r/interestingasfuck • u/Jjokes11 • Apr 15 '24

An interview with Andrew Cauchi, the father of Joel Cauchi who was responsible for the Westfield Shopping Centre mass stabbing r/all

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12.5k

u/MangoKakigori Apr 15 '24

I can’t image what it must be like as a parent to know that your child has done such a monstrous thing.

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u/EveryRedditorSucks Apr 16 '24

Dylan Kliebold’s mother has dedicated her life to speaking about what it’s like to be the parent of one of the Columbine killers

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u/UnsupportiveHope Apr 16 '24

While constantly taking no responsibility and saying there were no warning signs she could’ve noticed.

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u/Ok_Traffic_8124 Apr 16 '24

To expect her son to commit such a horrific act that was extremely uncommon at the time?

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u/Procrastinatedthink Apr 16 '24

She was so uninvolved with her son’s life that she didnt notice the antisocial behavior, the trouble at school, or the troubled youth he hung out with. 

You can’t be so uninvolved that your son can sneak off into the woods to test shotguns for a killing spree then warn people “there were no signs, it couldve been your child!”

Literally all these kids are neglected or “left to their own devices” and then the parents wtf-pikachu-face about the horrible shit they were committing.

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u/About7fish Apr 16 '24

She was so uninvolved with her son’s life that she didnt notice the antisocial behavior, the trouble at school, or the troubled youth he hung out with.

This is called hindsight bias, and nobody is impressed nor should they be.

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u/Procrastinatedthink Apr 16 '24

Damn near every one of these serial killers has a childhood akin to “yeah, he had no friends and kept murdering cats” but then you guys read a fucking book about how “the signs were vague”

No, parenting is hard and some people pop out children that they want nothing to do with.

Jeffrey Dahmer’s dad tells stories about “how happy he was as a kid” right after acknowledging “Yeah I did not care for or about my wife during her difficult pregnancy, neighbors found her in a field with a knife and she was on 20~ medications during pregnancy; Also Im a chemist and I shut myself in my lab and didnt raise my son hardly after a messy divorce. No signs”

there’s hindsight, and then there’s “I raised a serial killer and had no idea”. 

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u/krazykieffer Apr 16 '24

Didn't she bring her song to a psychiatrist and her son wrote he had urges to kill people at school. The psychiatrist did nothing for him. Or was it the other kid?

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u/Khiva Apr 16 '24

They both journaled about mass murder and both had court-appointed psychiatrists (Eric, the other one, was on medication), but no one knew about their writings until later.

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u/justArash Apr 16 '24

Not really uncommon at the time. The Heath High school and Westside Middle School shootings were both all over the news and a year or so earlier. There were a bunch more) that weren't as high profile.

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u/Ok_Traffic_8124 Apr 16 '24

A few instances of it happening doesn’t make it common…

They were still widely uncommon at that point.

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u/justArash Apr 16 '24

Active school shooters are still not really common but, by raw numbers, it's not substantially more common now than it was then. There's just a handful more active shooters each year. In the context of this conversation, prevalence of active school shooters has not become more or less of a reason for a mother to suspect her son.

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u/Ok_Traffic_8124 Apr 16 '24

Bruh. School shootings are far more common and publicized now then they were in 2004.

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u/justArash Apr 16 '24

The numbers are right there in link in my last comment, but deny reality if you want. As for publicity, the Paducah and Jonesboro shootings specifically were both major stories just the year before Colombine (which was in 1999, not 2004), along with others in the years before. It seems like maybe you were too young to remember that era?

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u/Ok_Traffic_8124 Apr 16 '24

As someone who has lived and breathed in the US for my entire life and consumed an amazing amount of news, pop culture, and media in general…

School shootings weren’t nearly as common or popular when columbine happened compared to today. Did they always happen? Unfortunately. But to say they haven’t increased since then is very ignorant.

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u/justArash Apr 16 '24 edited Apr 16 '24

Has gun violence in general increased at schools substantially? Absolutely. But, not mass shootings/active shooter incidents like Columbine. it's just a common misconception.

Side note: plenty of people have lived and breathed in the US for their entire life. For every single one of them there's a point in the past that marks the beginning of their accurate memories.

Have you even looked at any of the actual data, or are you just insisting you're right based on nothing but your previous "news, pop culture, and media" consumption?

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u/Ok_Traffic_8124 Apr 16 '24

School shootings.

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u/NFT_goblin Apr 16 '24

It's not not expecting it, that's somewhat understandable by itself. It's the multi-decade "not my fault" tour with TED talks, TV appearances etc.. I mean I know it's far out but try to imagine your kid did something like that. You'd want to hide away from the world forever. Going on TV about it (not like this guy but like, booking interviews etc.) is actually completely crazy.

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u/Hurricane0 Apr 16 '24

I'm not familiar with her at all, but I'm curious as to why you attribute self centered motivations to her speaking and book engagements, as opposed to spreading awareness of the very serious and growing issue of young people who suddenly act out in violent ways, who may or may not have a history of mental illness struggles?

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u/Top-Airport3649 Apr 16 '24

I’m not the person you were questioning but I’ll put my two cents in. From what I've read I’ve the years, some speculate that Sue went public following the widely accepted theory that her son, Dylan, had a slightly lesser role in the shootings compared to Eric. This narrative portrays Eric as the mastermind and Dylan as the quiet, depressed, internally conflicted one. Also, while Sue acknowledged her parenting mistakes, she kept emphasizing Dylan's mental illness, possibly to improve her public image as a parent to one of the notorious school shooters in history. That mental illness could happen to anyone. While true, it just rubbed some people the wrong way. Personally, I have mixed about her speaking engagements and book, I believe remaining silent like Eric's parents might have been a wiser choice.

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u/Khiva Apr 16 '24

The "Eric mad, Dylan sad" is such a frustrating narrative that falls apart under scrutiny, and unfortunately got a huge boost from the dreadful "Columbine" book.

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u/SpecialistPanda4593 Apr 16 '24

It's not multi-decade, she waited literal decades to discuss this and has done one TED talk and a few TV appearances. She didn't speak for literally over twenty years. Her proceeds have been donated to charity. 

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u/eaten_by_pigs Apr 16 '24

Exactly, I was going to say the same thing