Chapter 23
Too Little, Too Late
It was Saturday. The jury was locked up. Everyone was nervous. Cheryl had raced back from Bega, but was disappointed. She wanted to be there for the judge’s summation. They had said it would take two days. It hadn’t. Half an hour after she had arrived on the Friday, he had finished. The wait was hard. At the back of everybody’s mind was the possibility that Camilleri could walk. The networking ladies came to support the families despite it being their day off. They brought scones to go with the coffee and tea. Everyone was told not to go far, as there would be little notice when the jury returned.
The court attendant appeared suddenly. The judge had been called. A decision had been made.
‘I’ve got to ring the kids,’ Delma Collins announced, needing to be busy, ‘and Nan and Pop.’ She was frantic. There would be a short period before the judge arrived but she wanted to know immediately. ‘Come on,’ she jumped up. ‘We’ve got to get into court.’
‘No. No. It will be half an hour at least,’ Graeme told her.
‘We need to go in.’
‘I’ve got to go to the toilet.’
‘You can’t. We have got to go into court now,’ she replied.
Meanwhile finishing off the last of his breakfast, Detective Senior Constable Russell Sheather decided that the jury had probably made their decision the night before and slept on it. There had been no real deliberation time that morning. He was fairly confident they would convict. He had built the case well to counter any points of dispute that may have arisen during the trial. There had been no great surprises. When the defence counsel had attempted to show a weakness in the fire scene evidence from Canberra by having an arson chemist recreate the fire resulting in less debris, they had called two arson chemists to give evidence that fires could not be recreated accurately. Beckett, as a witness, had been forthright and believable. Camilleri’s defence had tried to trick him, twisting his words, but he had stuck to his testimony. There had been little to re-examine. As a whole their case seemed strong.
In the room the court attendant had provided for them, Cheryl Barry sat anxiously. Suddenly, she didn’t want the jury to come out. She didn’t want to know the decision.
‘What if they haven’t found him guilty?’ she asked herself again and again. The clerk arrived to usher them in. ‘I’m sorry I can’t,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want to go in. I don’t want to know.’
‘Yes, you do,’ he said, looking her straight in the eyes, and then hugging her. ‘Come on.’
It was the reassurance she needed.
The courtroom was packed. The upper level was overflowing, as was the area below. Delma glanced about. She wondered if there had been an announcement. It seemed impossible that so many people could have known so quickly. Then the judge entered, and the room fell silent. Everyone was waiting to hear the jury’s decision. Graeme Collins’s eyes travelled from juror to juror: the one who had cried, another who had fallen asleep during the long-winded moments, one who had diligently taken notes. The prosecutor had been precise and clear. His words had always seemed to engage their attention. Each side had undoubtedly won points.
The foreman was asked how the jury found Camilleri on the first charge of murdering Lauren Barry.
‘Guilty,’ he replied. There was a short burst of applause.
‘And of murdering Nichole Collins?’
‘Guilty.’
‘Yes!’ exclaimed Delma Collins.
Camilleri yawned. He would be sentenced in just over two weeks.
Outside the court there was a feeling of jubilation. Everyone was hugging everyone else. Graeme Collins withdrew from the throng. There was no joy in the decision for him, just a resounding feeling of senseless waste. He was searching for solitude to cry, when the defence counsel approached him, tears rolling down his face.
‘Today, justice has been done,’ he offered, hugging Nichole’s father.
Legally, it was the victory the families had been waiting for. Realistically, it was only a lull in the storm that has become their lives. Over lunch and throughout the afternoon the alcohol flowed freely, as those who’d worked so hard to put Camilleri and Beckett behind bars celebrated their achievement. That evening at the pub, someone was handing out cigars. But it was all too much for Cheryl Barry. She sat halfway up the stairs that led to the toilets, crying as the din continued below. She had been there quite some time when Russell Sheather found her, her thin shoulders hunched in pain. During the trial it had been he who had dissuaded her from seeing the photographs of Lauren’s remains. In the middle of a court day, she had approached him about them and he had to question whether her request had been triggered by something she had heard.
‘Why do you want to see them?’ he asked. ‘Is it because others have looked at them and you feel you need to be as strong? Or is it because you need to say goodbye? Or is it because strangers have seen the way your daughter ended up? Why?’
Unable to pinpoint exactly why she needed to see the photographs, Cheryl was told by Sheather of the horrendous nature of what she would see.
‘They will change your life. You will still remember your daughter as she was. You already carry with you a mental image of what happened to her. You don’t need the photos on top of that.’ Perhaps, he had reasoned, he may have seen it differently if approached at an alternative time. She had given in.
Tonight, off-duty, Sheather sat comforting Cheryl. Reality had set in for her. No matter how great Camilleri’s punishment nor how long his sentence, she would never see Lauren again.
‘I am also satisfied that upon “the demon” within you being let loose, it was not to be controlled until its lust and anger were exhausted. Whether or not Beckett saw the demon as you later inquired of him is unknown. But I have no doubt that you did,’ declared Mr Justice Vincent during sentencing. ‘Through your own actions you have forfeited your right to ever walk amongst us again.’
The judge then handed down two life sentences, without the possibility of parole. Camilleri would never walk free again. His sentence was heavier than Beckett’s sentence despite the fact Beckett had actually killed the girls.
For the first time Delma saw Camilleri’s mother cry. Day after day, she had watched Camilleri’s mother laugh and chat with her son before the judge arrived in court. The justice system had finally caught up with him and Beckett. Tragically, it had been too late for Lauren and her daughter. Nichole had been buried with her Doc Martens. She had only worn them once. Weeks before she disappeared she had rushed in to Delma’s office.
‘I have found them! I have found the boots, and he’ll sell them to me for $80 because someone else has already taken them home and then decided they didn’t like them. But I love them.’
‘Now, these are for your birthday,’ Delma had explained, writing out a cheque. ‘So they’re to go away and you’re not to wear them until then.’
‘Okay,’ she’d hurriedly agreed. It must have been the first time she had ever stuck to the rules. The only time Delma had relented had been for a birthday celebration in Goulburn. The boots had still been inside the cupboard when Nichole disappeared. Her sister had decided they should be put inside her coffin. They were Colley through and through, black with big, brightly coloured flowers all over them.
Delma had found it hard to know what to do for her daughter. The subject of burial versus cremation isn’t something you discuss with your 16-year-old. All Delma had known was that Nichole had wanted to donate her heart and kidneys for transplantation. That had been impossible. So, along with her Doc Martens, they buried her with her neatly folded Bananas in Pyjamas nightwear and other special keepsakes. As only her skeleton remained, they had been unable to dress her.
Since Camilleri’s trial, Graeme had watched his wife struggle to make it through the day. It was around the time she packed his clothes into cardboard boxes and told him to leave that he decided they needed to seek help. It wasn’t the first time they had sought it. In November 1998, a month after Beckett had been sentenced, New South Wales Premier Bob Carr promised to look after them. He had flown them to Sydney, met them in his offices and talked through some areas of concern surrounding the girls’ disappearance and the legal system.
Three issues were addressed that day. The first was with regard to Camilleri’s aborted trial. On 4 October 1995, he had been charged on ten counts, including six of sexual intercourse with a child under 16, allegedly against an 11-year-old girl. He had then been set free for almost two years on bail until his case had come before Judge Frederick Kirkham in the Queanbeyan District Court in September 1997. The then teenager had given evidence that under his care she had allegedly been molested and penetrated. The abuse had occurred periodically over a 12-month period. She also claimed he had counted during fellatio, making her re-perform each time her teeth touched him. It had been a striking similarity in evidence that had haunted them all.
On day two of the trial, Paul Whelan, the New South Wales Minister for Police, had launched a phone-in on paedophiles called Operation Paradox. Attempting to highlight the significance of unreported abuse, he had told the press: ‘On average a single child molester will have sexually assaulted up to 37 kids before being caught.’ The statement, made interstate, had nothing to do with the trial, but Les Camilleri’s defence had drawn it to the judge’s attention, arguing that, despite not referring directly to him, the minister’s comments may have influenced the jury. The judge then asked the jury forewoman whether or not the jury had discussed the comments or the minister.
‘No,’ she had replied.
At that stage it was concluded that there was no justification to discharge the jury. Regardless, the defence had continued to argue that the decision not to abort the trial carried with it the enormous risk of a miscarriage of justice. When asked for their opinion, the prosecution had remained neutral. They had not opposed aborting the trial and Judge Kirkham had followed through – aborting it. Graeme wanted to know how Camilleri could have been released. After the trial had been aborted, Camilleri had once again been given bail. Only days later he had teamed with Beckett, driven to Canberra and picked up a young woman. She was the second issue.
The 19-year-old, who later testified at Camilleri’s trial, had been allegedly repeatedly raped before escaping from him and Beckett in Bowral. Yet the system had still failed to incarcerate them. Her complaint had never been followed up.
The Premier promised that there would be an inquiry into why the case of the young woman hadn’t been pursued. It was to be placed before the Police Commissioner and the Ombudsman. Reassurances were also given that the Police Minister’s comments had been made in good faith, that their impact had been an erroneous assumption on the part of the judge, and that Whelan could not have foreseen that his comments would have been reflected in such a decision.
To date, no action has been taken against any of the parties involved in either the aborted trial or the bungled investigation of the woman’s alleged rape in Bowral.
The final issue that Graeme asked the Premier to address was the way in which both Camilleri and Beckett, until their arrest for murder, had continually managed to escape their allotted justice following their arrests and, at times, conviction. Time after time both men were granted bail, despite being repeat offenders. This allowed their crime spree to continue. Beckett, who had served six days for failure to appear in June, was on bail at the time he murdered Lauren and Nichole. He had been committed for trial that month on two charges of alleged sexual assault, then in the August for allegedly driving while unlicensed. Camilleri, who had also been on bail, should have been serving periodic detention.
Periodic detention requires that an offender remain in custody two days a week for their sentenced period. They must report to a detention centre by 7.00 p.m. on a specified day and are released at 4.30 p.m. two days later. The detention is usually served on weekends and is currently only available in New South Wales, which has 11 periodic detention centres.
On Friday, 5 September 1997, exactly one month before the girls’ disappearance, Camilleri had purportedly begun a four-month periodic detention sentence in Campbelltown on a conviction of receiving stolen goods. By his request, he had been allowed to convert that weekend jail sentence to a mid-week service so he could play cricket in Bega. Subsequently, he had missed that same detention on a number of occasions. No follow-up had ensued, nor had the breaches been picked up at later court hearings. There had been no facility to accommodate the transfer of such information. He had continued to get bail. It had been an appalling indictment of the legal system.
Adding to the ludicrous situation, reports in the media had suggested that Camilleri hadn’t even attended the cricket games. No one seemed to be accountable for Camilleri having managed to elude penalty.
The Premier was easy to talk to. Graeme Collins left his offices with assurances that he and his family would be looked after. The next day news reports on television stated that, in the wake of the murders of the two Bega schoolgirls, the Premier was announcing sweeping changes to parole and weekend detention laws. Then he heard nothing.
Eight months passed and things were no better. Graeme turned to HVSG for help. He took Delma to a meeting. Executive Director Martha Jabour had arranged the 1998 meeting between Bob Carr and the two Bega families. Later, under the Premier’s instructions, she had asked the parents to sign some compensation and counselling paperwork, filled out the relevant details and submitted the forms, expecting them to be fast-tracked. Not having checked, she was unaware that they hadn’t been. Her first clue to the rough time Nichole’s parents were having came at the weekend support meeting at Ebony House. Graeme explained that a month before they had received a package from the Victims Compensation Tribunal. The attached information stated that they had filled out the wrong forms and because their child had been murdered in Victoria they were secondary victims. It detailed that new forms had to be filled out. Delma had thrown the package into the corner shouting, ‘I don’t want their compensation.’ It had stayed there.
Martha researched the situation. Despite a directive from the Deputy Director General, a bureaucrat not processed their claim because it was on the wrong forms. She took it to the Premier, who set up the Joint Select Committee on Victims’ Compensation.
It was a reasonable request. Martha Jabour rationalised that if Lauren’s and Nichole’s parents addressed the Joint Select Committee on Victims’ Compensation in person, combined with numerous written submissions, the true picture of their re-victimisation would emerge. The Collins and Barry families were in a unique situation in that their daughters had been murdered interstate. This meant that any financial assistance they received would come through the Victorian system, although the service would be provided in New South Wales. Under Victorian legislation the grief of the Collins and Barrys still needed to be psychologically assessed and the degree of trauma evaluated before arbitrary funds were issued. This burden of proof had been removed in New South Wales under the Victims Compensation Act 1996 (NSW), but not in Victoria.
More importantly, the Collins and Barry families experienced a number of generic issues that faced most families of homicide victims and their cases were topical. Paperwork and bureaucratic red tape were tying up compensation payments for an average of six to nine months. The ongoing costs of funerals, accommodation and transport during trials and lost wages meant that some families reached financial crisis point before seeing any form of aid. HVSG had to issue food hampers to keep a number of families afloat. Although not in such dire straits, for the Barry and the Collins families, it was two years since the girls’ bodies had been found and neither family had received any form of financial restitution. Counselling was also an issue. As with many families, it hadn’t been automatically provided. When sought, due to the lack of suitable counsellors around the Bega area, Graeme and Delma Collins were forced to travel three hours to Canberra for an hour-long session before driving three hours back. It was counterproductive. Not only was Graeme aware that, due to his mental state, he was a hazard on the road, but when they got home they felt worse than when they had left.
HVSG suggested that the Collins stay in Waterfall at Ebony House and receive counselling. It wasn’t an option. They had to continue to work, to stay sane and to pay the bills. It was an issue singular to country towns. Before the Joint Select Committee on Victims’ Compensation, Martha Jabour cited a case in Mudgee where a counsellor only worked two days a week and the parents of a victim had to make appointments two weeks in advance. Grief could not be contained until appointments, just as murder wasn’t restricted to cities.
The Collins family were also considered to be an anomaly in the eyes of the law. They were a stepfamily, and as such only one of the four remaining children (Nichole’s full sister) was eligible for counselling. Yet modern society is made up of many families just like theirs. Graeme and Delma agreed to testify before the Committee.
As the Collins had stood at their daughter’s murder site on her birthday, one of the policeman had warned, ‘Mark my words, you’ll get compensation, and you’ll need every cent of it and a lot more, because of the expenses involved you can’t see, because you haven’t experienced this. Believe me, it will be gone before you get it.’
He had been right. At the time, compensation had been too abhorrent to consider. But then there had been the funeral expenses, the ten weeks they had to stay in Melbourne during the trial and six psychological assessments. Along with time off work during the search period and the trial, their finances had been stretched to the limit. They would be representing a number of families in similar or worse situations, some of whom had lost their main breadwinner.
Once they agreed to face the Joint Select Committee on Victims’ Compensation, Delma and Graeme faced a new problem. The mail began the week before the couple was due in Sydney. They went from hearing almost nothing from the Tribunal to being bombarded with pamphlets, information packages and telephone numbers. There were even messages left on their answering machine. That same week their trauma was to be psychologically assessed. At the same time Cheryl Barry was contemplating how she could best fulfil Martha’s request. Now separated from her husband, Garret, and struggling to make ends meet, Cheryl wasn’t able to attend the Joint Select Committee hearing. Instead she decided to sit down and word a letter as concisely as possible.
‘To your Honourable Parliamentarian listening today, I, Cheryl Barry wish to inform you of my dealings with the Victims Compensation Tribunal …’
When Graeme and Delma had seen the Premier a year before, they had brought back forms for her to fill in and sign. She had done so. She wrote:
I hadn’t at any stage received any information other than what had been brought back by Delma 12 months previously. I have received no information or offers of help in any way. It has taken the Victims Compensation Tribunal two years and two months to offer me any assistance and during this time I have been to HELL and found it extremely hard to fight my way back.
Four weeks earlier, she had received a letter telling her she had to apply for counselling and asking her to prove in writing why she was entitled to it. What did they expect her to write? That, at home, she had a chestnut lock of hair that had been returned to her by the police, that she had washed it with rose water, but it still smelt of blood. Exactly how did one assess the degree of one’s loss?
The Tribunal’s offer of free counselling for me at this VERY LATE date seems at times laughable, how could they let people that have been so emotionally distraught wait two years for any offer of help and think that they will just sit back and be grateful. Then to send me a letter stating that if I don’t use these 20 free hours of counselling within the next 12 month period they will be cancelled.
It was too long to wait. Too little had been offered.
Cheryl Barry’s letter was submitted the same day as the other parents recounted their experiences. Graeme and Delma Collins were eloquent in their address to the Joint Select Committee. Martha Jabour watched as one politician began to cry and another proclaimed shame at what the families had been forced to endure. Their recommendations were noted in a report entitled Ongoing Issues Concerning the NSW Victims Compensation Scheme and the Act was amended in June 2000, the amendments coming into force a month later.
From 14 July relatives of murder victims who were not eligible for compensation, such as grandparents or stepsiblings, were able to receive counselling. Reassessment would occur after 20 one-hour sessions. The compensation system was also to be streamlined. Families would automatically receive $50 000 three months after application, providing no other applications had been received. Funeral expenses would also be covered in cases where relatives were not qualified to receive compensation, and would be deducted from the $50 000. The Act would now be called the Victims Support and Rehabilitation Act.
All four families featured in this book helped to change New South Wales and Australian legislation to make it accommodate better the families of victims of homicide. But have they gone far enough? And what can we as individuals do to make a difference?