00:00I'd like to start by saying how truly, deeply sorry I am to Liesl Patelchus for the loss
00:05of her beautiful mother Jenny and her sister Gretel, losses she has suffered at the hands
00:11of my father's violence.
00:13My mother and I fled our family home on March 28 in fear of our lives and to remove ourselves
00:18from an abusive situation.
00:22Between March 30th and April 2nd, I spoke with police on three separate occasions to
00:28raise the alarm about my father.
00:31On each occasion, I alerted officers to my father's guns and told them my mother and
00:36I felt there was a real and imminent threat to our lives.
00:41I specifically mentioned that there was a Glock handgun which was unaccounted for.
00:46My understanding is this ultimately would be one of the weapons that my father used
00:50to take the lives of two innocent women.
00:54I also asked the police if we would be able to take out a 72-hour temporary protective
00:59order.
01:00We were told no and that there was nothing police could do about the situation at the
01:03time.
01:06On April 2nd, my mother and I were given a police escort to our home to collect some
01:11belongings.
01:12This was the third occasion we warned police about my father's guns.
01:18An officer said, oh don't worry, we know all about the guns and when he called for
01:23backup, he warned his fellow officers to wear bulletproof vests.
01:28We were ignored by five different male officers across three occasions of reporting.
01:34By that point, we felt completely helpless and I had to focus on getting mum to safety.
01:41I did everything I could to protect my mother and when my father couldn't find us, he murdered
01:47her best friend and her best friend's daughter.
01:50I did read a statement from Ariel Bombara about her thoughts on the interactions with
01:56police some seven weeks earlier when she and her mother were leaving the family home.
02:06I have asked that our internal investigations unit conduct an investigation into the three
02:13interactions that Ariel speaks of with our police officers.
02:19That investigation will determine what was done, what was said and what police responses
02:29were decided on at the time with the information that they had at the time.
02:35Domestic violence is a hard process to go through, sexual violence is a hard process
02:39to go through in any justice system.
02:41I know that's what the Attorney-Generals around the country are working on because
02:46All too often we see tragedies like women being murdered in our community and nothing
02:52being reported for years and years and years.
02:56And I think us as a community have to ask ourselves, why is that?
02:59Why don't people feel like they can come forward?
03:01How can we make it better for people to come forward and to report these incidents early
03:06to take out family violence restraining orders so we can take action quickly?
03:16For more UN videos visit www.un.org
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