Victim families serve life sentence

Lawrence McCraw explains the role and underlying view of the the Sensible Sentencing Trust.

I attended the Sensible Sentencing Trust 2011 conference held at Waiheke Island recently with my friend Pamela Wadsworth, whose 17-year-old daughter Jayne McLellan was brutally murdered in Green Island, Dunedin, in November 1988.

This year, victim families had the opportunity of telling their own stories, all of which were so horrific there was hardly a dry eye in the room.

Garth McVicar, spokesman and founder of the SST, was on hand to assist victims who found it hard to talk about their situation.

In Pamela's case, she was initially unable to speak, and Garth assisted. He was for a moment broken with emotion to the point where he also was speechless. Eventually, Pamela mustered the strength to go on.

I, personally, was so moved I decided if I could make a difference, this was it. Garth and his team have shown a passion that I have never witnessed. The help and support they give victims and their families to fight the current injustices in the system is undoubting.

Many victims of murder would be quite alone in their fight for their rights to receive justice and recognition if it were not for the SST. After all, it is the victims who are doing the life sentences.

The role of the SST is to see that victims of murder and sexual assault get help with their fight against a system that does not want to know they exist; it is the murderer who has all the rights, where their victims have none. There are many stories of people struggling with the parole board and courts. One of many issues is the censoring of victim impact statements and the murderer having the right to have input into the final censored draft.

We want to see sentences appropriate to the crime, life to mean life with sentences served consecutively rather than concurrently, tighter parole conditions and better management of who receives it, to ensure that adults and children are adequately and equally protected from violent criminals. Such protection is to require the offender serves all the sentences that are imposed: life means life. Other areas include: bail, restorative justice, name suppression and more.

Every year for the past 10 years the SST has held an annual conferences where victims of murder and other major crimes and the SST trustees come together to not only catch up with and support each other but discuss issues appropriate to what we are trying to achieve, and arrive at policy decisions to be placed before government with the hope of seeing law changes and other changes in the system.

Because we all have something in common we can speak with one united voice, which is very powerful, and hopefully MPs and bureaucrats alike will listen and bring about change.

The SST provides victims with hope and a reason to continue on. It takes up each victim's case by providing legal and moral support to help people battle what is a very uncaring system. Many victims have been helped through their ordeals and are still being supported, not only by SST but each other. It makes victims' ordeals easier to go through if they know there is a network of people which understands, cares and is experienced in dealing with issues related to fighting the system.

There is a lot of negativity from people who are uninformed and who just don't want to hear. You never know when it will happen to you and pray to God that it doesn't.

It is impossible to understand the hell victims go through, but make no mistake, it is very real. If you don't believe me, take a look at the SST website, all the information is there.

New Zealand is no longer a safe place to live. The SST is committed to making our country a better place and if we can keep these murderers off the streets for the rest of their natural lives, then everyone can feel more secure.

Lawrence McCraw, of Palmerston, is the southern spokesman for the Sensible Sentencing Trust.

 

 

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