and the other child’s “overactive imagination”.

Amid the physical abuse claims, Ms Beach was taken out of her foster home and placed into group care – but never told it would be permanent.

“No-one had blatantly said I was never going back … at that time it was easier for them to just throw me away,” she said.

“I was bounced around. There was a group home. And that wasn’t very pleasant when you go from a mum, dad, brother.”

Ms Beach said it wasn’t until she had children herself that she realised what happened to her was child sexual abuse.

“At the time, I didn’t realise how much damage had been done.”

Now, Ms Beach wants an apology for the abuse she suffered in Tasmania’s out-of-home care system.

“It’s not my fault. I want an apology because I feel what was done to me was wrong,” she said.

“To this day, I have not received an apology at all … I’ve raised it so many times.”

She said wards of the state were stigmatised – but the trauma they’d suffered was “not their fault”.

“I’m in survival mode at the moment, still,” she said.

“All I see is the department failing children over and over again. Then you’ve got the police force that look at these kids like, they’re nothing but trouble.”

Ms Beach also slammed the National Redress Scheme for making victim-survivors dig through “every bit of trauma” – and the long wait times for compensation.

“They only pay for the physical acts themselves – I think that’s actually really disgusting,” she said.

“I don’t have five years worth of fighting in me any more. So I sold out – I took the money and I ran.

“I felt completely dismissed. I feel like the Redress Scheme – it’s dirty hush money, is what it is.”

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Originally published as ‘It’s dirty hush money’: Victim-survivor abused as a foster kid slams National Redress Scheme