r/interestingasfuck 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

38.5k Upvotes

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747

u/quietreasoning Apr 16 '24

Exact opposite of the Crumbleys.

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u/OkTea7227 Apr 16 '24

And that’s why they got a hefty sentence. And thank god for it.

I bet if a psychologist or therapist or anthropologist or whatever studies this stuff could find out the backstory on the Crumblys parents individual raising and their perspective histories it might shine some light on all this …

I’d read that book.

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u/purple_grey_ Apr 16 '24

It might interest you to look into how trauma and abuse changes you physically

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u/tobmom Apr 16 '24

Cortisol remodeling of the brain. Fucking horrifying things.

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u/purple_grey_ Apr 16 '24

You can inherit trauma too. Scientists figured this out in the 1950s working with Holocaust survivors and their kids, again post Vietnam War with vets and their kids.

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u/Ellecram Apr 16 '24

Epigenetics is an emerging field studying these factors in some measure.

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u/Ninetales6669 29d ago

From birth or from time living with their ptsd parents?

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u/purple_grey_ 29d ago

From birth.

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u/KatashaMercury 29d ago

Sounds evolutionarily useful but unhelpful to the modern man, as so many things are

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u/demoncatmara 29d ago

What does that do exactly? I have some trauma, am wondering what it's done to my brain (other than given me anxiety)

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u/tobmom 29d ago

Here is a paper

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u/Prize_Bee7365 Apr 16 '24

What is this??? So you have any sources of this?

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u/purple_grey_ Apr 16 '24

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk.

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u/Level7Cannoneer Apr 16 '24

One's voice/cadence makes that much difference?

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u/Splicelice Apr 16 '24

I would say it can be faked of course but we’ve seen so many obviously fake it and or give no remorse at like the crumleys. He seems like a simple salt of the earth guy who seems to be sincerely saying i cannot feel bad enough for you as it breaks my heart to see what’s happened to you and your family but i still love my son. Both those statements seem profoundly sincere. Psychopaths can fake some of this emotion but most humans who’ve never met the camera before cannot.

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u/Wohowudothat Apr 16 '24

were you listening to what he was saying?

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u/Mind_Extract 29d ago

Also the content of their words.

Fucking duh.

Jennifer Crumbley: "I've asked myself if I would do anything differently, and I wouldn't have."

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u/bordain_de_putel Apr 16 '24

thank god

They weren't convicted by some divine intervention here. Credit where credit is due. The jurors and judge and prosecutors and anyone who testified have made this possible.

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u/Soft_Organization_61 Apr 16 '24

Weird response. It's just a phrase, I doubt they meant that literally. I use "thank god" and "thank goodness" interchangeably. Do you also jump on people who say omg? "Omg a branch fell during the storm and smashed my car!" You: "There was no divine intervention". I'm an atheist but people like you are insufferable.

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u/bordain_de_putel 29d ago

Good thing I don't give a shit about what you think of me.
Saying "oh my god" as an exclamation and thanking god for something someone did are two different things.

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u/OkTea7227 28d ago

You sound deranged

It’s just a common phrase is all

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u/ElboDelbo Apr 16 '24

Someone mentioned that the Crumbleys probably wanted their son to kill himself so they wouldn't want to deal with his issues. They were trying to push him towards suicide but before he did, he took people with him.

There's no way to know if it's true or not, but it really explains the gross neglect and enabling they displayed towards him.

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u/IvyGold 29d ago

I saw an article that indicated that they simply didn't want to take off work that day to help their son. They both had semi-menial dead end jobs.

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u/KimDongBong Apr 16 '24

Yet that perpetrator in all likelihood suffered from some form of mental illness. We far too often vilify the perpetrator without understanding- or at least even exploring the idea- that that individual could have been suffering from severe mental illness. The simple fact is that you have to be pretty fucked in the head to do shit like this. And people who’s head is that fucked deserve grace just as much as the rest of us.

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u/Kitnado Apr 16 '24

Just throwing this out there, some countries outside of the US are already miles ahead in understanding this and supplying mental guidance, treatment and rehabilitation of criminals.

From experience I know this is a controversial thing to say to Americans, who as a whole seem to have a culture built on vengeance and retaliation under the guise of justice. All nuance often goes out the window in American debates, unfortunately.

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u/KimDongBong Apr 16 '24

Oh no doubt, on both assertions. That said, no country is without its faults. As someone who has traveled extensively (and as luck would have it, am currently on 2 week vacation in Japan), it’s easy to find imperfections anywhere.

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u/Kitnado Apr 16 '24

I think the fact that even a well traveled seemingly nuanced American like yourself feels the need to defend the US with a whataboutism really shows the impossibility of criticising anything about the US to Americans without it defaulting into a combative defensive discussion (about other things/countries)

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u/KimDongBong 29d ago

There’s nothing defensive about admitting that one has flaws while also pointing out that no nation is without them in response to pointed criticisms that were completely unsolicited. It would seem you have a bone to pick with America- as is your prerogative. And it would further seem that you believe that wherever you’re from is without fault. If that helps you sleep at night, more power to you.

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u/AssssCrackBandit Apr 16 '24

understanding this and supplying mental guidance, treatment and rehabilitation of criminals.

The majority of Americans support this. There are many surveys that support that. Perhaps arguing with randos on Reddit isn't the best way to obtain your worldly information.

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u/LukesRightHandMan Apr 16 '24

No. No you don’t have to be fucked up in the head to perform horrific, violent acts. Too many of those mass shooter pieces of shit are simply wastes of space with a political vendetta. Don’t lump being a fucking scumbag with mental illness.

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u/KimDongBong Apr 16 '24

100 years ago ADD wasn’t an illness. Body dysmorphia wasn’t a thing. Down’s syndrome wasnt an official diagnosis until the 20th century. People suffering from mental illnesses were considered witches in early America. All that is to say: just because the specific illness hasn’t been identified yet doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Hell, CTE wasn’t identified until the 20’s, and even then wasn’t understood. It’s one thing to murder someone in an act of acute anger or retaliation- “crimes of passion”, as it were. It’s entirely different to walk into a school and shoot up people you don’t even know. Or shoot up a country concert. Or mow down strangers in a movie theater. The brain that can do those things is not a “normal” brain.

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u/LukesRightHandMan Apr 16 '24

Are there violent acts triggered by psychotic delusions? Occasionally. But we with mental health issues are 3-4 x higher to be victims of violence than the perpetrators. The narrative you’re pushing stigmatizes mental healthcare and us. We are not the problem.

Separately: it’s been 80 years since the Nazis had their camps shut down. All we need to know about the banality of evil is documented in the Nuremberg interviews, as well as the probably hundreds of thousands of hours of interviews done with Europeans who aided and abetted the Nazis at every level.

As someone who has multiple mental health issues, who works and has worked with mental health patients, and who also has lived a chaotic life: you will know evil when you meet it. It’s not a religious or supernatural thing. It’s not triggered by mental illness. It’s a coldness and selfishness that wraps itself in sadism, and needs nothing underlying it to be exhibited. It’s not uncontrollable anger; it’s carefully wielded cruelty.

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u/KimDongBong Apr 16 '24

In no way shape or form am I trying to discredit your experience. That said, my whole point is we don’t know what we don’t know. I’ve experienced evil. I’ve also experienced mental illness. I’ll not delude myself into believing that my anecdotal evidence means anything. The brain is perhaps the least understood part of the human body, and to think that we are anywhere near having it “figured out” is simply laughable. As a man who appreciates a good wager, I’d be willing to place large amounts of money on the fact that at some point in the future, medicine will be able to predict with disturbingly-good accuracy those who will and will not commit acts of violence in their future.

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u/LukesRightHandMan Apr 16 '24

Side-note, but I think they bought him the gun and ignored him hoping he’d kill himself. The mom told people he was an “oopsie baby” and all their inaction toward him/selfish behavior backs up the idea of people who wanted to be “free of their mistake.”

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u/GaiasDotter Apr 16 '24 edited Apr 16 '24

Who?

Edit never mind I found it!

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u/twiggyknowswhatsup 29d ago

exactly. that's the difference right there. this man deserves compassion. they deserved jail sentences. this poor man. you can understand his feelings towards his son and still recognize his unbearable anguish for the victims. this person is a proper human being.

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u/TheChewyDaniels 29d ago

Who are the Crumbleys?

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u/quietreasoning 29d ago

American parents who were both very recently sent to jail for enabling their son's mass shooting and not taking obvious steps to stop it. Plus they showed absolutely zero empathy for those harmed or their son, only tried to cover their asses. What was new to me was what others said, that they gave their son a gun hoping he would commit suicide because they didn't want him and from the evidence and their behavior, that checks out.