Australian law enforcement authorities could have prevented the rape and murder of Irish woman Jill Meagher in Melbourne by revoking Adrian Bayley's parole as soon as he breached it, a coroner has found.
While no inquest was held into the 2012 murder of Meagher at her family’s request, coroner Ian Gray said on Friday he had made the findings because she was one of three women murdered by men with violent criminal histories during a six-month period.
“Gillian Meagher’s death was preventable,” he said, pointing to failings by Community Correctional Services (CCS) - a division of Corrections Victoria - and the Adult Parole Board (APB), which falls under the remit of the Department of Human Services.
“A more rigorous, risk-averse approach by CCS and the APB would have led to a cancellation of Bayley’s parole,” Gray said.
“The approach taken is difficult to understand... It did not bring dangerous and high-risk parolees immediately to account.”
Bayley was on parole for previous rapes when he raped and murdered Meagher (29) as she walked home from a pub in Brunswick, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria in the early hours of September 22nd 2012.
He was also on bail pending an appeal of a three-month sentence received after pleading guilty to assaulting a man outside a Geelong pub in 2011.
At the time of that incident, Bayley was on parole after serving eight years’ jail for 16 counts of rape against five women.
He had already served time for rapes committed from the age of 18.
The coroner noted Victoria’s parole system has been amended since Meagher’s murder.
Had it been when Bayley was charged with the Geelong assault, Corrections Victoria told the coroner, his parole probably would have been cancelled automatically when he was convicted of that offence.
“The poignant truth of this ... will resonate with Ms Meagher’s husband, family and friends,” Gray said.
The coroner also referred to the murders of both Sarah Cafferkey and Sharon Siermans in his findings.
Cafferkey (22) was killed in November 2012 by convicted murderer Steven James Hunter 11 days after his parole for other crimes ended.
Siermans (29) was murdered in Ballarat by paroled rapist Jason John Dinsley the following April.
(Guardian)