KEY POINTS:
I don't believe victims should have to shout to be heard. So I didn't shout when I appeared before the Parole Board late last year at the hearing where it decided to release the man who murdered my mother in Gisborne in 1992, leaving me and my three siblings orphans.
I spoke to them directly, and told them I didn't need sympathy as I made my explicit requests - I just needed them to do everything in their power to keep the man who murdered my mother away from my family.
All I asked for from the Parole Board was determined, effective action. My pleas obviously fell on deaf ears - the most appalling result for a victim asking for support.
Within weeks of his release from prison the Parole Board, in conjunction with Corrections, had allowed the murderer to move in next door to my Hamilton-based sister, who was six years old and in the house when he killed our mother.
Shocked and traumatised, my family were forced to relive the memories that had shattered our lives. The subsequent response from the Parole Board and Corrections has been completely unacceptable and in my mind a travesty of justice.
My sister was forced to tell her story to the Weekend Herald two weeks ago in a bid to get some action and stop it happening to another family of victims. But nothing they have done or said since indicates that this won't be repeated.
The only action we have had is the murderer's recall to prison last week, something he initiated himself by breaching his parole conditions. Is this an indictment on the society we live in, one where we appease even our worst criminals, while giving little consideration for victims? Or do we simply have an inept justice system?
There are a number of basic systemic errors that have occurred in both this instance and the Graeme Burton case (with Parole Board member Judge Patrick Toomey sitting on both release hearings) that can, could and should be avoided.
What annoys me most is how Corrections and its minister have misled the public and purported to have systems in place that they clearly have not. Firstly, they have held out to have a victims' notification register in place to ensure that victims' whereabouts are considered when criminals are released, which did not happen in my sister's case.
What they actually have is a notification register, not a protection register. Many victims such as my sister do not want to be on the victims' notification register because they do not want to be continually reminded of the criminal and notified whenever the criminal's circumstances change. She was six at the time our mother was killed, and was not old enough to deal with this correspondence as she grew up.
And furthermore, none of the publicly available information about this register says it is used by Corrections and its Probation Service to consider where to allow offenders to live. In fact, Corrections have told us that there is no official policy to stop offenders moving in next door to victims.
But still the Corrections Minister Phil Goff shrugged off my family's case in a dismissive one-liner: "She wasn't on the register".
Rather than looking deeper, he offered only sympathy, not determined, effective action.
The Parole Board knew where my sister lived after it was raised in previous hearings, but did not have the gumption or the systems in place to share this important information with the Corrections Department.
The Parole Board have since been very cagey when asked what steps they took to ensure the murderer didn't end up next door to my family - "not our responsibility" has been their classic blame-shifting response.
Have they not been negligent in this case, causing unnecessary harm to my sister? Or are the bureaucratic gaps in our justice system so massive that the Parole Board can claim to not be responsible?
I believe a few things need to happen to improve our justice system:
* Permanent exclusion zones need to be placed on criminals serving life sentences to ensure basic protections are put in place from the top down. Too much latitude and opportunity for human error is given by delegating these responsibilities to probation service officers.
* Someone in our justice system needs to take some responsibility and lead some much needed improvements. This needs to be done as a formal review as there is an apparent lack of accountability in the current departments.
* An official victims rights watchdog needs to be established to ensure those responsible for protecting victims are held accountable.
The man who supplied this piece to the Herald is now 28. Names have been withheld by request.
