Leave bereft father alone to grieve loss of family
IT took guts for Aaron Cockman to hold a media conference after his children and their mother — his estranged wife — had been killed allegedly in a murder-suicide by his own father-in-law and now is not the time to judge him. He should be left to grieve, argues senior Channel Seven correspondent Robert Ovadia.
Opinion
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IMAGINE being a father whose four kids have just been slaughtered by their grandfather. Then, at your most vulnerable, holding a media conference because there were some things you needed to say.
It took guts for Aaron Cockman to do that last Sunday, following the murder in Western Australia of his children Taye, Rylan, Ayre and Kadyn, and their mother Katrina — Cockman’s estranged wife.
Such a man, in such a circumstance, in such a fragile mental state does not deserve to be judged. Of course, judgment did not take long.
Cockman described his children’s killer as an “awesome man”, adding: “He was like my best friend and I still love who he was.”
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I was among the journalists standing in front of him. It was uncomfortable to hear and it became more unsettling.
Aaron Cockman was still in shock, barely able to process the darkness of his new world. A desperate man convincing himself of some lasting goodness.
Far better to forgive your kids’ killer than plunge into an abyss of self-loathing and hatred.
Cockman was barely holding on only 48 hours after being told his children had all been shot dead. Who am I to criticise what he says and why he says it? Who is any of us?
Yet some felt comfortably entitled to criticise and politicise his words. “Social commentators” seized on the fact Aaron Cockman and others had called Peter Miles — mass murderer Peter Miles — a “good bloke”.
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They also took aim at similar descriptions in media reports. I can tell you this was the universal opinion of literally everybody we spoke with in the Margaret River township who knew Miles before his rampage — men and women.
This is what people were saying. It was Aaron Cockman’s opinion and the opinions of people who actually knew the man.
Nobody is glorifying a child-killing mass murderer. Nobody is legitimising his actions. Nobody thinks he’s a good bloke after the fact. Surely that’s implicit — surely? Do we really need to spell out that mass murderers are bad people?
But why should we be afraid to report what people thought of him before? It’s accurate. Why should Aaron not be honest and say he loved the man Peter Miles once was?
“It is an act of valorisation to focus on the so-called ‘awesome’ traits of someone who has just slaughtered their entire family,” admonished Fairfax’s Clementine Ford.
Georgina Dent claimed in Women’s Agenda that Miles was being “viewed sympathetically”.
Nobody I spoke with in Margaret River — literally nobody — views this man sympathetically. Nor should they. He murdered six people. Yet he had a past, and the media should report it.
This is the ultimate problem with the Outrage Brigade — if incontrovertible, unambiguous facts do not suit their world view, they believe such facts should not be aired.
Those who preach tolerance are often the least tolerant and, subsequently, grotesquely hypocritical. Not everything has to be viewed through a kaleidoscope of causes.
So how about doing a distressed father a favour and shutting the hell up for once?
Robert Ovadia is a senior correspondent with Channel 7 News