Years after their mothers were killed, these child survivors finally found each other

Squeezing her eyes shut, Martha Jabour visualises a photograph she took in the aftermath of the Bondi Junction stabbings.

Jabour, who leads Grace’s Place in western Sydney – the world’s first residential trauma centre for homicide-affected young people and their families – captured the moment when the mother of Chinese university student Yixuan Cheng, who was killed in the attack, rested her head on Helen Toumazis’ shoulder, then fell asleep for half an hour.

Toumazis’ son Kris was shot dead outside a nightclub in 1998. She is part of the NSW Homicide Victims’ Support Group, which Jabour co-founded.

Kathryn Joy pictured in an undated photo, after their mother was killed when they were three months’ old.

“[Cheng’s mother] woke up and said in [Mandarin]: ‘That was the most sleep I’ve had since my daughter was killed,’” Jabour says.

“Language was no barrier to the kindness that they showed each other and the grief that they were sharing with each other.”

The potential for connection at Grace’s Place settled at that moment, Jabour says. The victims’ families sat together and cooked together; a blue-eyed little girl joined a non-English-speaking Chinese family for congee at breakfast.

It’s something children and families in other Australian states and territories can only dream about. Many people affected by homicide never get the chance to meet anyone like them.

But a small group of people whose mothers were killed in domestic homicides has defied that trend. They were bound together for decades by the violence that ruptured their early lives, and they had to fight to find each other. Now, they’re inviting others to join them.

Before: A violent rupture, then silence and isolation

“In some ways, I feel like grief was my first memory,” Kathryn Joy says, draped in a keffiyeh and gripping a microphone in front of an audience at a panel discussion.

“The absence of her was present from the beginning, and so … my whole life, I feel like I’ve been very close to thinking about death, and dying, and grieving.”

Joy, who uses they/them pronouns, was three months old when their father shot their mother, Carolyn Joy Stuckey, 32, at their family home in Lismore in northern NSW.

It was January 1985, and Joy and their two elder brothers were at home when Allan Stuckey pulled out a bolt-action rifle. Allan ultimately spent 22 months in jail for manslaughter after a jury accepted he was “provoked” into killing his wife because she was having an affair.

Joy and their siblings were returned to their father’s care after his release from jail, to live in the same house where he killed Carolyn.

“I spent most of my life on the internet trying to search for some kind of information about this experience, and others who had experienced it,” Joy says, sitting in the afternoon light of their home office.

“I was desperate for anything.”

Forty years later, the children of people killed in domestic homicides are still plunged into darkness. They are sometimes not even recognised as primary victims, and there is no dedicated system in Australia to give them tailored support.

A few homicide victims’ support groups and not-for-profit, child-trauma-focused organisations across the country could theoretically set up tailored homicide support for children – but there’s no funding to do so.

And so far, Grace’s Place only exists in NSW.

When a child’s parent is killed in a domestic homicide in Australia today, authorities find a suitable adult to look after them, then put that child in the adult’s custody, University of Melbourne researchers say.

They then receive a GP-subsidised mental health plan – like anyone else – or the police may refer them to a support service depending on waiting lists and what is offered locally.

The lack of systematic and comprehensive care for child homicide victims in Australia means experiences can vary wildly from one child to the next, and families may be forced to fight for help – or fall through the gaps, researchers say.

“There’s essentially no tailored support service available for children [who are victims of homicide in Australia],” says researcher Hannah Morrice.

It’s a major contributor to the crushing sense of isolation children feel.

For Joy – who adopted their mother’s middle name as their surname – the isolation manifested in decades’ worth of anguish, compounded by the silence shrouding the circumstances of Carolyn’s death, which was framed as a kind of accident that happened after their father “snapped”.

“Having no one else to talk to about it, but also not knowing anyone else who had experienced it, [I felt] like I was the only person in the world who had ever gone through this,” Joy says.

Joy is not alone. More than 1500 kilometres away, in St Albans in Melbourne’s north-west, 11-year-old Beverley Attard felt abandoned.

Carolyn Stuckey and baby Kathryn Joy in an undated photo.

Attard – an only child – witnessed her father Michael Grech murder her mother Betty Grech in the family backyard in 1991.

Michael asked Attard to call the police after he shot Betty, 29, dead. Attard does not remember how many shots there were, but they still ring in her ears. The last shot was to Betty’s head.

Attard laments the lack of a system to record how many children are affected by intimate partner homicide nationally.

Data suggests there may have been 430 children over two decades – but researchers say that’s likely a substantial underestimation, especially given it only accounts for cases with an identified history of domestic violence.

As strangers, Attard and Joy shared trauma. But they also unknowingly developed similar characteristics, like honest vulnerability and an irrefutable desire to stand up for people in need.

Beverley Attard with her mother Betty Grech in an undated photo, before Betty was murdered in 1991.

Attard is a social worker for adolescents in drug and alcohol treatment programs.

Joy also studied social work, but ended up working in community and grassroots organising for social justice issues, alongside the arts sector.

Ashton Kline, who was 15 when his mother Viola Margaret Kline, 48, was set alight and murdered, is now a nursing academic and ambassador for the Alannah and Madeline Foundation, a charity preventing violence against children.

The paths of Joy, Attard and Kline were already running in parallel, but in 2014, Joy’s endless Googling yielded a search result that would eventually bring them together.

Joy stumbled across a research project in the Netherlands about children and young people bereaved by domestic homicide, and reached out to the author, Eva Alisic.

“[Alisic] was like, ‘I’m in Australia, I happen to be in Melbourne if you want to catch up sometime’. It was very random,” Joy says.

“We spoke a lot about wanting to do that research in Australia because it didn’t exist here. And so, I was on board right at the beginning.”

After: The meeting that led to ‘turning point’

Seven years later, an Australian project following on from the Dutch research was barrelling forward – and Joy was part of a dedicated team conducting intensive interviews with people whose parents were killed in domestic homicides.

But a face-to-face meeting of people with lived experience, which would mark a distinct “before” and “after” point in the research and the participants’ lives, was yet to come.

Ashton Kline (left) and his brother Grant Monks in 2001, about one year after their mother Viola Kline was murdered.

The project – in which Joy was also an interviewee – detailed and analysed the experiences of young homicide victims. Participants had to have been under 18 when their parent was killed.

It was a criterion Rebecca Burdon didn’t meet when her mother Marilyn Burdon, 70, was murdered in August 2017.

Charles Bisucci used friends and acquaintances to hide guns before he shot Marilyn, his partner of six years, with a .33 Winchester lever-action rifle at her home at Kew in Melbourne’s east. He then took his own life.

At the time, Burdon was in her early 40s, a criminal lawyer with three young children.

She remembers viscerally the chaos that followed, including explaining to her children what had happened.

“We’d never had a pet – let alone anyone in the family – die,” Burdon says.

“In the days, weeks, months and – it turned out to be – years after, one thing I was really trying to find was some sort of agency or service to help … because I just wasn’t functioning.”

Burdon’s family was referred to Victoria’s Victims Assistance Program and given financial and psychological help. However, she had to “fend for herself”, searching for people to help take care of her children while she navigated difficult police and coronial processes, she says.

“For someone who is fairly well-resourced and able, and knows what the world is made of, it was hard,” Burdon says.

Rebecca Burdon, whose mother Marilyn Burdon was shot dead in August 2017.Credit: Chris Hopkins

“Let alone [for] someone who doesn’t speak English, [or] who has no idea about the systems … I just still find it disgraceful. The systems, to navigate, [are] still mind-boggling.”

There is no active homicide victims’ support group in Victoria, and Burdon began combing through social media for anyone who shared her experience.

It was not until 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, that she found an online post about the research project and asked if she could contribute.

The project’s team of researchers – led by Alisic – ultimately interviewed 12 victims in Australia, plus 10 others in the UK and Ireland, and published a final report, along with several peer-reviewed publications.

Rebecca Burdon (centre) with siblings Nicholas Burdon and Natalie Burdon in 2021.Credit: Simon Schluter

In October 2022, though, they put aside their research agendas and held a workshop with people with lived experience, recognising the intense isolation they felt over decades.

The participants tentatively walked into a quiet, plain room at the University of Melbourne, and took their seats – before a life-changing sense of clarity came over them.

“That was the turning point where I’ve stopped searching,” Burdon says.

Joy says the feeling when they came together was “ineffable”.

They shared an intimate sense of knowing and understanding, despite being strangers, Joy says. They could be blunt without fear of how the other person might react.

Rebecca Burdon, Kathryn Joy and Beverley Attard were brought together through the University of Melbourne research project.Credit: Chris Hopkins

“[I was] sitting in that room and having conversations with a bunch of strangers, but actually a bunch of people who, in some ways, I felt like understood me better than anyone,” Joy says.

“[It was] something I’d been searching for my whole life.”

Kline, whose father Claude Monks murdered his mother Viola in September 2000, thought for the longest time some of his personality traits – like hypervigilance and forthrightness – were due to a neurodevelopmental disorder.

But at the workshop, he realised he shared those traits with the other participants – and that they stemmed from trauma.

“Having not met someone before this who had experienced domestic homicide, [it was] just the immense relief of feeling that you’re not alone in that grief process,” Kline says.

What comes next?

The connection between Joy, Attard, Kline and Burdon endures: as friends, confidantes and collaborators in the ongoing research.

They speak privately about their challenges and triumphs, and the researchers check in with them every three weeks with updates.

The project enters its next phase – “Homicide at home: minimising the impact on young survivors” – in 2025, with another five years of funding. It aims to set up the world’s first comprehensive multinational database of young people affected by fatal family violence, and exchange knowledge between countries to improve support.

On the back of the first tranche of research, the group is working towards significant changes for child domestic homicide victims, including a multi-agency outreach support network, dedicated peer support groups, and a team of domestic homicide specialists who can work with schools, services and professionals.

Researchers Hannah Morrice (front left) and Katitza Marinkovic Chavez (back left), with Rebecca Burdon (front right) and Beverley Attard (back right), whose mothers were killed.Credit: Chris Hopkins

“For many mental health, social services and education professionals, it’s a once- or twice-a-lifetime experience to support children after a homicide in the family,” Alisic says.

“Ultimately, it’s about building ‘critical mass’ that will sustain itself.”

Joy and Kline sit on the Queensland Homicide Victims’ Support Group’s (QHVSG) committee, which is investigating setting up its own Grace’s Place. South Australia – which also has a homicide victims’ support group – will in November look into building a centre there.

Jabour envisions Grace’s Place as a nationwide model – akin to something like Ronald McDonald House – where children find sanctuary in the aftermath of homicides and have 24/7 access to specialist support.

Victoria is “not even on the map” for homicide support, and there is a “massive gap” in Australia for child-specific services, says QSHVSG chief executive Brett Thompson.

“We seem to think that victims of crime are just victims of crime, and it really is dumbing down and shows a complete lack of awareness of the reality of what the journey is for victims.

“Until governments realise that it’s more than just one bucket, there’s going to be … poor health outcomes for families as long as they live.”

Just a few of those in the research team: (clockwise from left) Rowena Conroy, Kathryn Joy, Katitza Marinkovic Chavez and Hannah Morrice.Credit: Chris Hopkins

Victoria’s Victims Minister Anthony Carbines points to the state’s Victims Assistance Program, as well as family violence and child support service The Orange Door.

“We offer several ways for victims of crime – including children – to get support … The Orange Door has helped more than 220,000 children across Victoria since it began,” he says.

Back in Sydney, Jabour is once again preparing to host the Bondi Junction stabbing victims’ families at Grace’s Place, as they return for next month’s coronial inquest into the attack.

This time, they’ll be coming without fear, she says. “We’ve got children coming along. It’s not a scary thing now to have children involved in the justice system because families and parents know that there’s the safety net that we put around them,” Jabour says.

People often say children are resilient in the face of trauma – but they’re not, Jabour says. Instead, they go into a “protection racket”.

“They don’t want to cry because they’re going to upset their mum, upset their dad, or upset their grandmother, so they keep it inside,” she says.

Joy, Attard and Kline bore the pain of their mothers’ deaths on their shoulders – a kid with bright blue eyes, a girl with a weary smile, and a boy trying to be strong for his little brother.

Alone, they felt silenced, but together, they are determined to make real change.

The federal government has put more than $4 billion into women’s safety initiatives since 2022. But Burdon says it is not enough – more money is urgently needed to improve support for victims whose mothers are killed.

“There are always going to be groups like us, from here into eternity,” she says.

If you or anyone you know needs support, call Lifeline on 131 114, beyondblue on 1800 512 348, Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).

People who have lost a parent to family violence can find peers with lived experience by contacting the researchers at [e-mail].

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