I think it's important for people who have experienced the impact of homicide to share their experiences (if they choose). We can look at femicide in AUS & understand that it's too much, but first hand accounts truly give insight into unending, rippling pain of those who are left

As someone who has studied science & social science, I understand how useful numbers can be - but numbers neglect the humanity behind them.

I've told this story many times, but never in tweet form. The aim isn't to centre myself & my pain (although valid), but to give insight into what it's like to have a family member brutally murdered & navigating that as a teen.

I had arrived back home from a trip to Toowoomba w/ my brother. School holidays, playing vidya, listening to music when my mum & stepdad came home. My biggest gripe was that I wanted maccas & my parents didn't mind-read.

After a few minutes I heard my mum quietly calling to me from the doorway. I turned around, saw her face & immediately knew that someone had died. I figured it was a grandparent. I got up ready to comfort her. I asked what was wrong but she just coaxed me over for a hug.

She embraced me. I remember preparing to hear the news that my Nan had died. But then she said, 'Jason killed Haley'.

I had just been playing CoD:MW2. I was on the level where you're on a ship(?) and burst into doors using explosives. Everything slows down, allowing you to take in everything. When my Mum said those words I was able to take everything in, I remember it as clear as day.

I fell to the ground. My Mum was holding me so I didn't completely collapse. I let out a primal scream that I've only ever repeated once since - and that was during the immense pain of childbirth.

I remember the feeling of the carpet under my knees as I screamed. I scratched at myself, willing myself to wake up from what I was sure was a nightmare. I peeled my eyes open as much as I could, like I do in my dreams when I try to force myself to wake up.

I couldn't see a thing clearly for my tears which ran down into the fresh scratches on my face. They stung. I knew I wasn't asleep. I heard my abusive stepdad tell me to 'calm down' in the background, but for once mum & I didn't pay him any attention.

I remember brushing my hair. I remember the dress I put on before we left to go and tell my second-eldest sister, who was best friends with Haley. We had to go and tell my sister her best friend who was going to be moving in with her, was dead.

The pain felt as though it radiated out of me. Like it could infect anyone who was near. I stared out of the car, observing everyone going about their lives while I was living my very worst day. I didn't understand how people could continue while such devastation had occurred.

We were close to my sisters house when we saw her husband cycling home. We stopped, told him the news & without any other reaction, tears started pouring down his face. He had hot noodles. They were about to spend a weekend at home, eating & watching movies with their toddler.

We got to my sisters house. When she saw our faces she said she wouldn't let us in if we didn't tell her what was wrong immediately. We managed to hold off until she reached the top of the stairs, before she blocked us again. She knew something was wrong. She asked if it was Nan.

Once Mum said those three words to my sister, she too collapsed. I watched her react in the exact same way I did, except that I saw some sort of guilt on her face. We haven't spoken about this, but I suspect she felt as though she could have done more. Of course that's not true.

Then we headed to my Nans house. I remember opening the side gate and seeing a dozen or so people standing at different points down the long pathway. Everyone was looking at the ground. No one was speaking.

We could barely even look at each other. We all were together in the one place, but we had no way to plan how to move forward. This isn't something anyone plans for.

After that moment, things blur until the following day. We drove to my aunty & uncles house, where Haley was killed. I had a cheap bunch of plastic-wrapped flowers in my hands.

As we pulled up, the fence was plastered with police tape. The front yard was littered w/ yellow evidence markers. I saw one forensic officer kneeling down, processing the scene. Another came out from under the garage, took off their face mask and put their head in their hands.

It was at that moment I knew that she had died in a way that was truly horrific. A uniformed officer came over, ready to tell us to move along. Once he saw that we were family, he took the flowers and gently weaved them through the front fence.

From then on I was more or less on auto-pilot. The murderers son had been in my maths class that year. Thankfully he dropped out of school - like I later would - so I didn't have to see the splitting image of the person who took my cousins life every day.

My teachers got angry when I couldn't concentrate at all. The other kids looked at me with pity & curiosity. My grades tanked. I had a teacher tell me to 'just get over it, shit happens'.

I had people come into my life wanting to know the details of the murder. The truth is that we didn't have any. Jason Spina had accidentally burned himself in the process of burning my cousins dead body.

He was on remand, but a trial could not proceed until he had healed. He needed a tracheotomy for a period of time, his ears melted to his head.

I want to wind back for a moment and point out that in QLD, victims of crime are given 10k to help cover expenses. In the context of murder, this could go towards funeral expenses, travel, accommodation, loss of income etc.

It also needs to go towards paying for forensic cleaning. In QLD the tenant/landlord is responsible for the cleaning of a crime scene. My grandparents were able to help pay for the 15k cleaning bill - but the cleaners wouldn't do certain things and were honestly grifters.

There was the blood of my cousin on photos frames. We cleaned off the sloughed off skin of the murderer from the upstairs shower where he had tried to relieve himself of his burns. This added to the trauma.

One of my goals is to get this policy changed. I'm currently working through that. The state should pay for forensic cleaning, and they should have quality assurances.

Anyway, it wasn't until a year and a half later that we were able to find out answers to how Haley was killed. The trial was brutal. My first love broke up with me the night before, so having teen angst mixed with this surreal & totally abnormal court experience was whack tbh

We spent days staring at the back of Jason's head, willing it to explode. He was badly scarred & it disturbed me how pleased I was knowing that he had been in pain. His family was there to support him. I was glad that they were there to find out the truth.

He plead guilty to manslaughter, citing provocation. The state rejected that & aimed for murder. His attorneys were really good. Considering his parents sold their house to pay for them, you'd hope so.

I won't go through everything because writing all of this is starting to take its toll on me, and the murder trial was honestly one of the harder things I've experienced in my life. This is largely because the forensic evidence went up on the projector without adequate warning.

I can still conjure the image of my cousin laying on her back on the concrete. I see the scattered dog food where the bowl had tipped over. I saw how flat she was from blood loss. I saw her clothes had burned away from the top of her body.

I saw the black around her neck & underneath her eyes as a result of strangulation. Hair matted with blood. She looked so peaceful. Her hands were unharmed & relaxed, outstretched from her body. They were tiny. I couldn't look at pictures of hands without crying more months after

He had stabbed her multiple times - iirc around 30 times in total. 10 stab wounds had entry and exit wounds through her body. I stared at those wounds & saw male entitlement, supremacy & disdain for others in them.

Those images helped solidify the state case against Spina. You could see that she had not been alive at the time that he set her alight. He claimed that he had killed her after being set alight. Forensic evidence indicated that she was dead after being pushed & was strangled.

His cowardly family refused to be in the room any time the state provided evidence.

If you Google her name, you'll see that our families 'brawled'. What happened was that someone from our family said 'did you see what he did to her?' since they refused to actually look. The sister replied 'what about Jason?!'

An extended (Irish lmao) family member went up & punched her in the nose. Lmao.

Anyway, the jury came back finding him guilty of murder. Justice Applegarth was incredibly empathetic & sentenced him to the maximum possible in our state. Which is to say he's going to be released in a few years. Spina was crying, but only ever for himself.

He only ever called the ambulance for himself because of his wounds. We heard where he said he 'may have stabbed her [Haley] a little bit'. He felt no remorse.

I stepped out of the courtroom and knew that I still had my freedom while he didn't. There was a moment of elation because the realisation that fundamentally, nothing had changed. Haley wasn't back. There's no reward. There's prize at the end.

He later attempted to appeal, but it was squashed. Jason was punished with all tools available in our current justice system. That honestly doesn't give me any comfort. The life of my family members, and my own life will never recover.

If my son even grazes my neck I freeze & dissociate. Big knives scare me. If I hear someone scream in the neighbourhood I go on high alert.

I saw a woman get punched in the head in the car behind me in traffic a few months ago. Something took over me & I tried to get out & pull the man out of the car. If someone tells me they're being abused I will listen & help, but I let them know that they may be killed.

There's no amount of therapy that will ever erase the deep scars I have as a result of Haley's murder. I recently found out that there's a step of the grieving process that I hadn't heard of before: making meaning.

Earlier this year I took a physical forensic evidence unit at university. My lecturer was a forensic officer for QPS. She processed my cousins body and scene.

Meeting someone who had also seen my dear cousin in that horrific way, who wasn't related to me, was actually really powerful. She knew something about my life that almost no one else does.

(Even though she's a cop lmao), I have a lot of respect for her. You have to be a cop to process scenes on site in QLD, btw. But her integrity & thorough work did help the case against Spina & I am grateful for that.

At around that time I also listened to the 'victimology' episode of the Ologies podcast. I found out that you can use a background in science along with an eye on social justice & victims in particular & potentially do meaningful work.

As luck would have it, a victimology unit started up this July at my uni. I was also able to transfer my degree to Justice and knock a year off it immediately with prior learning.

What I'm trying to say is that I feel like I've finally made as much meaning as I can from Haley's death. I take her memory to uni with me every day. Everything I fight for is with the ultimate, 'radical' goal of less women being murdered by men.

I'm a nervous, shy person but I try to use the sense of injustice that she carried in life & I carry after her death to speak loudly. Whether it's in victimology work, anti-fascism work - her stolen voice is what keeps me going.

I've already been through pain that, 10 years on, winds me even still. So bring it on, basically. I won't stop trying to lessen the pain others go through.