Sisters’ grief turns to anger

By Kath Gannaway
SISTERS Deanne Green, Carmen Sullivan and Marea Yann expected to live out the last years of their lives together.
They’d talked about it … sisters and best friends plotting good times as they grew old together.
Carmen and Marea lived in Healesville, Deanne just a 15 minute drive away in Yarra Glen.
The youngest sister, Antoinette Tancredi, lived in the USA, but was in constant contact by phone, particularly with Marea.
A phone call on the morning of 30 September 2003changed everything.
Marea had been found murdered in her own home. It was the beginning of a journey of grief turned to despair and now anger.
Mrs Green says they struggle more than four years later to comprehend not only the daily aching loss, but now, the trauma inflicted by a court system she and Mrs Tancredi say treated the family inhumanely.
“The one thing we wanted for Marea was justice, but her killer still walks the streets, and it seems unlikely anyone will pay the price for her murder. I know now it’s over and I am making the decision to just embrace Marea and move on,” Mrs Green said after the acquittal last week of the man charged with her sister’s murder.
While they accept that they must get on with their lives, Mrs Green and Mrs Tancredi are calling for reforms to the court system to ensure no family suffers the trauma they say they were subjected to because the trial was held in the tiny Geelong courtroom. A court they believe should never have been used for a murder trial and never should again.
The women told the Mail the trauma of sitting through horrific details of Marea’s death, under threat of being removed if they showed the slightest sign of emotion was something they will never forget, or forgive.
“All through we were warned by the judge that because the jury and the accused were so close, we were not to show any emotion,” said Mrs Green.
Mrs Tancredi sat through a graphic police video taken at the murder house.
“I had to see for myself what my sisters have had to deal with since that day. But to have to sit there, not shed even a tear, to have to hold in the tortuous pain of seeing my beautiful sister like that, was so unjust,” she said.
Mrs Green said: “All through we were asked to be completely inhuman, but to be told just two minutes before the verdict ‘I will have no emotion in my court’ was numbing. (Justice Betty King made the comment after concerns expressed by the defence counsel.)
“We had to sit there, hands held, fists clenched. We felt all the emotion like an electrical charge through our bodies but we had to stand motionless and emotionless. We got up silently and walked out, our hearts breaking. Because we are a dignified family we did that. But it is the most horrific expectation of any human being and we will do what we can to make sure no one has to endure what we did.”