Opinion
My daughter was killed in the Bondi Junction attack. How my family found out is shameful
By Elizabeth Young
In the aftermath of my daughter Jade’s murder at Westfield Bondi Junction, so many in our community have risen to the occasion to provide support for our family. The real test of an individual or an organisation is how they handle a crisis. Most passed with flying colours.
The same cannot be said of some media and social media outlets. The family of Ash Good had to put out a statement asking media to stop sharing photographs that were adding another layer to their pain: “Overnight we have been shocked by some media publications reproducing photographs of Ashlee, her partner and our baby girl without our consent. It has caused extreme distress amongst Ashlee’s loved ones and we request that the photos be taken down.”
Elizabeth Young holding a photo of her daughter Jade, who was killed in the Bondi Junction attack.
On the evening of Saturday, April 13, members of my family recognised Jade and her husband Noel in uncensored vision being played on a mainstream TV news feed, with vision of Jade lying on the ground at the shopping centre, receiving CPR. The vision, shared on social media and picked up – and used by – multiple news media programs shared my daughter’s final moments with millions.
Finding out that a loved one has been murdered is a horror that I do not wish on anyone. But seeing the vision of their last moments and knowing it has been broadcast to millions of people is an appalling breach of privacy and an insult to human dignity.
It is profoundly alienating to realise that our family’s very private grief was being commodified and turned into casual content. Why anyone with an ounce of humanity would think such an image was appropriate to capture and share, I cannot fathom. I point my finger at the individual for seeing fit to capture the moment and then sharing it, and the mainstream channel for putting it to air.
We are scraping the bottom of the barrel of humanity when images of dead, or dying or injured people are shared to air. For what reason? I can only think it is to satisfy the increasingly morbid curiosity of society.
Some of those same media organisations approached our family within hours of the attack, offering their condolences … and the opportunity to share our family’s story. These same media organisations reported the failure of a certain popular social media platform to take down videos, without acknowledging their own complicity. I am not surprised at their hypocrisy, but I am angry.
Yes, I acknowledge I am utilising the mainstream media to have my voice heard now.
Social media has enabled all of us to share words, images and video with an ease never experienced before. But without respect for legal or moral boundaries, this ease can bring down a maelstrom on unsuspecting individuals.
The social media platform in question offered its condolences (placatory words with no meaning behind them) to those affected by the Bondi Junction murders and the stabbing of a bishop that occurred days later, at the same time accusing the eSafety commissioner of being the Australian censorship commissar.
In the immediate aftermath of Saturday, April 13, a date I will expunge from my calendar, misinformation ran rampant, leading to an innocent young man being identified as the perpetrator. This young man will forever be associated with one of Australia’s most savage attacks, marked forever.
Sharing violent images or personal material from the lives of victims of crime is not free speech – it is enormously profitable for some but it’s speech with a steep price for the victims.
Those who run social media platforms are remote from the pain inflicted by their uploads and the dystopia they have helped create. It is the victims who bear the cost.
As I said in my eulogy for my beautiful daughter, I am scared for the future of her daughters who live amid widespread use and abuse of social media.
Have we become a nation of voyeurs fed by powerful uncontrolled media?
I hope not.
Elizabeth Young is the mother of Jade Young, who was killed in the Westfield Bondi Junction attack.