The club that no-one wants to belong to
From Port Arthur to Sandy Hook, Dunblane to Pittsburgh, mass shootings leave deep wounds that stay with the survivors and communities. Marty Sharpe looks at what happens in the weeks, months and years after the vigils stop and the media packs up.
‘‘Our community has really focused on the healing, on giving back, and volunteering, because people feel like they have made a difference and that is very powerful.’’
Christine Hunschofsky Mayor of Parkland, Florida
Aman, a gun and evil intent. It’s a perilous combination that has wrought misery and irrevocable pain in cities, towns and communities across the world.
Christchurch is the latest member of the ‘‘club that nobody wants to belong to’’.
It won’t be the last, and it will soon be among those others that have endured and continued despite the hideousness that called on them.
This week Stuff spoke to some of those who have been here before: the Pittsburgh rabbi starting a morning service when a gunman stormed in and killed 11 worshippers; the priest who buried 5-year-olds shot dead at a Scottish school; the library clerk at Sandy Hook Elementary School who hid 18 kids in a closet as a gunman killed 26 pupils and staff; the woman who swam 500 metres to avoid the bullets that claimed 77 others at a Norwegian youth camp; the Florida mayor whose friends lost children at the shooting in a local high school; and the Tasmanian woman whose goddaughter was among the 35 killed at Port Arthur.
These are their words to the people of Christchurch and New Zealand.
‘You can just love them and listen to their stories’
Father Basil O’Sullivan conducted the funerals of several of the 16 children killed at Dunblane primary school in Scotland on the morning of March 13, 1996. He continues to comfort the families of all the children and one teacher slain, and still holds masses every anniversary.
‘‘You never forget. As one of the parents said to me as I was burying his child, ‘You have no choice, you have to go on’. We’re a small country town. We were traumatised for a year. Nothing much happened.
‘‘The whole town shut down, if you like. You’d go to the supermarket and there was silence. You could see people’s faces were drawn. But gradually time healed and life moved on. But we never forget that morning,’’ he says.
Words are hopeless in these situations. ‘‘You can just love them and listen to their stories. And hug them. That’s about all you can do. There’s nothing you can say to a parent who’s lost their child. In [the Christchurch] case, they’d have lost a loved one in the mosque.
‘‘You can just hug them and love them. The Muslims will be praying for each other just as we did as Christians,’’ O’Sullivan says.
‘‘The best remedy was the bereaved parents themselves and their ministering to one another. They formed a very tight group and met regularly for many years. They’re the only ones who can truly understand it. They’re the ones who dropped their children off at 5 to 9 and who found they were dead within half an hour. No-one else could understand that.
‘‘I read about your prime minister saying she wouldn’t speak the shooter’s name. We’re the same. We don’t like to mention his name. We’ve no control of course when it comes on television, but noone likes to mention his name or see his face on TV. I completely applaud your prime minister. Especially when he [the accused] is still alive. Ours, of course, shot himself.’’
‘There is no playbook’
Mary Ann Jacob was working in the library at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Connecticut, on December 14, 2012, when a gunman entered the school and killed 20 children and six teachers.
‘‘Like you will be discovering in New Zealand, there’s no playbook that tells you what to do in the aftermath of a tragedy of this magnitude,’’’ she says.
‘‘We learnt so many things. First of all, the greatest comfort survivors get in the aftermath of something like this is from other survivors from similar situations, and being with each other. Because nobody else really understands what it’s like to live through that sort of thing.
‘‘We find ourselves as part of this club that nobody wants to belong to. A community like yours, and ours, is forever changed.
‘‘What we’ve learnt is that everyone’s journey is very different. Regardless of where you were physically, it affects the whole community. Six years later we’re still recovering. The people of Christchurch will be in the same position.
‘‘We’ve developed lifelong friendships with the people of Columbine and other mass shootings and tragedies because they were able to talk to us at a time when we were drowning and couldn’t imagine what it would be like in six months or a year. They spoke about the journey and how they managed it. Being able to talk to someone who understood it made such a difference.
‘‘There’s always the weight of the tragedy that will be part of who you are. Sometimes it’s heavier, sometimes it’s lighter. In those first weeks after the tragedy no-one went out for dinner in our restaurants, no-one got their nails done, no-one could function.
‘‘Eventually, just by putting one foot in front of the other, you start realising you can have windows of happiness and joy and there are things you don’t feel guilty about. That takes a different amount of time for different people.
‘‘Are there times when it still brings me to my knees? Yes, there are. But is it every day? No. I used to cry in the shower every day for six months. I don’t do that any more.’’
The school is still visited several times a week by people wanting to see where the tragedy occurred. Among them are the conspiracy theorists, who say there was no shooting, that the people claiming to have had children at the school were lying, that it’s been fabricated by anti-gun groups.
‘‘What the victims in Christchurch will find out is that they do not have control of this story any more,’’ Jacob says.
‘‘There will be conspiracy theories, which I’m sure have already started. I can’t imagine if my loved one died that way turning on the TV and unexpectedly seeing a story about it again six years later, or seeing a flash of my daughter’s funeral, or reading a book – an innocent fiction book – with a passage about it. You just don’t have control over it.
‘‘We don’t mention the shooter’s name here. We don’t talk about him. We’re going to talk about the tragedy, not him. The press has caught on to it. They write articles that don’t include the name or image of the gunman because one of the things they know about these crazy guys is that other crazy guys emulate them.
‘‘The more you make the story about them, the more heroic they become to other people who want to do this. It’s part of the whole sickness.’’
Settling on a site and design for a memorial is fraught with difficulty, says Jacob. That’s one thing she wants New Zealand to be prepared for. ‘‘It’s been six years of painful discussion for us because even among victims’ families they do not agree what should happen.
‘‘We’ve finally decided, through a pretty good process, on where the memorial is going to be and what it’s going to be. Now we’re in the process of raising the money to create that memorial.
‘‘I would encourage the people of Christchurch to talk to us about how that happened in Sandy Hook, because I think that’s one of the things we did do well. But it’s still super painful.
‘‘I would say to the victims and survivors that we, the Sandy Hook community, are here to support you in any way we can. We know you’re in for a hard, long, difficult road and if there’s any way we can help make that road a little smoother, we will do that for you.’’
‘Something like that wouldn’t happen here’
The mayor of Parkland, in Florida, Christine Hunschofsky, had just arrived at her home across the road from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14 last year when a lone gunman entered the grounds and killed 14 students and three staff members. Several of her friends’ children were killed.
Just 13 months on and the city of 24,000 people, ‘‘which barely anyone in even Florida knew about’’ beforehand, is still a long way from coming to terms with that day.
‘‘This kind of event completely shatters people’s sense of safety and security,’’ Hunschofsky says. ‘‘It was always ‘something like that wouldn’t happen here’ and then it does. There is a lot of trauma around knowing the people who were killed and around knowing that maybe you’re not as safe as you think you are, and being faced with that in a very real and immediate way.
‘‘I always say we weren’t as safe as we thought we were before February 14, but I don’t think we’re as unsafe as we feel we are at times after February 14 either.’’
If Hunschofsky could say anything to the people of Christchurch it would be: ‘‘Don’t underestimate the ongoing effects of trauma.
‘‘Because a lot of problems come from trauma that’s unaddressed. Everybody grieves differently and something like this reopens any previous trauma you might have had. Everybody deals with it in different ways.
‘‘The people I see who’ve done the trauma therapy and really worked on it, it doesn’t mean they don’t ever have their moments, but they recognise it and learn skills to help manage it. The ones who haven’t addressed it – you definitely see the difference.
‘‘Some people thought they were fine and it wasn’t until months later that they started exhibiting signs of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. You see it coming, whether it be through anger, heightened anxiety, sleeplessness, issues with eating . . . you see all those sorts of things.
‘‘As we got close to the one-year mark I started to see some of the behaviours exhibited that I’d seen immediately after the shootings. It was almost like the one-year mark was bringing people’s memories back and reopened a lot of those wounds.
‘‘Some people still have a hard time and can’t talk about it. But there are many people who do talk about it. It’s something we deal with every day. Everyone is going to work through it in their own way.
‘‘I’d encourage people to reserve judgment on themselves and to allow time to work through it and
allow others to work through it in their own time frame.
‘‘Some have found release through the arts, some have used the therapy dogs. Some have used equine therapy. Everyone finds what will help them.’’
Also not to be underestimated, says Hunschofsky, is the healing power of giving.
‘‘When I think back on how far we have come, in many ways there is always a long way to go, but our community has really focused on the healing, on giving back, and volunteering, because people feel like they have made a difference and that is very powerful.
‘‘What people don’t understand is that there were hundreds of students in that building who watched their friends or their teachers get shot and killed. Everyone who was in that building that day – and there were hundreds of them – had to walk over dead bodies in order to get out. I think people think of the number, 17, and they don’t acknowledge the ripple effects in the community. They are just incredible and completely underestimated outside of the community.’’
‘Some people still can’t deal with helicopters’
April will mark the 23rd anniversary of Tasmania’s Port Arthur shooting.
Among the 35 killed that day was Roseanne Heyward’s 27-yearold goddaughter Elizabeth Howard.
Heyward, who lives near the historic penal colony, is a frequent visitor to the memorial garden and pond for the shooting victims.
‘‘There is still, 23 years down the track, people with issues about what happened that day,’’ she says. ‘‘Everybody is different. What works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for everyone else.
‘‘There were a lot of social workers and psychologists . . . down here after the shooting. Some people wanted the social workers to go away. They didn’t want to see them. But other people needed it. So it’s very hard to have a blanket fix because everybody’s different.
‘‘That’s what makes it really hard.
‘‘I’m one of those people who was shocked and will never forget it, and I will never forget Lizzie or the other 34 victims. But I’m one of those people who gets on. I didn’t need support or help. I’ve coped, but I’ll never forget that day or the victims.
‘‘We have Martin Bryant still alive in our jail. Many people ask why the police didn’t shoot him on the day. But everyone wanted to know why it was Martin Bryant and we still don’t know why. He was just a very mentally deranged young man.
‘‘Every time something happens, like Christchurch, it comes up again. Just a few moments ago I was driving and the radio announcer called the mosque shootings ‘New Zealand’s Port Arthur moment’. The same will happen in Christchurch. Every time there is something like this in a mosque there will be commentary around what happened in Christchurch.’’
Heyward worries about the video recording made by the alleged Christchurch gunman and the effect it will have in future, because she saw first hand the impact that something similar had on Elizabeth’s late mother Nancy, who is buried alongside her at St Albans church.
‘‘There were some recordings of the Port Arthur shooting. I remember Nancy used to listen to a video and she knew which numbered shot killed Lizzie. It’s terrible and it will never go away.’’
Some still recoil at the sound of a helicopter, she says. ‘‘That’s what does it. There are staff at the site who still can’t deal with helicopters flying over the site because it brings back memories of that day.
‘‘Anyone can go to the memorial. It’s a beautifully designed native garden and reflection pond. It’s hard to do anything quickly afterwards in terms of a memorial. It can’t be a knee-jerk reaction. You need to let it settle and slowly, slowly see what sort of memorial you want.
‘‘Some of the community haven’t healed. Some have, and they move on. This is where it’s so difficult. Some people want to acknowledge the terrible event but want to just get up and on with the rest of their life. Others like to dwell on it.
‘‘People visiting Christchurch in five years’ time will think about what happened there, but not like the people who live there think about it.’’
‘A new normal’
It’s been less than five months since a gunman entered the Tree of Life synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighbourhood of Pittsburgh and killed 11 worshippers and injured seven others in the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in United States history.
Rabbi Jeffrey Myers was leading the morning service on October 27 when the gunman opened fire.
‘‘We are adapting to what I call a new normal that is still being defined,’’ he says. ‘‘The continuous outpouring of love and support from around the world has been so very healing.
‘‘Our healing can only go so far until we return to our true home in the Tree of Life, so the displacement is an impediment towards a full healing.
‘‘What makes Squirrel Hill so unique and special is that the love, care and concern expressed by all residents was present before October 27, 2018, and remains a stellar characteristic of this community.’’
Myers says the massacre in Christchurch has been one of the most disturbing events for his congregation to deal with.
‘‘I hope that you will learn that the entire world is made of good, decent, caring people, and that the actions of one person cannot be the sole defining characteristic of what it means to be a human being. Just as we continue to be enveloped in love, so too will you, and we share that love with you to let you know that together we will heal.’’
‘I don’t think we’ve learnt’
Kamzy Gunaratnam swam 500 metres to avoid the bullets of Anders Breivik on July 22, 2011.
Breivik killed 77 people that day, of whom 69 had, like Gunaratnam, been attending the Labour Party summer camp on the island of Utoya, near Oslo, Norway.
Nearly eight years on and much of the world might think the massacre, born as it was of Rightwing extremism, would have forever altered the country’s political landscape, in a positive way.
Gunaratnam, now Oslo’s deputy mayor, says it hasn’t. If anything, things are now worse than they were before that day.
‘‘We were so united after the 22nd of July. All the political parties, everybody, came together. And that’s a good thing. The prime minister at the time was able to unite a whole nation, and not only those who sympathised with the Labour Party.
‘‘Everyone let their feelings out and we spoke freely about it.
‘‘But we didn’t really confront the idea behind the attack. And we’re still not confronting it, because the vast majority is talking about it as if it could have happened anywhere. But it didn’t happen anywhere.
‘‘It wasn’t a coincidence where the attack occurred. It was a targeting of the government building in the centre of Oslo and a summer camp for youth because they were the future of the Labour Party.
‘‘Just because police acknowledge Right-wing extremism as one of the biggest threats doesn’t mean people acknowledge and relate that to 22nd of July and remember it as an act of extremism.
‘‘I think the vast majority want to think of it as an attack, period. They talk about it as a ‘lone wolf’ event, not the Right-wing ideology that drove it.
‘‘To call someone a ‘lone wolf’ with no evidence is just an excuse to not confront the larger issue,’’ Gunaratnam says.
‘‘I don’t think we’ve learnt. Neither the politicians or the society.
‘‘So I urge the people of New Zealand to take the debate on the hateful mindset of the terrorist. That’s the best advice I can give.’’