Noel, Joy & Roger

Noel McNamara's my name. I had a charmed life. That all came to an end one night in March when our daughter Tracey was brought in comatose to the hospital.

Once Tracey died, it became a murder. So that was the start of it.

I'm Roger Membrey and my dear wife Joy Membrey and we have a daughter Elizabeth Membrey, who in 1994 was cruelly murdered. And still, even to this day, we have not located her body and no one has been successfully charged with murder.

It's a terrible shock when something drastic like this happens.

Once you join the club that no one wants to join it's like an out of body experience, I found. You know, I was sort of up there, looking down and all this is going on around us.

And it's hard to avoid the situation where you're not very confused and very unsure of the path that you should take.

Well, the basic things become out of proportion and you know coping with the ordinary stuff is difficult. 

Broken sleep and all sorts of things going through your mind.

It really makes it almost impossible to exist in any rational way.

You know you're just numb. Your life is thrown into turmoil. You've got anger. For the first time in your life you feel like you could kill someone, which you wouldn't do because you'd lower to their level.

I've had a couple of people say 'but you must feel very guilty' and I said what on earth for? I couldn't have done any more as a mother.

They think 'well my daughter wouldn't have that sort of fate because I brought her up properly'.

Each day is entirely different. Some days you can cope, other days you just want to hide away.

I went into what I call the black hole. I was very unsociable, and I'd reached the stage there where I would sit at home and watch the leaves come down on the ground and I couldn't stand the leaves coming down.

I'd be running around picking them up and cleaning them up. I'd no sooner get one lot cleaned up and I'd have to go back and clean up another lot.

But that's how the black hole affects you.

I think the police recommended this psychologist and that would have been a great help if, in hindsight, we could have had someone to sort of prepare us for what was ahead.

Of course, I didn't believe in psychologists doing any good to me I just thought, you know, it's rubbish. How can he tell me, he's never been through a murder, how can he tell me how I'm feeling?

But I did find that very helpful.

Not only that, the Victim Support Agency is open from 8am in the morning to 11pm of the night time seven days a week.

Of course, they've got their website with all the information they need, and when they're in touch with the victims they'll look after them right up to the trial and even after the trial at times.

 

With siblings it's a different story. You don't know how they're grieving, how they're going because they keep it to themselves.

it's very important not to lose track of your own family to keep that communication and loving, if you like, going with the other children.

For many, many years I always felt, having not being able to have a funeral and a perpetrator hasn't been sentenced, I just couldn't... I always felt she wasn't exactly dead.

And you see mothers and daughters out there with a close bond and you think 'ok, here we go again'. And you have to sort of put a barrier, an emotional barrier around youself.

But you know, I feel her around, still, in a strange way so that's quite comforting. And then as the days go, you somehow manage and then you either go under, I think, or you become stronger in different ways.

You'll always grieve, for the rest of your life, but you won't be as bad as what it was at the start.

 You must externalise the grieving process and if you don't you could end up with cancer and all sorts of things.

We started a group, the Crime Victims, and if you walked into the room and they'd just met one another for the first time, you'd think that they'd known one another for years because of a bonding that just took place straight away.

We really felt an obligation, a moral obligation, to help people. We did a number of things. We made a film in Elizabeth's name. We've also made donations to various organisations, including the Bush Heritage organisation.

We were particularly proud that we could put in a garden beside the Exhibition Building in Melbourne. It's a small garden but it's an expansive area and we're proud to do that. We're proud for Elizabeth. Not for us. We're proud for Elizabeth.

It's important for people that don't have a body or haven't been able to have a funeral to have a place to reflect.

The Flight of the Angels which is a memorial service which is up at Parliament House where we call out each victim's name and with each name goes up a balloon and we let a dove go for each victim. That we have every year.

Your life, while it's changed forever, you learn to get your priorities straight because the things that were once a worry to you are no longer a worry.

We have taught ourselves to survive because of our daughter. She wants us to live a full life.

I can hear her saying 'Mum, get a life. get a life.' You know, cheeky little thing she was.