Thread by @StMaryMacKiller

In the’90s I received social support as a single mum for the first time ever. I was studying &doing contract work.
I informed C’link that I wasn’t eligible for Austudy but they paid it anyway. I put it in a separate account til the day they asked for it back using threatening ->

-> letters that implied I’d knowingly defrauded them. The language of the letters was traumatising, but I had informed them TWICE &they had told me I was wrong, so I knew the fault was theirs. The sum they tried to extract was more than they had overpaid ->

-> I knew bcs I had the money, untouched, waiting to be returned. They didn’t like that but accepted it.
Then they began a new course of harassment, more letters demanding payment of the money already returned. I had a lawyer send a cease&desist letter.

So began 5am unannounced ‘house inspections’ on the premise that it had been ‘reported’ I was living with a man. They went thru cupboards to find evidence of a housemate, even trying to claim the mens razor I used for my legs as proof of a partner.
I also began to be dragged in->

-> with great frequency for full audits of my history. One sympathetic(?) C’link auditor said I needed to stop declaring changes of work(contract)/income bcs this was “putting me at the top of the pile, &inspectors pull off the top”.
Not declaring *would have been fraud.

(Also, I did suggest that maybe there lay the problem: ‘inspecting’ ppl who routinely updated their info, whilst ignoring the ‘bottom of the pile’ ppl who never updated, was surely incongruous mismanagement?)

They told me to commit fraud.
The other instance where I was told to commit fraud was when I decided to share a rental house w/my disabled mum, &care for her. Bcs I’d declared she was my mum, I cdn’t get C’link. I was 7mo pregnant, with pre-eclampsia, &no one wd employ me.

My mum was on DSP &working but unable to support me. Eventually C’link agreed to pay me Sickness Benefit that covered my rent, but no other normal extras bcs I ‘lived w/my parent’. That was when they told me to lie bcs mum had a different surname. I didn’t, bcs A)I don’t lie ->

-> and B)they’d have a record it was fraud🤨🤷‍♀️ Truly mindblowing audacity.
So after months of dawn interrogations &audits, I had to send another cease &desist, *much more aggressive, threatening immediate legal recourse if baseless harassment continued. It finally stopped.

Bear in mind, I had spent 6 weeks in hospital at risk of death; almost died in childbirth; was told my son would die during the Caesarean (due to medical negligence); that he had a severe brain injury; he was mangled during birth; &then I was dropped like a hot rock.

The community nurse failed to monitor his health &dismissed my alarms; he was deaf &had massive brain infection *from the birth; and while I was fighting to be heard about his health, while also trying to be a good working citizen, C’link began this harassment.

I was also trying to sort out my own fractured spine, hip &knee, &brain injury from a motorcycle crash, with no vehicle, no support system - maintaining work &learning to be a mum, which the system seemed determined to actively sabotage.

I tried so hard to be a model contributing member of society, feeling I had something to prove bcs single mums were/are so wrongly condemned, but it was like being in a fascist country, where authorities were free to seize &interrogate a person under falsified premises, anytime.

Eg: a prominent paeds (now deceased or I’d sue) misdiagnosed (actually deaf, ABI) son as ADD &threatened to have him made a ward of the court after I refused to treat an 18mo old w/Ritalin. I had to fight an establishment specialist to get my son reliably diagnosed. It took 3yrs.

(Note: I was right, but egos were now at stake. Bless the amazing paediatrician, Con James, who fought our corner &pursued actual evidential diagnoses a &saved us).

Meanwhile, the sustained, organised abuse by C’link and the neglect by some facets of the medical fraternity led me to honestly question if I’d died during the Caesarean &woken up in Hell, a la ‘Bliss’.
I didn’t suffer a robodebt demand but I know exactly what C’link do ->

-> &I can vouch that they will *knowingly* hound, hunt, &hurt you *especially if they know you are vulnerable. Defending myself &fighting the system on multiple fronts, I almost took my life &my son’s - there’s no way I would have left him with these blundering, abusive morons ->

-> who were knowingly, using govt sanctioned processes, systematically pursuing the destruction of an innocent person who was just trying to do the right thing.
At this time I knew someone who *was rorting the system on a monumental scale - inc another country’s welfare system ->

-> &they were never, ever - not once - investigated, audited, questioned or visited at 5am🤷‍♀️. Same age, same situation, but fraudulent on every front: never declared anything either.
C’link has always operated unethically, always under the premise that it’s to ‘catch fraudsters’.

But it doesn’t. It wrongly persecutes innocent ppl - often for its own errors - data entry errors, banking errors, assessment errors, etc - in a system in which no *user knows or understands the inner workings or criteria.

If C’link pay you an amount, you have to presume they’ve assessed it as correct, bcs there is no publicly available information regarding criteria or figures. Which brings me to the time they claimed they’d overpaid me over a period of months.

Not a lot - but it came after the 1st C&D letter, after they’d tried to double dip on the overpaid Austudy.
Uncanny🤨
I got the evil, bullying, threatening letters - like a crime syndicate - but I got MAD. I instructed my now-not-billing-me lawyer to draft a letter demanding ->

-> they produce forensic level accounting to prove their claim of debt. We gave them a deadline, after which, if they had not produced the relevant evidence, the debt would be considered non-existent, &should they continue to pursue me w/o that evidence, we would sue.

They never pursued it.
But so much damage was done. I was a beaten, exhausted, shell of a human being - and they just *kept going* after me, no cause, no evidence of fault, no justification - &I never fully recovered.
I can’t see justice but it was robodebt without the name.

They’ve been honing &’perfecting’ methods for 30 years. It’s past time they were stopped.
I hope every robodebt victim gets redress that makes them feel relieved of the hollow, crippling exhaustion that C’link causes via their unethical &irreparably scarring methods.
#Robodebt

(For further context: I don’t try to fiddle the system. Never have. The reason why, aside from just being a basically honest person, is illustrated by treatment of a close friend, forced to put her extremely mentally disabled &physically overpowering young son into care after ->

-> he physically harmed her younger son. She was a single parent to avoid DV. She was a nurse. She informed C’link of the change of son’s residence &they cut all his support - despite it now costing her more. She worked every shift she could get to cover costs of secure high ->

-> level care, plus her own &younger son’s costs. After a couple of years C’link SMASHED her. They said she hadn’t declared an overtime pay change that resulted in a small debt. This hard-working, battling, honest woman was given a suspended sentence, criminal record for ->

-> fraud, &a fine far beyond the debt or her ability to pay.
Even when it’s innocent, honest, or thru oversight without intent, they will destroy a person).

Also, I thought life did this to *everyone. After a life of eccentric freedom travelling widely, I thought this must be normal if you’re trying to conform. I’m only recently fully realising it was pretty outstandingly sucky - yet also, confusingly, many did suffer similar.

NB: Writing this has triggered my extreme fight/flight responses, inc perceived inability to get breath; numbness in limbs; diarrhoea; nausea; ringing in head; shakes; increased HR - because I’m so scared they will see it & penalise me for speaking up. It never goes away.