Ariel Bombara, the daughter of Floreat double murderer Mark Bombara, has delivered an extraordinary account of living under "persistent dread" from her dictatorial and abusive father and denounced the heavy burden women carry for men's violence because of a system that does not protect them.
WARNING: This story contains details that may distress some readers
Ms Bombara delivered a speech recounting the terrifying lead-up to her father's killing of Jennifer Petelczyc and her 18-year-old daughter Gretl in Floreat in May, and the deep and widespread impact of his horrific act of violence and preceding years of coercive control.
Hundreds of people listened in the Perth CBD as she made her powerful and emotional speech at the 34th March Against Domestic and Family Violence.
A heavy burden
Ms Bombara told those gathered of her survivors' guilt, saying for the rest of her life she would question her decision to convince her mother to leave her father and wonder what more she could have done to stop him.
"Hating myself for never considering that he would kill other people if he couldn't find us," she said.
"It's a heavy burden women carry blaming themselves for men's violence. An utterly unfair, twisted weight we feel because the system doesn't protect us and puts the onus on women to manage men's behaviour rather than holding perpetrators accountable.
"We weren't the ones to pick up that gun, yet we must live the rest of our lives paying for his crimes."
Ms Bombara has previously said she contacted police on three separate occasions to warn them of the "real and imminent threat" her father posed.
She said they were repeatedly ignored and repeatedly failed, costing the lives of "two incredible women".
Ms Bombara and her mother had fled her father and, after eight weeks trying to escape him, were finally living in a new apartment.
"During that time, we were gaslit, told we were overreacting, crazy, but my father would never physically hurt us," she said.
Then, her father came looking for them.
'I stood there powerless'
Ms Petelczyc was her mother's best friend. Bombara went to Ms Petelczyc's Floreat home looking for his wife and daughter and when he could not find them, murdered Ms Petelczyc and her daughter Gretl.
He then turned the gun on himself.
In her speech on Monday, Ms Bombara recounted those moments in detail.
Her mother received a call from Ms Petelczyc.
"We heard Jenny telling her 18-year-old daughter, Gretl, to go hide," Ms Bombara said.
He didn't believe Ms Bombara and her mother were not there.
Loading...
"We heard Jenny say, 'Mark, put the gun away', and I remember the ice-cold shot of adrenaline and the sound that escaped my mouth akin to that of someone who's been kicked in the gut," she said.
"It was the knowledge that after eight weeks of meticulous safety planning, eight weeks of predicting and staying ahead of his behaviour in the most terrifying game of cat and mouse, he was about to do everything we thought he was going to do to us, to somebody else."
Those were the last words she heard Ms Petelczyc say, as she then frantically called triple zero.
"I heard mum scream, and then she was wailing," she said.
"The last thing mum heard was two gunshots before the phone went dead. I stood there powerless, watching her in shock as her wails filled our empty apartment, laden with the pain of someone who's just heard their abusive husband murder their best friend."
Ms Bombara told the crowd what it was like for her and her family to live with her father, saying his abuse and coercive control meant her mother was essentially "a slave to this man for 35 years".
"My father was a dictator, and his coercive and controlling behaviours were constant," she said.
"He was a master manipulator who would twist her words and gaslight her until she couldn't trust her own mind.
"He kept her isolated from friends and family."
Ms Bombara recounted how she had unsuccessfully tried to get WA Police to take any action to protect her family back in March.
"I fought for eight weeks against every person that tried to convince us we were overreacting," she said.
"The police who dismissed us, the people who said, 'oh, but he doesn't rape you or hit you, so it can't be that bad'.
"All I can ask is, do you believe me now?"
'System reform'
Police have been conducting an internal investigation into their response to issues raised by Ms Bombara and her mother.
WA Police Deputy Commissioner Allan Adams also addressed the march.
He acknowledged police did not always get it right, "and on occasions we're involved in incidents that have gone tragically wrong".
But he added there was some hope from the "system reform" now underway in police response to family and domestic violence, including improving communications between police and frontline family and domestic violence workers.
The Minister for Prevention of Family and Domestic Violence Sabine Winton also took to the stage, praising the courage and inspiration of Ms Bombara and other lived experience speakers.
"We know that almost 30 per cent of women have experienced violence or abuse by a partner and those statistics are unacceptable," Ms Winton said.
Monday marks the start of the 16 Days in WA campaign, to stop violence against women.
The minister gave an account of the work done by the Family and Domestic Violence Taskforce to improve and strengthen responses.
Ms Winton said the government would soon announce the members of a lived experience advisory group, a key ask of a summit on domestic violence last year.
"So that we can ensure that victims and survivors ... have a real voice on the policies and systems that impact on them," she said.
Ms Winton defended the fact WA had still not criminalised coercive control, unlike other states, but said the government had "committed" to doing so.
In September, the Cook government launched a two-year campaign to help West Australians understand coercive control.
"We will do it in a staged way," Ms Winton said.
"We will do it in a way where we will know we will get results by criminalising it, and we will also make sure that when we introduce it that we don't further put at risk victim-survivors."
Loading
