There’s something grotesque about the haste with which activists and media too often seek to exploit tragedy for political ends. Such exploitation takes two main forms: denial of obvious, often explicitly stated motives, or attributing motives that simply aren’t there. Which it is depends on whether the motives dovetail with the exploiters’ personal prejudices.
To be clear, no particular persuasion is immune to this: ask yourself how often you’ve scanned news of some outrage, thinking (however surreptitiously), ‘I hope it’s not X’, or ‘Whew, it was Y’. But media and activists have no defence when they rush to judgement based on nothing at all and trumpet horror for their own ends.
Which is what happened when a knife-wielding man ran amok in a Sydney shopping centre, stabbing dozens of people, murdering six people and injuring 12 others, including a nine-month-old baby. Feminist activists pounced on the fact that the majority of his victims were women. It was all part of a ‘femicide’ crisis. The killer deliberately targeted women as part of some ‘incel’ campaign to slaughter women. Even today, Wikipedia retains the claim that his motive was ‘misogyny’. NSW police commissioner Karen Webb claimed that it was “obvious to me... that the offender focused on women and avoided the men”.
Except that it now emerges that that was not the case at all.
Joel Cauchi did not appear to target women but “whoever was in his way”, and had searched online for information about serial killers and the Columbine shooters in the days before the attack, an inquest into the Bondi Junction Westfield mass stabbing has heard […]
Although the phone searches about “cop killers” and mass stabbings ahead of the attack gave some insight into Cauchi’s “inner turmoil and dark thoughts”, there was “no evidence indicating any motive in relation to what happened”, counsel assisting the inquest Peggy Dwyer SC told the Coroners Court in her opening address.
The high number of women killed seems, sadly, simply to have been an outcome of just who was most likely to be in that particular part of that particular shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon.
Detective Chief Inspector Andrew Marks, in charge of the inquest […] said after reviewing hundreds of versions of the footage, he did not believe “at all” that Cauchi was targeting any particular individuals, or women in general.
“From the start of his attack, he moved very quickly and he appeared to attack people who were not ready, who didn’t know what was happening. He had an opportunity to stab numerous people, numerous females. I believe whoever was in his way, where he was running, was who he attacked,” Detective Marks said.
What is clear from the inquest is that heroism on that grim day knew no gender.
[Detective Marks] said he believed victim Ashlee Good should posthumously be given a valour award for her bravery in trying to save her daughter after she had been stabbed multiple times.
Ms Good carried her daughter to safety in a nearby store before other shoppers came to her aid.
Then there was the conspicuous bravery of the policewoman who rushed to confront the spree killer, alone, and the two bystander men who stepped in to back her up.
As Inspector Amy Scott ran alone into Westfield Bondi Junction, having just been warned about a man “killing people” inside, she had resigned herself to the fact that she “was probably going to die”.
She had the same thought when she fired the first shot at Joel Cauchi as he ran towards her at speed downhill, Inspector Scott told an inquest into the murders of six people at the Sydney shopping centre on April 13, 2024 […]
She said: “I felt nauseous as I ran in because in my heart I resigned myself to the fact that I was probably going to die.”
Her training had taught her that when you meet an active armed offender, you have a 50 to 70 per cent chance of non-survival if you’re partnered-up and vested-up, she said.
Inspector Scott had no vest. Two bystanders, dubbed the “Bollard Men”, were her only backup.
Two men, French construction workers Silas Desperaux and Damien Guerot, followed her into the shopping centre and up the escalator. One of them tapped her on the back, she told the court, and said “you’re on your own, we are coming with you, and I said that’s great but can you stay behind me the whole time”.
At that point, she heard screaming to her right, and either Mr Desperaux or Mr Guerot pointed and said “over there”.
Mr Desperaux and Mr Geurot gave evidence together.
The court heard that a female shopper had told them that “someone is hurting people”. Mr Desperaux “looked at Damien and said OK, lets go catch him”.
Asked by counsel assisting Peggy Dwyer SC if he had training in self defence to “catch someone like that”, Mr Desperaux sheepishly replied “No”.
The men tried to find an object or a weapon that could help them fight the attacker.
“(The) first thing I saw was actually a bollard. So I took it straight away,” Mr Desperaux told the court.
Mr Desperaux told investigators: “I knew I needed to stop him even if it meant hurting him” […]
Mr Guerot said they were, of course, scared, but they had to make a choice “do we escape or do we go”.
If there are any ‘political’ questions to answer, it may be that we need to question the ‘de-institutionalisation’ model which has ruled mental health care for decades.
Cauchi was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was 14 years old, and later treatment-resistant schizophrenia. Since then, he was on psychotropic medication which he stopped taking in late 2019 when he disengaged from the healthcare system.
He moved to Brisbane and then Sydney where he was homeless and “far from the watchful eye of his parents” […]
Dr Dwyer said the inquest would hear numerous “missed opportunities” to reintegrate Cauchi into the mental health system after he stopped his medication in 2019, including sporadic visits to GPs and psychiatrists, and run-ins with police.
In late 2019, Cauchi’s mother raised concerns with his private psychiatric clinic that he was hearing voices again and that she had discovered some notes suggesting he believed he was under satanic control. She wanted him to go back on medication, but Cauchi didn’t want to, so his psychiatrist left the decision up to him.
Then there’s this jaw-dropper.
At some point after 2019, Cauchi saw a psychiatrist in an attempt to obtain a gun licence. That psychiatrist determined he was “asymptomatic” and a “fit and proper person to be issued with a weapons licence”, although Cauchi never followed through on it.
For which we can only be thankful.
And thankful for those who willingly put themselves in harm’s way for the sake of people they’ve never met.
