TOM MEAGHER, THE husband of murdered Irish woman Jill Meagher, has given his first interview since his wife’s killer was sentenced to jail.
Speaking to ABC News, he said that his life was completely changed in one night, and that his family and friends were pulling him through the situation.
Speaking about the sentencing of Adrian Ernest Bayley, who was jailed for at least 35 years for Jill’s rape and murder, Meagher said:
I don’t think anything is enough. I can’t think of a worse person than that man. And it wasn’t… I wasn’t expecting anything else. I wasn’t expecting the judge to hand down life without parole, simply because people had told me this wouldn’t happen.
I certainly don’t think the sentence for the rape charge was enough, at all, given what this man has done in the past. I think that 15 years is a disgrace, considering the maximum penalty for rape is 25 [years]. I don’t know what the maximum penalty is for, if it’s not for that man.
Asked whether Bayley was remorseful, Meagher said he did not see how he was remorseful.
He said his “blood boils” when he thinks about the fact Bayley had already served sentences for sex crimes, and had served less than half of the maximum penalty for 16 counts and four victims during his last stint in jail.
This sends out a disturbing message, said Meagher, adding that Bayley is “unrepentantly evil” and had been “let off too many times by our justice system”.
He also said that the message given from the sentences that Bayley received for attacking sex workers says to women “if we don’t like what you do, you don’t get justice”, and tells Bayley “not ‘don’t rape’, but ‘be careful who you rape’”.
Asked if the Australian justice system failed Jill and failed him, he said it did. Meagher said the murder had made him angry and really fearful.
He described Jill as “the funniest girl in the world”, breaking down while describing her as incredibly funny and incredibly witty, “so smart and intelligent”, and a woman who “brightened up any room she was in”.
Watch the full interview with Tom Meagher here.
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