OUR LIVES ARE DESTROYED..! – THE DEVASTATING HUMAN TOLL OF VICTORIA’S CRIME CRISIS LAID BARE AS VICTIMS AND FAMILIES REVEAL HOW THEIR LIVES HAVE BEEN CHANGED FOREVER.
unday mornings used to be loud in the Becker home.
Aidan Becker and his dad Matthias would settle in to watch the UFC together, the 22-year-old shouting at the television as the fights unfolded.
“He loved UFC. That was him and his dad’s thing every Sunday morning, which makes Sundays in our house very, very difficult now,” Nathalie Becker said.
“Aidan would be shouting, and it was very lively, and now it’s very hard.”
Nathalie feels her son’s absence in a million ways, seven days a week.
“Just his phone calls three or four times a day,” she said.
“The ‘what’s for dinner?’ phone calls and him showing us videos.
“Now I wish I paid attention. I wish I’d watched whatever he wanted at any time.”
Nathalie Becker
Five months ago, Aidan became another innocent casualty of Victoria’s violent crime crisis.
The off-duty security guard was fatally stabbed at Mernda train station on Melbourne’s northern outskirts on March 6 after intervening to protect a 14-year-old schoolboy who was allegedly being robbed.
Police allege a group of teenagers pursued and attacked Aidan after he stepped in to help the young stranger.
Four teenagers, aged 16 to 18, were charged with murder and armed robbery.
The three younger accused pleaded not guilty last week and were committed to stand trial in the Victorian Supreme Court, with a directions hearing on August 26. The 18-year-old will face a committal mention next week.
This week, Nathalie spoke to The Nightly through tears about her kind boy who adored his family, loved animals and instinctively protected the vulnerable.
“Aidan was infectious. He just had such an energy about him. He felt like his task in life was to make people happy.”
Injustice, she said, “didn’t sit with Aidan”. Even as a child, he once stood protectively in front of his mother on a tram because there was a drunk passenger nearby.
“He wouldn’t stand back ever and see someone hurt,” she said.
As a young adult, Aidan decided he wanted to become a security guard.
“It was just over two years that he’d been at The Alfred before this happened and he was really finding his groove in life,” Nathalie said.
“He’d started back at the gym and was just starting to get a little bit of confidence in himself.
“I’d have loved to have seen what he could have become.”
Aidan played for Mernda Junior Football Club, Yarrambat, Assumption College and the Preston Bullants, and supported North Melbourne after his South African family realised they needed an AFL team.
On the field, Nathalie remembers, he was often the shepherd – protecting his teammates rather than chasing glory himself.
Off the field, he dreamed of becoming a rapper. Since he was six, Aidan had told his mother he would one day be famous, and he was due to record his first full-length track with his friend Kush a week after he died. The family is left with only short recordings.
“He would be totally amazed at how many people did love and respect him,” she said.
“I wish he knew that, but he does now, I suppose.”
The cruelty of Aidan’s death is compounded by why the Becker family came to Australia.
Photo by Adrien Olichon on Unsplash
They left South Africa in 2008 when Aidan was four and his sister Siobhan was 18, seeking one thing: safety.
They arrived in Melbourne knowing nobody, with four nights’ accommodation and 160kg of luggage.
After several weeks in a motel, they found work and a rental in Altona before eventually settling in Mernda.
Nathalie still remembers the relief of those first nights in Australia.
“I think I had my first full night of sleep in months,” she said.
“Safety was on a whole new level for us.”
Now the family feels profoundly betrayed by the place they chose as their refuge.
“Our family is extremely disappointed,” Nathalie said.
“We came here for safety and security and the most horrendous thing that could ever happen has happened here, and I feel let down.
“Until we see some change to ensure that there are consequences for people’s actions, despite their age, we’ll continue to be unsafe.”
Nathalie Becker
More innocent lives lost
Aidan is far from the only innocent Victorian whose life has been brutally cut short by senseless violence.
Earlier this month, 60-year-old Sunshine grocer Van Viet Truong died after he was allegedly attacked while helping another retailer confront suspected shoplifters.
A 15-year-old boy has been charged with manslaughter and remains in custody. Other children allegedly involved, aged 12 to 14, have been charged and released on bail or community release.
In April 2024, carpenter and expectant father Aaron Toth, 30, was shot dead outside a Hampton Park home in what police said was a case of mistaken identity.
Doncaster doctor Ashley Gordon, 33, was fatally stabbed after pursuing teenagers who had broken into his home in January 2024.
And 14-year-old Ethan Hoac was deliberately struck by an SUV before being stabbed dozens of times with machetes in an unprovoked attack at St Albans in 2023.
Victorian Victims of Crime Commissioner Elizabeth Langdon said the devastation of such crimes spread far beyond the immediate victim.
“What particularly strikes me about cases involving bystanders and Good Samaritans is that these are often people who were simply going about their lives or helping someone else,” she said.
“There is a profound sadness in knowing that an ordinary moment, or an act of kindness, can end in tragedy.”
Ms Langdon said these crimes cast a long shadow.
“Long after the headlines fade, victims and families are still living with the consequences,” she said.
“Their lives are often divided into ‘before’ and ‘after’.”
For the Becker family, there is no “after”. There is only survival.
Siobhan, a critical care nurse, has moved back home. Nathalie has returned to work for the distraction, while Matthias goes to the gym.
“What we all share in common is just total exhaustion from wearing a face all the time because every day we try to be socially acceptable,” Nathalie said.
“That requires putting on a face and putting on a front to be a resemblance of who we used to be, but none of us are the same.
“We are shattered. Our lives have been destroyed.”
‘Something catastrophic without warning’
clinical psychologist Lisa Burke said grief could consume every part of a person’s life.
“Sudden violent death turns the completely ordinary into something catastrophic without warning,” Dr Burke said.
“Somebody leaves home, catches a train, goes to work, meets friends or does any of the routine things we all do without thinking twice.
“Then their family is suddenly confronted with a reality in which that person will never walk back through the door.”
‘Difficult to process’
University of Melbourne trauma researcher Professor Eva Alisic said bereavement could fundamentally alter a family’s relationship with the world.
“Traumatic bereavement can be very difficult to process indeed, especially when there has been violence involved,” she said.
“Life is turned entirely upside down from one day to another.
“All of a sudden, there is this loss of a loved one and the world feels like a dangerous and unpredictable place.
“A loss of this magnitude reverberates for a lifetime.”
Clinical psychologist Lisa Burke
University of Melbourne trauma researcher Professor Eva Alisic
Aidan’s family will forever grapple with an unbearable contradiction: pride in what Aidan did and their desperate wish that he had not done it.
“Aidan would never have walked past that,” Nathalie said.
She is proud of her son’s courage.
“Yeah, but also disappointed in a way, because he’d be home with us,” she said.
“If it was your child and you got a chance to stop them, you would have stopped them, right?
“Any parent would. But would he have stopped? I don’t know.”
Dr Burke – a grief specialist – said those seemingly contradictory emotions were entirely compatible.
“A family can be enormously proud of what their loved one did in trying to help others, and at the same time they can profoundly wish that their loved one had not been in the situation,” she said.
A plaque championed by Aidan’s friends now stands at Mernda station
“But is that enough? No, it’s not enough. My son’s gone,” Nathalie said.
“Is that enough of an ode to his bravery? No, it’s not for me.”
“If it was your child and you got a chance to stop them, you would have stopped them, right?”
The family has met the 14-year-old boy Aidan tried to protect that ordinary Friday afternoon.
At Aidan’s vigil, the boy stood quietly with his devastated parents while his sister gave Siobhan a drawing of Aidan.
Nathalie told him: “Live your life now. You’ve got a life to live, so make him proud.”
She has also encountered one of the strangers who desperately tried to save Aidan.
“I walked into the Woolworths and saw one of the guys who was performing CPR,” she said.
“He and his wife were there. They’re still completely emotionally traumatised.
“There was also another guy who told Aidan his family loved him.”
The criminal proceedings still hang over the Becker family.
“I’d call it survival mode at the moment,” Nathalie said.
“I don’t know when healing starts, but right now it’s just survival for all of us.
“I get to the end of the day, and I think, ‘okay, it’s another day done’.”
Nathalie hopes healing may begin when the legal proceedings end.
“But until then, it’s an open wound, and every time we go to court, it’s just going to be ripped open again,” she said.
“We’ve had the greatest finality, and that is that Aidan is not here and he is not coming back.
“There’s no justice that can be served for us, because the only justice would be to have my boy back at home and it’s not possible.”
Dr Burke said violent death can quickly become the defining public story of a victim.
To the world, victims can become known through the worst thing that happened to them. To their families, they remain whole people with lifetimes of memories, relationships and meaning.
Nathalie wants Australia to know who her son was.
“I just think if there was anything to be taken from Aidan, it would be his love for all beings,” Nathalie said.
“I don’t believe my son saw anybody differently at all. Everyone, humans and animals, all deserved to be treated well.
“I want people to know about his enormous courage, humanity, empathy and total lack of malice.
“We don’t want him to be forgotten.”
“We don’t want him to be forgotten.”
