Abbie Chatfield has shared her thoughts on the Bondi massacre in a one-hour podcast, condemning the incident as “violence against women”.
Queensland man Joel Cauchi, 40, stabbed 18 people – including 15 women and a nine-month-old baby girl – during a violent rampage at Westfield Bondi Junction on Saturday afternoon.
Five women and a male security guard died as a result of their injuries.
The massacre has rattled the nation, with women sharing their frustration and fear that the incident appears to have been a targeted attack on them despite police claiming there was no clear ideology driving the attacker.
Chatfield, a resident of neighbouring suburb Bondi Beach, released a special episode of her It’s A Lot Pod podcast on Wednesday morning to process her own feelings about the incident that she said hit “really f**king close to home”.
She said she was planning on visiting the Westfield that afternoon but had decided against it at the last minute.
Chatfield said she switched off from all media over the weekend and was still reeling over what she said was “one of the most horrific things she had ever heard of”.
However after a couple of days of processing, she said she felt compelled to discuss why this attack was so upsetting to her and other women in Australia.
“I do want to speak about mental health at a higher level and also about misogyny and how those two societal issues are not mutually exclusive,” she said.
Chatfield said society had allowed misogynistic behaviour to “fester everywhere” and a “very mentally unwell person” to hone in on this rhetoric.
“It was a f**king horrific storm that caused a man to violently attack women,” she said.
“Hating women is an ideology.
“It’s something that permeates so strongly throughout our society, particularly in Australia, this country that f**king hates women.”
NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb has said while investigators had yet to determine the killer’s motive, videos of the attack made it “obvious” that he was targeting women.
“The videos speak for themselves, don’t they?” she told ABC News Breakfast on Monday.
“It’s obvious to me, it’s obvious to detectives that it seems to be an area of interest that the offender focused on women and avoided the men.”
The Bondi massacre has been compared to a second mass-stabbing event that took place at a Christian church in Sydney’s southwest on Monday night in which a teenage boy allegedly stabbed two priests.
The incident was declared a “terrorist act” by police due to the religious motivations of the alleged offender.
However, speaking on Today on Wednesday morning, Premier Chris Minns said the reason for declaring it a terrorist incident was to unlock greater police powers to investigate.