I totally agree. I think the perpetrator is the only one at fault ,not the fact that the adults left a door open.
Jeez in my small town in Australia our school “fence” is less than a metre high with multiple unmonitored gates, at least 8 entry points I can think of (off the top of my head), only two of which lock, and the community library is also on the grounds, so open to the public pretty much any time.
Blaming the door being open/unlocked is just absurd - I understand wanting to minimise hazards and when small children are involved (toddlers-4 year olds probably) I’d prefer a closed/locked door to avoid escapees, but the thought of my almost 6 year old having to exist in a world inside only locked buildings and behind fences just makes me feel so desperately sad.
After the Bondi junction attack (similar in a lot of ways to this one) a few things came out about the attacker, unmedicated schizophrenia for one, and I wonder whether similar facts will come out about this person too. Some people do awful things regardless of course, I just have a lot of feelings about that attack and this is just as horrific and appears to be just as targeted at women and children, if not more so.
*** Also big disclaimer: In no way do I think schizophrenia or any mental illness is solely to blame for attacks like this, nor do I believe that every sufferer of schizophrenia/psychosis/Mental ill health is likely to be violent, or capable of violence like this. It is just one aspect that needs to be considered. ***
I know it probably violates 100 human rights principles and privacy laws but my god, if I suffered from an illness that increased my risk of developing psychosis or delusions that may invoke me to respond by harming others, I’d give anything to be permanently medicated for that illness despite any side effect. I suffer from a few MH conditions and ADHD, I deeply understand how much it sucks to go through the nausea, weight gain/loss, fatigue, brain fog, sleeplessness, loss of libido and a bevy of other side effects that come with some of the medications I’m on. What I do believe is that if you do suffer severely from one of these conditions, especially if you’ve proven violent tendencies, to live in the community unsupervised you should be assessed by a psychiatrist maybe quarterly, and appropriately medicated on a permanent basis. (And if not, choose to live in some kind of supervised setting.)
I know I’d rather have an injection a few times a year or take a tablet every day with monitoring, than to come out of a psychotic episode and find I’d inflicted life changing harm upon someone else.
We can do it with hormonal birth control (one injection of Depo provera lasts 3 months for example) so surely something could be developed for illnesses like this.
It is cruel and discriminatory and all of those things, but is it more or less cruel than a 6 year old being slaughtered at a f*ing dance class?
Is it more or less cruel than the image of a young mother in a shopping center desperately shoving her bleeding infant daughter into the arms of a stranger for help as she dies of her own stab wounds, not knowing her baby would survive?
People deserve to live in a society that is safe to the extent we can make it so, and the criminal/legal system is no use until something terrible happens. It’s not like it acts as a deterrent, especially not if some kind of psychosis or delusion is at play.
Governments need to divert serious funds to MH support and massively increase the accessibility of professionals and inpatient facilities, but in the meantime, surely some kind of solution to lessening the amount of random, extremely violent attacks undertaken by people with serious issues living totally unchecked in the community just has to be looked at doesn’t it?? Locking a door on a hot day isn’t going to cut it.
IMO etc of course
