From SBS News Australia: A woman with disability was drugged, raped, hit by staff and deprived of food while living in a Sydney boarding house, a royal commission examining homelessness has been told.

Charlotte, 61, was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager and has lived in about a dozen hospitals and state-run institutions in NSW since, including a privately-owned Stanmore boarding house.

“Life at the boarding house was terrible. It was like a prison. We were treated horribly by the staff and the owner,” she said in a statement read to the disability royal commission on Monday. “I was hit and raped while I was living there … I had no control over my life and no privacy.”

Charlotte, who lived at the home for about 15 years in the 80s and 90s, said the managers and staff would often hit residents. “One of the girls who worked in the boarding house kitchen was really violent and abusive,” she said. “Depending on how she felt, (she) would sometimes not give us breakfast or lunch.”

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