EPISODE #64: LOUISA HOPE (LINDT CAFE SIEGE HOSTAGE/SURVIVOR)

EPISODE #64: Louisa Hope, the incredibly inspiring Lindt Cafe Siege hostage & survivor, joins MattyG in the Speak Free Studio to tell her story. The Lindt Café Siege was a terrorist attack that unfolded in Sydney’s Martin Place on 15–16 December 2014. Man Haron Monis, an Iranian-born Australian citizen, entered the Lindt Chocolate Café armed with a sawn-off shotgun and claimed to have explosives. He took 18 people hostage. One of those people was Louisa Hope, who was trapped in there fearing for her & her mother’s lives, for an agonising 17 hours, right until the very end. In this very special episode of Speak Free, Louisa bravely retells exactly what happened from her point of view, from the moment she walked into the cafe with her mother, right up until those horrific final moments in the early hours of the morning the following day, when cafe manager Tori Johnson was horribly shot and killed by Monis, and police stormed the cafe to finally bring an end to the siege, with fellow hostage Katrina Dawson also being tragically killed by police bullet fragments in the process. Louisa & MattyG also talked about the outpouring of grief from the Australian community that followed & how we came together as a nation, how Louisa has coped in the decade since, and the importance of her sharing her story to help her heal from her trauma.