Jill Meagher’s family focused on gaining closure

The family of Irish woman Jill Meagher have said they are focused on gaining closure now that a number of other cases against the man who raped and murdered her have come to a conclusion.

Adrian Bayley (43), is serving a life sentence, with a non-parole period of 35 years, for the rape and murder of Ms Meagher as she walked home from a night out with work colleagues in Melbourne in September 2012.

On Thursday, it emerged that Bayley was found guilty of the rape of three other young women. Due to court suppression orders in place until the third trial ended it had not previously been possible to report on any of the cases.

In a statement, the family said reports that they were to join others whose relatives were killed by criminals either on parole, or whose parole had just expired, against the state of Victoria, were completely false.

"Nothing can bring back our daughter, but was as was clear from the Callinan report, the Victorian Parole Board failed to protect our daughter and many others in the community," the statement said.

“As a family we have until now been very mindful not to make any statement or take any actions that might delay the outstanding criminal proceedings against Gillian’s murderer. However, now that these proceedings are completed we want to try and obtain closure and to ensure that others families don’t have to endure this trauma.

"In particular, as a family we would like to a) continue to raise awareness of the systematic problem of violence against women. It is an issue that Tom Meagher our son in law in particular is totally associated with in both his writings and his role as an ambassador for the White Ribbon Campaign; b) Ensure that the proposed coronial inquest into the circumstances of Gillian's death does not proceed.

Following the Callinan report, the 20th of May 2013 amendment to the Corrections Act 1986 (Victoria) and the criminal proceedings in relation to her murderer we see little to be gained from a local inquest into her death.”

Bayley has now been found guilty of more than 20 rape offences. His other victims included his 16-year-old sister’s friend 25 years ago, a teenage hitchhiker and several prostitutes. When Bayley murdered Ms Meagher he was out of prison on parole after serving eight years of an 11-year maximum sentence for rape.

* This article was amended on March 27th due to a factual error.