Have pity on the victims, but spare a thought for the sick boy, and the parents who loved him

A woman leaves flowers outside the Westfield Bondi Junction shopping mall in Sydney on April 14. Picture: David Gray/AFP

When the terrible events at the Westfield Bondi Junction shopping centre began to unfold, my first reaction, as with most people, was complete horror.

I thought first of the mother killed while trying to protect her baby; then about the baby and whether it was alive; then the others, ordinary shoppers or just lookers, as my daughter and I might have been at the junction on a Saturday afternoon.

I grew up and went to primary school less than a kilometre from where these events took place. My daughter, also a mother, lived down the road. I usually stay around there when I go to Sydney. It is my old home base.

Later I began to read and hear all the wash-up, the bravery of some people, the bollard man and the man who protected the baby. Then in among all this confusion I began to hear about the perpetrator, in police talk.

Naturally there were the theories about why he did it (as if there always has to be a why), the clinging to some sort of explanation.

The most bizarre explanation was that he was, in the words of one correspondent to this publication, a “radicalised misogynist”, a quintessentially postmodern notion that proves there always has to be some explanation rooted in someone’s bad psychology, transformed into ideology. For some it is always thus, no matter how superficial the explanation for an act that seems otherwise beyond human understanding.

A straight-out manifestation of violence targeted specifically at women also was the favourite theme of female radio hosts, all keen to push this as a misogynistic act that required more protection for women, although most of the people strolling through a shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon probably are women, and casually shopping women are easily distracted and easy targets.

This theory conveniently ignores the one unfortunate male victim, but for some professional know-alls it was yet another opportunity to portray men as latent monsters. For others it was a simplistic way to find something to say, anything, about something that seemed inexplicable.

The inexplicable nature of Joel Cauchi’s actions is really what bothers us. The only explanation is of course his sheer madness, the madness of the delusional schizophrenic who had gone off medication. However, when Cauchi was killed, many reacted with “good riddance”. They were relieved – all except Cauchi’s grieving, heartbroken parents.

Andrew and Michele Cauchi, the parents of Joel Cauchi. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

I, too, felt relieved when I first heard about his death, but now I feel compelled to say I feel guilty about that reaction and I feel grief for that poor young man who seems to me to be like so many others. He was a young man who was once his parents’ loved child. They nurtured him from infancy, then supported him through this devastating illness, which typically manifests at that adolescent tipping point. Later they helped him into education, supporting him until his decision to go off his medication. In his delusional confidence he thought he could. But he was wrong. He was not a monster. He was, as his father said, a “very sick boy”.

His parents were not the only people who felt like this. One young compassionate person with whom I spoke, who is no stranger to suffering, felt the same way and was upset that Cauchi was killed.

Mass stabbing perpetrator Joel Cauchi. Picture: Twitter

It is a view motivated by simple Christian compassion for a suffering human being. Cauchi’s life already was reduced to him living in a rented storage space, wandering in a city of six million where he knew no one and no one cared whether he lived or died.

We couldn’t help asking ourselves: did he have to die, was his death inevitable? When he was killed, no one questioned the policewoman’s decision to do that. I am a good bit older than that young person and my deceased brother was a policeman who was gravely injured in the line of duty. I know these decisions have to be made quickly. However, young people today know too many of their contemporaries who could easily tip over as Cauchi did and end up the same way.

One hopes some good may come out of this. For years psychiatrists have been begging for more mental health facilities. Anyone who knows anything about mental health knows the availability of residential care is almost in collapse. It is a crisis.

We are doling out money from the National Disability Insurance Scheme for parents with children who have questionable diagnoses while parents whose children are genuinely catastrophically ill are in desperation. Australian Psychological Society president Catriona Davis-McCabe has said: “People with mental health issues are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.” True.

We should remember that asylum, in relation to the mentally ill, became a dreaded word only because of the lack of care and understanding in mental hospitals of the past, but we abandoned these institutions and didn’t really replace them. Asylum means a place of refuge, of safety, and no one needs it more than the mentally ill, most of whom are more in danger than dangerous.

As a mother and as a friend of other mothers, some of whose children have balanced precariously on the edge of madness, I cannot feel anything but enormous sadness and compassion for Cauchi, a child who was lost, killed to save others and possibly, in the end, himself.