Justice Christopher Beale is continuing to speak of the pain Erin Patterson unleashed with her murders.
The relatives she killed, he said, were good to her. She took loving grandparents from her own children.
Your offending involved an enormous betrayal of trust. Your victims were all your relatives by marriage. More than that, they had all been good to you and your children over many years, as you acknowledged in your testimony.
Not only did you cut short three lives and cause lasting damage to Ian Wilkinson’s health, thereby devastating the extended Patterson and Wilkinson families, you inflicted untold suffering on your own children, whom you robbed of their beloved grandparents.
Four generations of the extended Paterson and Wilkinson families have been traumatised by your crimes, not to mention their friends.
Don’s mother, Martha Patterson, aged 100, made a victim impact statement. In it, she craves the God’s healing for her family.
The families keenly feel… the impossibility of shielding the youngest from the incessant discussion of the case in the media, online, in public spaces, even in the school yard.
Many also struggle to cope with work and studies, and many have experienced additional financial burdens.
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