Wheelchair humiliation sparks fury

By Rebecca Fraser
THE Australian Wheelchair Foundation has slammed Westfield Fountain Gate Shopping Centre for its treatment of two disabled shoppers.
Narre Warren North resident Sharon Mammone, the secretary of the Victorian branch of the Australian Wheelchair Foundation, said they had registered their disgust with Westfield after two brothers were stopped from taking wheelchairs owned by the shopping centre from a main door to the car park.
Both men, from Euston near Mildura, suffer from muscular dystrophy.
One brother was forced to crawl five metres to a car after security staff refused to let them take the wheelchairs outside.
Ms Mammone said the organisation had since written a letter to Ross and Tony Costa, who are both in their early 40s, to express their disgust and praised them for having the courage to share their experience with the public.
“We have written a letter to the individuals stating how disgusted we are with the ridiculous protocol and expressed our sympathy for the indignity they had to suffer,” she said.
“We are pretty appalled. We (the Wheelchair Foundation) are off to Fiji on Thursday to distribute wheelchairs over there and this is the sort of thing you expect from a Third World country.
“To find this ignorance in our own country is very disappointing. I was just dumbfounded when I heard,” she said. Ms Mammone said Westfield staff told the organisation its policy would be changed, but the humiliation the incident had caused could not be easily fixed.
“This shows that a lot more work needs to be done to make people aware.
“They needed the chair to access the shop and the shop facilities,” she said.
“Isn’t it then obvious that they needed the chairs to get from the door to the car?
“People’s dignity has been stripped away. Imagine being subjected to crawl to your car. How humiliating is that?”
Ms Mammone is also on the board of the Australian National Wheelchair Foundation, and her husband, Vincent, is chairman of the Victorian branch.
She said the organisation aimed to improve disabled people’s dignity and sense of selfworth and show that they were a valuable part of the community.
“Just because they are less able does not make them less valuable.
“I am really grateful for the courage these individuals have showed by bringing this to the attention of the media.
“I don’t know where this policy would have originated from and I am amazed that things like this are still happening in our society.
“I shop there myself and you just have to put yourself in their situation,” she said.
The Victorian branch has helped send wheelchairs to Samoa and other nations in the Pacific and Asia, as well as across Australia.