THE PARENTS OF murdered Irish woman Jill Meagher have spoken to an Australian television channel about living with the pain of their loss and the difficulties they face because of financial and health issues.
George McKeon has been ordered to attend a hearing in Dublin next week in connection with a civil lawsuit and faces a penalty of up to AUS$270,000 if he does not appear.
However, a medical condition renders him unable to fly from Perth (where he lives with his wife Edith).
The order comes from a US court as part of what has been described as a complex civil suit. It is unrelated to the death of his 29-year-old daughter.
“My health is bad. I’ve had three strokes. I have a brain disease,” he told Channel 10, adding that it doesn’t have a “great effect” on him because “Gillian has died”.
“I can’t cry any more tears. I’m cried out,” said Jill’s mother Edith.
We’ve lost our daughter to the most horrendous, horrendous death.
The pair travelled to Melbourne earlier this year for the trial of their daughter’s killer Adrian Bayley.
“We succeeded in putting ‘it’ away,” said Edith.
“When I was face-to-face with him, it took a while,” added George. “But then he became afraid”.
Jill’s father says that his daughter’s legacy of changing the law and changing attitudes about sexual violence is a “great comfort” to him.
However, Edith finds little comfort in anything other than her memories and photographs.
“We won’t have any grandchildren. We won’t have the life that we should have had with them.
She always had that lovely, lovely smile. What you see is what you got with her. We miss her dreadfully.
Jill Meagher’s body was discovered in a shallow grave on 27 September 2012 about 55km from where she went missing six days previously.
Bayley was found guilty of her rape and murder and was jailed for a minimum of 35 years.
(YouTube: English News)
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