Rosemary McLeod: Justice for all can be painful

I hope nobody will give me Lesley Elliot's book about her daughter's murder or expect me to read it.
Mrs Elliott is suffering so much it hurts to watch her.
She seems to live with a burden of guilt that she may never overcome, although she's guilty of nothing.
Her fault - if there is any - lay in underestimating the depths bad people can sink to when she opened the door to her daughter's killer.
Misplaced trust is the downfall of many of us, and Mrs Elliott and her daughter paid a terrible price for what happened next.
Possibly the only person who doesn't still suffer over it is her killer, Clayton Weatherston, who the entire country surely came to loathe as his trial unfolded.
He seems disconnected from the moral world and the best place for people like him is jail, indefinitely.
I'm not sure it's a kindness to feature Mrs Elliott and her grief in the media in this ongoing way.
Each time she's interviewed, she must relive the misery of her experience and to learn that she keeps Sophie's bedroom as a kind of ongoing shrine three years after her death is so sad.
While time stands still in that room, where Sophie died, so does her mother's life.
Mrs Elliott says her motive for writing her just-published book, Sophie's Legacy, is to expose the lack of support and empathy for victims in the justice system, and to warn young women about the dangers of abusive relationships.
I'd like to think young women will listen, but they won't.
They have a talent for walking into domestic hells with their eyes wide open and staying when all around them are screaming at them to run.
As for the justice system, it has to be completely neutral, which means it's obliged to be, to some extent, heartless.
A victim's family suffers, undoubtedly, but so does an accused person's family, who in their way become victims as well.
Their lives are also on hold until the trial is over and they share the shame of the accused, although they've done nothing to deserve it.
They, too, must feel obliged to attend the trial to offer support, and may be deeply shaken by details that emerge as the case unfolds, as Mrs Elliott was.
If victims' families are to be entitled to extensive financial aid - as they increasingly are - then we have to give the same rights to both sides, surely, otherwise the system pre-judges a case before it's heard.
I'm not sure that the State belongs on the periphery of people's private lives, though, offering money as a salve to pain. Where would we draw the line? Some marital break-ups are devastating for all concerned, and a minor burglary can be too much for some people. Isn't a better answer to cultivate good friendships, and hopefully good family ties, so that a more personal support network kicks in when disaster strikes?
Disaster is surely toying with one family at war with itself in the Family Court, where a mother says she has spent $200,000 in a three-year custody fight with her former partner.
They seem to loathe each other, but have a young child.
He is a wealthy foreign national, and can afford the luxury of ongoing litigation, which is causing the mother's financial ruin.
She has had to borrow from her parents' retirement fund, and has been forced to sell possessions to pay her legal bills, she says, all for the sake of keeping her own child.
What nonsense is this and who can feel proud of the part they play in it?
The parents are not evenly matched in their battle and it's an indictment on the legal system that it can be exploited like this.
It's hardly justice when money can bully a favourable result out of the legal process and it's surely a failure when lawyers - always so eloquent about their calling when challenged - end up being the only likely winners.