Jess McVicar and Terry Hemmingsen at the Grey Power meeting in Levin last week.
Jess McVicar and Terry Hemmingsen at the Grey Power meeting in Levin last week.
There was complete silence when Sensible Sentencing Trust national spokeswoman Jess McVicar brought up a large photo of the late Grace Virtue on the big screen.
McVicar was speaking to more than 60 members of Horowhenua Grey Power at Levin Cosmopolitan Club last week, almost a year to the day since the 90-year-old Virtue was attacked in her own home.
Virtue was attacked in her Levin home in Bath St on November 2 last year and taken to hospital with serious brain injuries. She died 25 days later.
There was an outpouring of grief within the Levin community, with flowers and messages left on the street outside her home in the days following the attack.
Three girls - two aged 16 and one aged 14 - were arrested and originally charged with her murder. They all entered pleas of not guilty.
The trio later all entered guilty pleas when subsequently charged with the less serious crime of manslaughter, and were released on bail.
Jess McVicar
They have since been found guilty of manslaughter and await sentencing at a hearing at the Palmerston North High Court on November 13. They have all been granted interim name suppression.
Horowhenua Grey Power president Terry Hemmingsen said Grey Power members had followed the
Virtue case throughout and were interested in just what sentence would be handed down next month.
"This lady is close to our hearts," he said.
Hemmingsen said the large turnout to the meeting was due to the genuine concern of elderly people who no longer felt safe in their own home following the attack.
"They are frightened and it's not baseless," he said.
Hemmingsen said the trio gained entry to Virtue's home on the guise they wanted to use the toilet. He said people should do what they could to make their homes as secure as possible with security doors and latches.
"We were brought up in a generation where you didn't lock your doors and didn't lock your windows," he said.
A talking point at the meeting was the reduction in severity from the original charge of murder to manslaughter, and the sentencing options available to the court for the three girls.
Hemmingsen said a majority of questions to McVicar from the floor centered around the events leading up to the attack that caused Virtue's death, and the judicial process that followed.
Terry Hemmingsen and Jess McVicar.
"It's hard for people that haven't been through the system. They can't understand how it works," he said.
Hemmingsen said Horowhenua Grey Power was calling for accountability for serious offending.
"At some point everyone must take responsibility for their actions and take personal accountability," he said.
McVicar told Grey Power the current justice system was failing as the reoffending rate of those in youth residence was more than 95 per cent.
Almost half of offending youth who received Alternative Actions reoffended within 24 months, while 70 per cent of all 16-year-old offenders end up in adult court within two years, she said.
There had also been a rise in female youth offending, she said.
Often home detention for youth offenders meant they were sent back to an environment that led to the offending in the first place.
"There needs to be consequences, rehabilitation and prevention... home detention for serious violent crime is not acceptable," she said.
McVicar said there were 30,000 people on home detention in New Zealand and she believed it was not an appropriate punishment for serious crime, nor did it act as a deterrent for reoffending.
She said every New Zealander got a taste of what it was like to be on home detention during the Covid-19 lockdown period earlier this year.
"I know a lot of people really enjoyed it," she said.
She said SST advocated other options like boot camps in the sentencing of youth offenders.
