4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 5 July 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Australians know the devastation of bushfires all too well. So why would anyone deliberately light a fire?
In this episode of Criminal Psychology, our new four-part series on unusual crimes and unusual minds, we're exploring the psychology of arson.
Answering questions like, how does it relate to pyromania? What do we know about the profile of a typical arsonist? And how do investigators track down the source of a blaze?
Guests:
Dr Paul ReadClimate criminologist
Dr Nichola TylerSenior lecturer, forensic psychologySwinburne University of Technology
Richard WoodsDirector, Wildfire Investigations and AnalysisAdjunct Associate Lecturer, Wildfire Investigation, Charles Sturt University
Credits:
Extra information:
Adults with intellectual disabilities and/or autism who deliberately set fires: A systematic review
The truth about Australia's fires — arsonists aren't responsible for many this season
Some Coalition MPs say that arson is mostly to blame for the bushfire crisis. Here are the facts
Deliberately lit vegetation fires in Australia
What are the differences between children and adolescents who deliberately light fires?
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
0:00.0 | This is an ABC podcast. |
0:08.4 | Victorians are being urged to stay indoors. |
0:12.4 | The state is bracing for its worst fire conditions ever. |
0:15.7 | February 7, 2009. |
0:18.0 | The heat wave prepares to go out with a bang. |
0:20.3 | It's an incredibly hot, dry, and windy day in Victoria. And in the town of Churchill, |
0:29.3 | in the Latrobe Valley, a bushfire sparks. This bushfire is one of 400 fires that will |
0:37.2 | rip through the state that day on what will soon be dubbed the Black Saturday bushfire is one of 400 fires that will rip through the state that day, |
0:39.0 | on what will soon be dubbed the Black Saturday bushfires, collectively considered one of Australia's worst bushfire disasters. |
0:47.4 | But in this particular fire, the Churchill fire, 36,000 hectares of land are destroyed, |
0:59.0 | 150 homes raised, and 10 people are killed. Then, days after the event itself, |
1:03.0 | a 39-year-old man is charged with arson. |
1:05.0 | A local man named Brendan Sokoluk is charged with arson causing death. |
1:09.0 | The crown argued he was a cunning liar who created a web of deceit as to why he was in the area. |
1:14.3 | And three years later, in 2012, Brendan Sokoluk is found guilty of deliberately lighting a bushfire that killed 10 people on Black Saturday. |
1:24.4 | He was sentenced to 17 years and nine months in jail. In the end, the jury decided |
1:29.6 | Sarkalak was an arsonist intent on wreaking havoc on one of the worst days in Victoria's history. |
1:36.5 | It's a story that gives some small insight into just how devastating arson can be. And arson is the topic of today's episode of Criminal Psychology, our special four-part |
1:49.1 | series on All in the Mind. |
1:51.5 | So we want to know what drives someone to light fires like this. |
1:56.1 | It's a very small subsection of arsonists who actually get caught and that skews our understanding of who they are |
2:06.2 | and what their motivations are. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from ABC listen, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of ABC listen and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.