Sexual assaults on public transport.
Physical and verbal abuse so frequent you become too scared to leave home.
Being picked up off the ground, filmed without consent, and singled out by crowds.
Relentless trolling and strangers online telling you that you should be killed.
These are all things people with disability in Australia routinely experience in public spaces.
The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability (DRC) sat in Brisbane this week, examining the experiences of people with disability who have faced harassment and abuse in public spaces.
Witnesses said they often felt unsafe, scared and humiliated while going about their daily lives.
These were just some of the many shocking stories from the hearings this week — stories the commission heard were common occurrences.
'Just the right height for a blow job'
Debra Keenahan — an accomplished artist and teacher who is short of stature — told the inquiry she had been assaulted, sexualised and ridiculed by people in a range of ways and public settings.
"I have been grabbed on public transport," she said.
"I have had a man rub his crotch at the back of my head. I have had a hand coming down the front of my top, grabbing my breast. I have had comments saying having intercourse with me would be like having sex with a child.
"Comments like 'you are just at the right height for a … blow job' or 'while you're down there, love' — that's a classic one."
Dr Keenahan also recounted other stories about being harassed in public, including in her local area while walking her dog.
"As I was walking up the hill, I turned around and this young man on his way to school … stopped and just overtly stared at me, laughed and he pulled out his phone," she said.
"He was obviously taking [a video] and I stood and I just [gestured 'no'] at him. He put his phone down and just cacked himself laughing and then put it up to continue … and mocked how [I walk].
"And I just thought — this is where I live."
'They decided we were hilarious'
Witness Peta Stamell told the inquiry about a time when a stranger lifted her sister off the ground to show her to his friends and referred to her using a derogatory term. Both women are short of stature.
"Me and my sister went to this bar, and immediately the vibe when people saw us was pretty bad — it was almost like a critical mass of people that decided that we were hilarious," Ms Stamell said.
"On the way out, someone picked up my sister, turned around to his friends laughing and said, 'look I've got a m*****t'."
Ms Stamell said people took their photos as they left. On the car ride home, her sister broke down in tears.
"This stuff is so [common] it becomes normal after a while. If it doesn't happen within a stretch of time, it's almost unnerving and like you are waiting for it to happen."
Another witness, Fiona Strahan, who is also short of stature, recounted an incident that had only happened the night before.
"I needed to go to a shop down the road and hadn't noticed there were a bunch of young men looking at us through the glass," she told the hearing.
"When I came out, they followed me and got closer and closer and kind of turned into a 'V', just behind me. [They were] talking out loud about 'how many of us' they had seen."
She didn't feel safe enough to ask them to stop.
"I know that if I turned around and said something to them, I put myself at greater risk," she said.
'It left me very fearful'
A family violence survivor, who spoke under the pseudonym "Ashleigh", told the inquiry that a man threatened to blind her at a concert because her walking stick accidentally made contact with him.
Ashleigh said she acquired a brain injury after her stepfather "tried to kill" her with a hammer, leaving her with paralysis and 70 per cent vision loss on her left-hand side.
"[After bumping into the man at the concert] I said 'I'm sorry, I can't see on my left side'.
"And then he said, 'do you want me to make you blind on your right side as well?'
"That left me very fearful … and I haven't been to a concert since."
Tim Marks, an amputee and wheelchair user, told the royal commission he does not leave his house after 4pm because he is too scared.
"Every time I go out I fear that something is going to happen and I much prefer to go out with one of my carers," he said.
Mr Marks became an amputee in 2010 and said prior to that he never experienced the kind of abuse he does now.
He also recalled a visit to a supermarket where he had glass bottles thrown at him.
"One hit me in the head … above my right eye and cut me and I started bleeding," he said.
"I ended up putting my wheelchair into full power and getting out of there because I thought I was going to be attacked."
'They said I should be killed'
Disability advocate and writer Carly Findlay, who lives with a rare, severe skin condition called icthyosis, gave evidence on Friday that focused on online abuse.
Ms Findlay told the royal commission that she could not think of a single day where she had not been "mocked, laughed at or questioned" about her appearance outside her home.
Taxi drivers could be the most discriminatory, she said.
"In 2013, I got in a cab and the taxi driver said that I would ruin his seats.
"Now, I don't know anyone that's rubbed their face on a taxi seat, but apparently he thought I would."
Ms Findlay has also experienced extreme abuse online and recalled an experience when her photo was shared, and ridiculed, widely on Reddit.
"People said things like, 'what does your vagina look like? What the f***k is that? It looks like something that was partially digested by my dog,'" she said.
"They described me as a lobster. They said that I should be killed with fire."
Ms Findlay has also experienced trolling and sexually abusive comments on a number of other online platforms. However, she said police told her many incidents were difficult to investigate.
"I don't feel like the law has caught up with the fact that online is real life, but also we don't often know our trolls," Ms Findlay said.
Ms Findlay said the existing legal frameworks to protect people in online spaces were insufficient and a high threshold must be met for something to be classified as cyber abuse.
"This leaves me and other disabled people liable to ongoing hurtful comments and abuse from complete strangers," she said. "This … should not be on our shoulders alone."
Representatives from Twitter said many types of material on the platform were prohibited, including unlawful content and that which threatened violence and targeted or harassed people.
With more than half a billion tweets being posted daily, Twitter said there was an "enormous corpus of work and effort happening globally" to catch violating content.
Twitter said in June it launched a new reporting process that made it easier for people to report unwanted content.
"It is also trying to lift the burden from individuals to be the one having to interpret the violation," said Kara Hinesley, Twitter's director of public policy in Australia and New Zealand.
'The whole population has to be engaged'
Police and government representatives also gave evidence during the week.
South Australia Police assistant commissioner Linda Fellows acknowledged there was a trust deficit between the police and people with disability.
"As police, we have a statutory obligation to protect the community and fundamentally to protect the vulnerable," she said.
While the Commonwealth runs the National Disability Abuse and Neglect Hotline — a service for reporting abuse — the inquiry heard many people with disability didn't know that was an avenue available to them.
Debbie Mitchell, deputy secretary of the federal Department of Social Services, said she was angered by the evidence presented this week, and the abuse of people with disability was "everyone's issue".
"I'm outraged that we continue to hear what we've heard in the commission this week," she said.
Disability researcher Gwynnyth Llewellyn, from the University of Sydney, told the commission that violence and abuse of people with disability was "endemic".
"It's a population and public health issue, and the whole population has to be engaged in thinking about and responding to it."
