The Lockhart murders: The voices that matter most, have been permanently silenced.

Over the last 48 hours I have received all sorts of emails in response to a piece I wrote about the murders of Kim Hunt and her three children.

I’ve had complete strangers call me to thank me, including one woman who just yesterday was handed the ashes of her daughter who was killed by her partner two months ago in a small country town.

Yesterday, after receiving her daughter’s ashes the mother happened to read my article and felt compelled to call and thank me.

We talked for about an hour and later, as I read the news pieces about her daughter, I found myself tearing up again. I’ve also received dozens of emails from all over the world. So it’s been very gratifying to see how much people really do care about the issues raised in the piece.

But the experience has taught me other things too, and caused me to reflect on the nature of humanity and grief. Because I have also received some very angry emails, coming from people who are clearly in pain. One woman from Lockhart, the community where the murders took place, wrote to me demanding that I apologise to her and her community, adding various insulting remarks along the way.

I’ve been thinking about how to make sense of such strong reactions on both sides, and all I’ve come up with is this.

When a person you know and love commits a heinous crime, it’s painful to have to reconcile the image you have of that person in your mind with the horrendous act they have committed. So it can lessen the pain to downplay or turn away from some of the details. It’s also unpleasant and painful to have someone remind you of those details, and in fact you can feel very angry when a journalist (namely me) chooses to do just that.

The only problem is that by whitewashing the details and downplaying what a violent, inexcusable act this was, we are doing the victims a tremendous disservice. When we use euphemisms like “perish” or provide excuses by suggesting that the Kim Hunt’s brain injury caused her to lack empathy and love, we are minimising the accountability of the perpetrator. And the reality is that the only natural justice left for the victims is to have what happened to them acknowledged in full by the community. This cannot occur when details are downplayed or spun.

So here we have the crux of the dilemma. On the one hand, the local community feels that they have a “right to grieve” (which is code for a right to feel a bit less horrible and a bit less confronted by it all). This is understandable given how much they are reeling right now.

But the flipside is that the victims also had a right to have what happened to them properly acknowledged by the community and any attempt to minimize, whitewash, downplay or spin that deprives them of that.

Likewise, the argument can also be made that it’s not only insulting to the victims in this murder case not to acknowledge exactly how they died, but by extension, it’s also harmful to other survivors of abuse not to acknowledge exactly how inexcusable and atrocious such crimes are.

A further dilemma is that because the victims are all dead, this natural justice is largely a symbolic justice and cannot actually aid the victims directly.

If Kim Hunt had somehow survived the gunshot and was now lying in a hospital bed somewhere I don’t think any reporters would be talking about what a nice bloke her husband was because of the extreme insensitivity and hurt that would cause her. But since she is dead, journalists have not found it necessary to afford her that courtesy.

So now we have a situation where the local community members at Lockhart are effectively prioritising their need to grieve over the victims’ right to natural justice. And this of course, they justify in the name of “healing” and moving forward as best they can.

The unfortunate reality though, is that in doing so they are also prioritising their pain over the pain and trauma experienced by the victims and other victims of family abuse. Whether or not this is justifiable is at the heart of what is causing the debate.

And indeed it is both a complex and tragic dynamic when the needs of the community to heal are at odds with the rights of victims to have the crimes against them properly acknowledged.

One friend of mine whose own uncle committed a similar crime shared this insight with me: “[In cases like these] there is an outer denial of the event and protection of the perpetrator to protect the community itself. Otherwise the community lives in fear and chaos.” In other words, it’s an act of self-preservation to want to avoid the graphic details, at least in public. And perhaps that makes some sense.

The sad truth though, is that in doing so, we fail to properly recognise the victims’ ordeals.

Perhaps the take home lesson in all of this is that the struggle over who has the right to determine the significance of a senseless act of violence is a vexed and complex issue, most especially because the people whose voices matter most have all been permanently silenced.

Nina Funnell is a freelance writer, author and speaker. She is the co-author of Loveability: An Empowered Girl’s Guide to Dating and Relationships (Harper Collins: 2014) and has contributed to multiple anthologies including Destroying The Joint: Why Women Have to Change the World. In 2010 Nina was awarded the Australian Human Rights Community (Individual) award for her advocacy work around gender-based violence.

If this post brings up issues for you, you can contact the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence hotline on 1800 737 732 for 24/7 counselling. Alternatively, you can call Lifeline on 131 114.