Mental health services initiated art therapy programs Monday for children traumatized by the Bondi Beach shooting that killed 15 at a Hanukkah celebration. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned the antisemitic terrorism while laying flowers at the site as flags flew at half-mast following Australia’s deadliest gun violence in decades.
The Sunday evening attack on approximately 1,000 Jewish community members including many families by father-son shooters Sajid Akram, 50, and Naveed Akram, 24, traumatized children who witnessed violence or lost loved ones. The roughly ten-minute assault before security forces killed the elder and critically wounded the younger left young survivors struggling to express feelings through words alone. The father’s death brought total deaths to sixteen.
Art therapists offered non-verbal processing methods through drawing, painting, sculpture, and other creative activities. Young survivors could express trauma, fear, loss, and confusion through art when language felt inadequate. The youngest victim at age ten highlighted needs for age-appropriate interventions, while other hospitalized children among forty total patients required art therapy adapted for medical settings.
Programs also served children of injured adults including offspring of hero Ahmed al Ahmed, 43, recovering from gunshot wounds sustained wrestling a gun from an attacker. His children processed their father’s hospitalization and their own trauma from nearly losing him. Art therapy helped children across the age spectrum affected by the attack targeting people aged ten to 87 understand that their feelings were normal and manageable.
This incident marks Australia’s worst shooting in nearly three decades and created unprecedented child trauma needs. Art therapists emphasized that creative expression provided crucial healing pathways for young people whose brains process trauma differently than adults. As programs launched, coordinators prepared for sustained needs recognizing that children’s trauma responses often emerged over time as developmental stages brought new understanding of what they experienced, requiring therapeutic resources available not just immediately but throughout childhood and adolescence.