Disabled rape victim left in abuse room for eight years

A woman in a disability group home was moved out of the room where she was repeatedly raped only eight years after the attacks.

A victim of sexual assault in a ­Yooralla disability group home was moved out of the room where she was repeatedly raped only eight years after the attacks, the disability royal commission has heard.

Yooralla chief executive Sherene Devanesen told the commission no one to her knowledge from Yooralla had ever asked the wheelchair-bound victim with the pseudonym Jacqueline whether she wanted to move rooms, and accepted leaving her in the same room was “wholly inconsistent” with how victims should be looked after in the ­aftermath of a sexual assault.

The commission, this week examining whether group homes are an appropriate accommo­dation option for people with disability, revisited the case of Vinod Johnny Kumar, a casual employee of Yooralla charged in 2012 and convicted in 2013 of multiple counts of rape and other sexual offences against three women and a man in his care.

Counsel assisting the commission, Kate Eastman SC, asked Ms Devanesen why it took until 2019 for Jacqueline to be relocated into a different room after the abuse occurred. “As far as I know, it was the first occasion on which Jacqueline requested it,” Ms Devanesen said.

“Did anyone ask her before that?” Ms Eastman said.

“Not that I know of. I don’t know the answer to that question,” Ms Devanesen said.

“Do you agree with me that maintaining her in that room for eight years after the abuse is wholly inconsistent with a ­trauma-informed approach to the care of a victim of sexual violence?” Ms Eastman asked.

“Yes,” Ms Devanesen said.

“Do you have any explanation as to why no one made that inquiry for eight years?”

“I do not,” Ms Devanesen said.

She conceded that while Jacqueline received compensation from Yooralla under a confidential settlement in 2014, Kumar’s three other victims hadn’t, and Yooralla had not supported them to seek independent legal advice about their rights.

Commissioner Roslyn Atkinson said this put Yooralla in a “classic conflict of interest ... As a result, you paid money, presumably a substantial amount of money, to one survivor and nothing to the others.”

Ms Eastman also raised the case of a supported employee of Yooralla, a woman with an intellectual disability who was sexually assaulted in 2015 by another ­employee. The victim and her mother both initiated legal proceedings against Yooralla that eventually was settled, but the victim’s case was run as a WorkCover compensation claim while her mother made a civil claim for compensation for psychological injuries.

“You’d agree that being sexually assaulted at work is not an injury occasioned during the course of performing your duties as an employee?” Ms Eastman said.

“I do agree with that,” Ms Dev­anesen said.