Lindt Cafe siege survivors: Where are they now?
One hostage managed to get secret messages to police as the terror unfolded. He is one of the tragic participants caught in a moment of terror that changed Sydney forever. Here is where the police and hostages are now.
NSW
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Just a handful of highly-trained tactical response police officers who worked at the Lindt Cafe siege remain in the NSW Police Force, and even less still work in the high-risk specialist unit.
“There’s definitely not many left, not from the entry teams. I can’t say that’s all because of the effect of Lindt but it was horrific,” says Ben Besant, the man who stormed into the cafe and shot dead terrorist Man Haron Monis.
All hands were on deck that day, Mr Besant’s colleague Gus recalled, adding he was called in from holidays.
“For a job like that you’re going to need as many as you can.”
Gus, who asked that his surname be withheld, has since left the force and like Mr Besant, is battling PTSD.
Other police officers, who asked not to be named, told The Daily Telegraph the job on December 15, 2014 had devastating effects on “most of the officers who were there”.
“Especially the blokes who were in those entry teams, there’s bugger all left, some have gone off sick and some have taken promotions, to get a desk job, some just got out.”
The hostages have also suffered lasting effects — with Louisa Hope saying her PTSD came on six years after the siege.
“It was much later for me, I was just grateful to be alive and was busy dealing with pain issues from my injuries when it was suggested I see a psychologist because of what I had been through.”
Ms Hope is forever grateful to fellow hostage Tori Johnson who was killed by the gunman that day, and says she got a few more years with her mum Robin, who has since passed because Mr Johnson bravely stayed to protect her.
While Ms Hope says she has tried to keep in touch with her fellow survivors — she even tried to start up a regular support group — many have chosen to keep to themselves, go their separate ways.
“I totally understand that some were so young, some have moved away and some would prefer privacy.”
Ms Hope now spends much of her time on her charity Louisa Hope Fund for Nurses which she started to show her gratitude for the staff at Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick where she spent months recovering from her injuries.
In August she started Victims of Terrorism Australia and is hoping Mr Besant will become involved and share his story.
In a good news story to come out of such horror, hostage and cafe worker Joel Herat fell in love with his co-worker Eunice Estaris, the pair bonding after their mentor Tori was killed by Monis.
In an exclusive interview with New Idea this year, Mr Herat said he had “come full circle”.
“Ten years on, having gone through it, survived it, and done all [of] these other amazing things that I’m proud of … And now, I’ve married the love of my life,” he said.
“I do feel I’ve come full circle in a sense,” Joel, 31, told New Idea in an exclusive interview on his wedding day.
Some of their workmates from Lindt witnessed their wedding in November last year.
Mr Johnson clearly had a lasting effect on those he met.
The day before the siege barista Harriette Denny, who was 14 weeks pregnant at the time of the hostage drama, had decided she was going to ask Mr Johnson to be godfather to her first child.
She said during a magazine interview in 2022 that she kept as quiet as she could during the hours of terror in order to protect her unborn baby, managing to escape after 2am, just minutes before police raided.
She has since had three children, admitting she is “more protective” as a parent as a result of the siege.
“I thought I’d be taking my children out everywhere, but unfortunately with my anxiety and my post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD], I have to plan every outing — how we get there, how long we’re going to stay, how we can leave — it is meticulous,” she said.
She told Women’s Day she tries to keep in touch with her fellow Lindt cafe co-workers, Jarrod Morton-Hoffman, Fiona Ma and Mr Herat, who is also her child’s godfather.
Mr Morton-Hoffman didn’t return to his job but continued his university studies, he told the inquest.
The youngest of the hostages, Mr Morton-Hoffman had graduated from Rose Bay Secondary College the year before the siege and was in his first year of an Arts degree at UTS and working part-time at the Lindt cafe when the siege took place.
Mr Morton-Hoffman emerged as a “quiet hero” who used various tricks to communicate secret messages to police during the siege.
Ms Hope remembers him fondly, and how he helped hostages escape and executed tactics to communicate secret messages to police, including passing hand-drawn cards under doors and emphasising certain words during phone calls the gunman forced him to make.
Paolo Vassalo, one of the first three hostages to escape the cafe, along with John O’Brien and barrister Stefan Balafoutis told the inquest he begged police to storm the cafe or someone would die.
The chef fled through the fire escape door from the cafe’s kitchen about six hours into the siege where heavily-armed police officers were waiting.
The father-of-two, who never returned to work at the cafe, said “Negotiation was non-existent, demands were not being met”.
Mr O’Brien, a former tennis international in the 1950s, has since said he was keen to get home because he had a sick wife and daughter who needed him.
He said the longer the siege went on, the more likely he thought Monis would get “trigger happy and blow us all up”.
“He was quite mad, dangerous, very dangerous,” Mr O’Brien said, describing the daring escape as the “the worst five seconds of my life”.
Mr Balafoutis returned to work as a barrister following the siege, having to come to terms with losing his friend and colleague Katrina Dawson.
Mr Balafoutis, then 40, had arranged to meet Ms Dawson and Julie Taylor inside the Martin Place cafe and the trio were sitting down for coffee when he heard Monis announce he had a bomb.
Ms Taylor, who was pregnant at the time of the siege, has since spoken of her heartbreak at losing Ms Dawson, her best friend and work colleague who died in the arms of Mr Besant after she was hit with stray police bullet fragments.
Ms Taylor said her friend, who was a mother of three, was “the most wonderful person I have ever met”.
“She was my closest friend, a role model and confidant,” she said in a statement. “Her bravery and strength was, and continues to be, a comfort and inspiration for me.”
The Katrina Dawson Foundation was established in December 2014 by Katrina’s family and former Governor General of Australia, The Honourable Dame Quentin Bryce AD, CVO in order to honour Katrina’s memory.
It gives scholarships for undergraduates to attend The Women’s College within the University of Sydney.
Ms Dawson’s brother, high-profile Sydney barrister Sandy Dawson SC, died eight years after the siege. He lost his fight against a brain tumour.
The inquest into the tragedy heard Elly Chen, who the gunman dubbed the “sick girl” because she vomited during the siege, returned to work at the cafe as soon as it re-opened.
Ms Chen, had worked at the cafe for just days before the siege.
Selina Win Pe told the inquest in 2016 how the “soul-destroying” siege has dramatically changed her life.
The former Westpac senior manager — who said she was told by the gunman she had 15 minutes to live and was still in the cafe when Tori Johnson was executed — did not return to her job.
In 2023 she released her memoir called “Untold Truths: A Journey to a Will of Courage”.
She reportedly said her book was her way of saying ‘thank you’ to each and every person who has had any positive influence on this extraordinary, deeply personal, completely life-changing and lifesaving journey.
Another Westpac employee, mother of three Marcia Mikhael, was hit by shrapnel in the crossfire when police opened fire on Monis. She was hiding under a table not far from Ms Dawson, who was fatally hit by bullet fragments.
Ms Mikhael told the inquest she asked officers to take Ms Dawson first, who wasn’t moving, but they took her first and carried her out over Monis’ dead body where she noticed his head was “blown out”, the memories of which still haunt her.
Puspendhu Ghosh gave brief testimony at the inquest but didn’t say how the siege had personally impacted them.
Jieun April Bae and Viswakanth Ankireddy did not testify at the inquest. At least one of them is reportedly overseas.
The scene of the tragedy is now a Dan Murphy’s wine cellar, where a central tasting table is adorned with flowers in memoriam.
No one claimed Monis’s body when it was released by the NSW Coroner, and he was subsequently buried in an undisclosed NSW location at state expense.
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Originally published as Lindt Cafe siege survivors: Where are they now?
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