Victim impact statement example for homicide (written by a family member)

A note before you read

This is a fictional example. In it, James writes about the loss of his younger sister, Adaeze. It's here to help family members of homicide victims understand what a victim impact statement can look like. In most Australian states and territories, close family members of someone who has died as a result of a crime can provide a statement. Use this as a guide, but write your own statement in your own words, about your own experience.

There is no right way to write about losing someone to violence. You don't have to describe what happened. You don't have to mention the offender at all if you don't want to. This is about your person, who they were, and what their absence has cost you.

How I felt at the time

I was at work when my mother called, and at first I didn't understand what she was saying. I drove straight to the hospital, and I don't remember the drive at all. My parents were already there. My brother Emmanuel drove four hours from Sydney that night.

For days afterwards I felt completely numb. I went through the motions, making phone calls, telling people, sitting in waiting rooms, but none of it felt real. I remember strange details, like the colour of the chairs in the hospital family room, and almost nothing about the funeral itself. I couldn't eat properly. I'd forget basic things, where I'd put my keys, what day it was.

The hardest hour of my life was sitting with Chisom, my sister's little girl, while my mother tried to explain that her mum was not coming home. I don't have words for that, and I'm not going to try.

Emotional wellbeing

I startle easily now. A loud noise, or someone walking up behind me, can leave my heart racing for minutes afterwards. I don't sleep through the night anymore, and most nights I'm awake for an hour or two before I can settle again.

I've been seeing a psychologist since Adaeze died, and I'm still seeing one. I've been diagnosed with anxiety and take medication for it, which I never needed before. The sessions and the medication help, but they haven't taken away the underlying problem. They make it more manageable day to day.

Grief still ambushes me. A song in the supermarket. Her handwriting on a card I kept. I can be steady for a week and then lose a whole day to it. If I had to describe myself now, I would say I am on edge most of the time, tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix, and quicker to feel overwhelmed by things that used to feel manageable.

Relationships

I've lost my closest friend. Adaeze and I spoke almost every day, and good news or bad, she was the first person I called. Now I'll go to call her about something and remember halfway through dialling that I can't. There's no replacing a person who's known you your whole life.

Our family has changed shape. There were four of us, and now there are three, and every gathering has a gap where she should be. I am grieving my sister while watching my parents grieve their child, and some days I can't tell you which is heavier. My father has gone quiet in a way I don't recognise. My mother carries it differently, but I can see what it has taken from her.

I've also lost the future I expected. I expected her at my wedding, whenever that happens, and I expected her to be there if I have kids. I expected we'd grow old together as siblings and one day remember our parents together. Those things were so certain to me before, and now they're just gone.

Physical health

Grief has worn me down physically. In the first months I lost my appetite completely, and I lost weight without meaning to. My clothes still don't fit the way they used to. My stomach has been unsettled for more than a year, and my doctor has put that down to stress. I get tension headaches that I never used to get. I seem to catch every cold that goes around, which I'm told is common when your body is run down and you're not resting properly. I am 38, and I have never felt this tired in my body before.

Financial impact

Over the past eighteen months I've taken seven weeks of leave for court and coronial proceedings, and meetings with police and prosecutors. This has been a mix of annual and unpaid leave. The unpaid leave has meant a direct loss of income, on top of using leave I would otherwise have kept for my own life.

I've spent around $12,000 on travel, accommodation, and legal advice connected to this. I've kept a record of these costs and can provide it if needed. My psychologist appointments have an out of pocket cost every fortnight, and that is ongoing.

Adaeze also helped support our parents, financially and with day to day things. The rest of us have taken over what we can, and I now contribute to their costs each month. I don't resent any of it. It is simply another way the loss shows up.

Daily life and routine

My work has suffered. I hold a job that needs concentration, and for a long time I couldn't give it that. I would read the same email three times and still not take it in. My manager has been patient, but I know my output isn't what it was.

I've stopped doing most of the things I used to do for myself. I played touch football on Thursday nights, and I let that go. I used to cook properly and enjoy it, and now I often don't bother.

Some new things have come into my week too. I take Chisom to school on Wednesdays and have her every second Saturday, and I wouldn't give that up for anything. But I want to be honest that my life has been rearranged around a loss. There is no part of my week that looks the way it did before.

Sense of safety

Something I didn't expect is how unsafe the world feels now. Before this, I think I assumed that terrible things happened to other people. I don't assume that anymore. I know now how quickly someone can be taken.

I worry about the people I have left. I call my parents more than I used to, and if one of them doesn't answer I feel a flash of panic before I can talk myself down. I worry about Chisom in a way that is hard to switch off. I find myself thinking about everything that could go wrong for a six-year-old who has already lost so much.

I can't watch the news the way I used to, and I can't sit through anything on television that shows violence. I have to leave the room. It pulls me straight back.

Spiritual and cultural wellbeing

Our family has always been close, and faith and community were a big part of how I grew up. When someone dies, there are things you are supposed to do, ways of mourning together, gatherings that hold a family up. Some of that has been a comfort. People brought food. People sat with my parents. I was grateful for it.

But I'll be honest that my own faith has been hard since Adaeze died. I have found it difficult to make sense of how this could happen to her, of all people. There were stretches where I didn't pray at all, and that was not like me. Some of that has come back slowly. Some of it hasn't.

There is also an expectation, in our culture, to be strong for the family and to carry grief quietly. I have tried to do that, especially for my parents. But carrying it quietly has its own cost, and I want the court to understand that the loss has reached parts of my life that don't show on the surface.

Who I was before this happened

Before this happened, I was a brother who took that role seriously. I'm the second oldest of four, and I'd always felt a quiet responsibility to look out for the younger ones, especially Adaeze, who was the baby of the family.

I was also a fairly settled and even-tempered person. I had my routines, my work, my own life ticking along. I wasn't someone who startled easily or lay awake at night. I trusted that the world was, on the whole, a safe place, and that the people I loved would be returned to me at the end of each day. I was that person right up until the morning my mother called.

What I want the court/assessor to know

I want the court to know who Adaeze was, because a court file cannot hold a person. She was the youngest of us and somehow the one who organised everything. Christmas happened because of her. Birthdays were remembered because of her. She worked as a nurse, and she would come off a night shift and still turn up to Chisom's school assembly with a coffee in her hand. She laughed loudly and often, usually at me. She was 31.

She helped support our parents, and she was raising Chisom mostly on her own, and she made both of those things look easy. What she carried has now been spread across the rest of us, and we feel the weight of it every day, in money, in time, and in worry.

I expect to need psychological support for the foreseeable future. This has not resolved, and I do not expect it to resolve quickly.

What I am asking the court to understand is the size of the hole she has left. Not just that someone died, but the whole life that was inside that loss, and all of our lives that were built around hers.