Troubling side to killer's release

Rosemary McLeod

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Rosemary McLeod

What price a cultural inheritance To be rich, have a butler and save Kirks Prostitution not just selling your body A life not to be celebrated Baby Boomers join Gen Y in drug-fuelled solace Old age hard enough without pious interference The year ahead must be better Much ado about a jolly stuffed toy Stop pussyfooting on street safety Short mutts - bad, mad and dangerous to know

OPINION: What a perplexing problem Stephen Anderson, the Raurimu killer, presents. He shot six people dead, is now back among us, and is sorry, he tells us. But are there times when sorry is not enough?

Anderson is a schizophrenic. At the time of the killings, in 1997, he had chosen not to take his medication because - a not uncommon delusion among the mentally ill - he didn't believe he needed it. He had become a heavy cannabis user, was obsessed with firearms, and had had his gun licence taken away.

Disaster was on the cards. His father was among his victims: the others, including four wounded, were family friends and his parents' workmates who had been invited to stay at their ski lodge.

To put it in perspective, this was one of the worst mass killings in our history, up there with the Aramoana massacre, and the Schlaepfer, Ratima and Bain family tragedies. The details were harrowing, and a good many people are suffering still from the aftermath. Think of the van de Weterings. The father of the family, Henk, was shot and killed that day. His wife, carrying grandchildren in her arms, fell and was injured while calling 111, and later had to fight ACC for compensation. She and her son, Rodney, shot in the head and arm, but surviving, left the country. He still has pellets in his brain, and suffers from what his brother, David, describes as "horrific headaches".

Isabel McCarty, another victim, was shot in the back, while her husband died next to her from his injuries. She describes herself as "full of shrapnel" still. It is a lot to expect of people to move on after such a calamity, and build new lives. That is what the killer has been doing through years in the mental health system, but his victims have evidently been less supported.

Anderson's mother, Helen, says her son is "not newsworthy". She's wrong. His release was newsworthy, and he has now made it more so by writing an account of himself and his present state of mind for a national magazine. A reaction was inevitable, not least because mass killers traditionally haven't left either jail or mental hospital for the rest of their lives. We have a right to question why he has, and to expect confident reassurance that it will work out for the best.

The mental health system failed to care for Stephen when he became ill in the first place, though revoking his gun licence was a sign of someone's concern. His deteriorating state might have been apparent to his parents, but leading up to the killings they seem to have reluctantly accepted both his heavy cannabis use and not knowing for sure if he was talking his medication. His appearance with a gun a few days before the tragedy might have aroused concern, and it seems astonishing that on the morning of the killings he had access to a loaded weapon which had plainly not been kept secure.

A certain unreality seems to have still enveloped his mother after the event. McCarty was astonished to be invited by her to stay at Raurimu again within weeks of the massacre. "Funny ideas I am afraid," she has said. In other words, relying on people close to a person with severe mental illness to monitor them may not work out.

It isn't fair to blame Stephen's parents. They needed close professional support, which they plainly didn't get, and seem to have gradually normalised the abnormal. They should not have been put in that impossible position.

We have a right to ask what has changed since in mental health, and to debate whether, now that he has recovered his senses and is taking medication, Stephen should be free. I find his abiding interest in cannabis, expressed in the article, troubling, and his appreciation of the horror of what he did is not apparent to me there. He says other people have told him they could have done the same. What does he mean by that?

Compassion says to give him a chance. Experience says to be wary. As for me, I'd hope we would remember the victims. They would deem it a blessing just to be alive.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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Mel   #1   09:57 am Jul 29 2010

Furthermore... according to the New Zealand Herald with regards to Anderson's article in North and South magazine, Anderson was paid "a freelance contributor's fee of around $2500 for the article".

The article which he wrote about having killed six people. Silly me for thinking we live in a society where people are not legally allowed to make financial gain from commiting a crime....

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