Ariel Bombara spoke out about her interactions with WA Police in the weeks before her father killed two women and himself. In response, WA Police will be conducting an internal investigation.
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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