Woman Charged After Months Long Islamophobic Graffiti Spree

A Sydney woman is alleged to have undertaken a seven-month long Islamophobic and anti-Arab graffiti spree, during which time she defaced a major shopping centre and a sports stadium with phrases such as “Arabs are all terrorists”.

53-year-old Bronwyn Elizabeth was granted bail in Parramatta Local Court on Sunday, faced with nine counts of damaging property inside the toilets of Westfield shopping centre in Hornsby and Commbank stadium in Parramatta.

The court heard that alleged offences were “repeated and deliberate”, occurring between July 2024 and this weekend.

Court documents allege Nowicki used a black texta at Westfield Hornsby in July when committing the first crime. On August 17 at the same shopping centre, she is accused of writing “Muslims are terrorists and need to fuck off from our country. Palestine supporters need to fuck off to Palestine. Scarf = ugly slut who fuck their brothers. Islam = terrorist cult”.

Similar messages were found at the door of a public toilet at CommBank Stadium on Saturday: “the mob have spoken, Arabs are all terrorists and need to fuck off to Palestine”.

Graffiti part of bigger hate speech movement

Police from Ku-ring-gai Police Area Command discovered the Hornsby Westfield graffiti in late January, and began investigations shortly afterwards. Police at CommBank Stadium discovered teh graffiti in the bathroom at about 7pm on Saturday.

Nowicki was arrested inside the stadium and taken to Parramatta Police Station, where she was charged with nine counts of destroy or damage property and was refused police bail.

In court, her defence lawyer argued that she was of “upstanding character” adn had no criminal record.

“The defence concedes the objective gravity, not by way of value of the damage but the dangerous rhetoric over the past six months of which these offences took place,” he said.

“The defence concedes there is CCTV footage showing her go and leave the bathrooms and she made partial admissions to police.“

Nowicki has not entered pleas and will return to Hornsby Local Court on Thursday.

This comes as Sydney is experiencing a rapid rise in hate speech, with a heavy government and media focus on antisemitism.

The Islamophobia Register has documented a 600 per cent increase in reported incidents of hate in the last year, though they note that these reports represent only a fraction of actual incidents.

Last week, the Minns government tabled new hate speech bills, with the Premier explicitly saying he didn’t have time to make extensive changes to anti-vilification legislation in order to protect groups like the LGBTQIA+ community.

“We were faced with a situation where we’re looking at naked racism on our streets today,” he said.

“I made a decision that I wanted to progress the hate speech laws as it applies to race immediately.”

The laws have faced backlash from human and civil rights groups, who have raised concerns that the new laws would suppress protest and give police unnecessary power.