Perth mother Leisa Jeisman has told Karl Stefanovic the machete gang that bashed her son Lucas Jeisman, 17, unconscious at a Mindarie party were "all Sudanese boys" and one white boy, and that the first of them to plead guilty has walked away with no conviction recorded.
The white boy was arrested within days, she said. Getting anyone else charged took her weeks of fighting police, the same police she says ignored her bleeding son as he begged for an ambulance and ordered him off the street.
Her interview aired on The Karl Stefanovic Show, launched after Nine forced him out of Today, in an episode built around one question: is there one rule for some and another for everyone else? Stefanovic opened the episode with former Australian Federal Police detective superintendent David Craig, asking whether Australia is developing a two tier approach to policing and national security as another Australian with Islamic State links seeks to return home. He then turned to a very different story, closer to home, and to Ms Jeisman.
Within a day the clip of the interview on X had been viewed tens of thousands of times, carrying a graphic content warning for the vision of the attack.
"They tried to kill my son that night," Ms Jeisman said. "It wasn't a one on one fight. They mobbed him. He had no chance to defend himself whatsoever."
Lucas Jeisman stepped in to save his mate. Ten attackers turned on him
The attack happened on Good Friday, 3 April, at a house party in Mindarie, in Perth's northern suburbs. Lucas had been at the party for about an hour, his mother said, when a group of boys turned aggressive towards his friend. Lucas got between them and told them to leave it.
"They've turned on Lucas, and they just knocked him unconscious straight away," she said.
When he came to, he found one of the group holding a knife to his friend's throat, and jumped in to help him again. "When you have 10 pack animals jumping on you, he had no chance."
The pair tried to run, but Ms Jeisman said the gang had already phoned for backup, and carloads of boys cut them off at the end of the street. Footage of what happened next, reported by The West Australian and 7NEWS, shows the teenager on the ground being kicked and stomped by about half a dozen young men while at least one stands over him with a large machete.
"There's one boy that used my son's head as a soccer ball while he was unconscious. There was another one slashing his legs with a machete," Ms Jeisman said.
Lucas spent two days in Joondalup Health Campus with deep cuts to his legs, bruising and scratches. His mother says the attackers filmed the assault and stood over him laughing at the videos while he lay in the street pretending to still be unconscious. "He said, Mum, I thought that was it. If they knew I woke up, they would have killed me."
"I need an ambulance. My shoulder's broken." Then, she says, police ignored him
What Ms Jeisman alleges happened when police arrived is the part she says destroyed her faith in the system, and every claim in this section is her account, told to Stefanovic on camera.
Lucas heard police in the street, got up and walked to them, covered in blood, and asked for an ambulance, telling an officer his shoulder was broken. "The officer ignored him. He just ignored his pleas for help," she said. She says a neighbour who watched the attack later told her he'd heard Lucas begging for an ambulance while his arm hung at his side.
Instead of help, she alleges, officers swore at the two injured boys and ordered them out of the street, and one drove after Lucas, pinned his hands behind his back and slammed him into a fence. No ambulance was ever called for him.
She says a police inspector later sat in her lounge room, in a meeting she recorded, and told her Lucas "was the aggressor that night", and that no ambulance was called because Lucas "showed no signs of injury". Her freedom of information request for the officers' body camera footage from the night was refused, and she has lodged complaints with the Corruption and Crime Commission.
When she asked the inspector to show her the footage, she says he refused because it was "too confronting". "I'll decide if it's too confronting. Why is it hidden? If they have nothing to hide, why don't they show me?" Stefanovic put the contradiction plainly: police can't say nothing happened to Lucas that night, then refuse to release the footage of it as too confronting.
One News Australia has put detailed questions to WA Police about the night, the arrests and the refused body camera footage, and is awaiting a response. At the time of the attack, a spokeswoman told The West Australian that Joondalup detectives were investigating.
"All Sudanese boys, and there was one white boy." One arrest came in days, the rest took a fight
When Stefanovic asked who the attackers were, Ms Jeisman didn't hesitate. Lucas went to school with a handful of them, she said, and knows their names. "They were Sudanese, all Sudanese boys, and there was one white boy."
Her description matches the only earlier reporting to put it on the record. In April, the Noticer reported that the footage showed Lucas attacked by "several hooded thugs of African appearance armed with long blades", a detail the mainstream coverage of the attack never carried.
Then came the detail that hands the episode its title. "The white boy was arrested within days of this happening. Within days," she said. For the rest, she says she had to fight police every day. "There's a video of the attack. Why are you not making any arrests?"
The arrests eventually came, she says, after her 7NEWS interview went to air and an inspector turned up at her home the next morning. Four boys were charged.
A guilty plea, no conviction, and a court system that tells the public nothing
The first of the four pled guilty. "I found out last week that he got no conviction," Ms Jeisman said. "So he got away with what he done to my son. How does that work? How do you try and kill someone, which is what they done, and get no conviction?"
Because the accused are children, the case sits in the Children's Court, where offenders can't be identified and courts can impose a penalty without recording a conviction against a young offender. Ms Jeisman's verdict on that arrangement was blunt: "Just a slap on the wrist. Don't do it again, Johnny. It's not good enough."
"They've charged them, put him in front of a magistrate. How do you hold the magistrate accountable for this? What if it was her kid?"
In his post promoting the interview, Stefanovic added that one of the accused has since been granted bail. Ms Jeisman told him there is more to the story that she legally can't discuss while matters are before the courts, and none of what she can't discuss is public. WA Police never issued a media release on the attack, no court outcome has been published, and beyond her interviews there is no public record that the case exists at all.
Lucas has PTSD. His mother wants a mobbing law named Lucas's Law
Lucas has been diagnosed with PTSD. "Physically he's good, he's healed. Mentally he's not the same boy he was before the 3rd of April," his mother said. He'd just left school, started an apprenticeship and got his licence.
Ms Jeisman says other parents contacted her after the footage spread, saying the same group of boys had attacked their kids. The group of parents wants WA Parliament to create a new offence for group attacks, with harsher penalties than assault, and she wants it called Lucas's Law. "They didn't assault him. They mobbed him. It needs to be more serious than what it is."
Her fear for the community is simple. "Who do you call when you can't call the police?"
Queensland went adult crime, adult time. Victoria banned machetes. WA recorded no conviction
Ms Jeisman doesn't need the interstate comparison explained to her. When Stefanovic pointed to what's happening overseas, she corrected him: "Not even overseas, over east in Melbourne. It's coming to Perth. It's here."
Other states have stopped pretending this is working. Queensland's Adult Crime, Adult Time laws now expose 10 to 17 year olds to adult equivalent sentences across 45 offences, including attempted murder and riot. Victoria banned machetes outright from 1 September 2025 after a machete brawl in a Melbourne shopping centre. In WA, the first boy to admit his part in a mob attack that left a 17 year old unconscious and slashed in the street walked out of court with no conviction.
In our view, that gap is the whole story. A boy can be bashed into unconsciousness twice and cut with a machete, and the system's answer is secrecy about the attackers and a result his mother only found out about last week. Adult crimes deserve adult consequences wherever they happen, and zero tolerance shouldn't depend on which state the ambulance, if one is ever called, takes you to. And when a mother says on camera that the gang who mobbed her son were all Sudanese boys bar one, Australians are entitled to ask the question Canberra keeps ruling out of order: is the immigration program that built these suburbs actually working, and who pays the price when it doesn't?
It's the same question Craig and Stefanovic circled in that opening segment, in a week when accused Islamic State bride Rayann El Houli walked out on bail and his show's panel on her case passed 120,000 views. Audiences aren't confused about what they're seeing, even when the courts won't show it to them.
"Keep fighting the fight," Stefanovic told Ms Jeisman at the end of the interview. "It shouldn't happen to anyone else."
