The three children of Samantha Fraser were waiting for their mother to pick them up from school and were initially perplexed when she didn’t show up.
When they realized mom would never be there again because their father, who should have loved them, destroyed their lives by taking her life, their perplexity gave birth to indescribable sorrow, sadness, and wrath.
Ms. Fraser, a psychotherapist, was brimming with suggestions for assisting young people in coping with trauma.
When he killed their mother, Adrian James Basham’s three children—who were then five, seven, and nine years old—experienced that horror.
The eldest daughter of Ms. Fraser, who is now a teen, gave a tearful testimony to the Victorian Supreme Court on Monday, saying it made her sick to think that her mother was slain despite having an endless amount of love for others.
She said, “I have written and crossed out phrases for the past four months that will never compare to the destruction this man, Adrian James Basham, has done to our lives, my life.”
“He killed my mother. He wrecked so many other lives by taking Sammy’s.
One child who made the harsh remark, “What if (she) becomes nuts just like her dad and kills us?” was one of many classmates that she mentioned.
She claimed she wanted to testify in court to obtain justice for herself, her mother, and her friends and relatives.
She declared, “I’m here today to prove to everyone that I’m a fighter and we’ll achieve justice for mom.”
The youngest daughter of Ms. Fraser, who is only nine years old, claimed that Basham had stolen the best part of her heart.
She said, “(Mum) will always remain the angel that lights up my sky.”
Janine Fraser, Ms. Fraser’s mother, said in court on Monday that she didn’t want to give Basham the gratification of seeing how he had irreversibly damaged the family, as he had previously promised to do, but the pain they endured was severe and unrelenting.
She claimed that when her daughter read in the media about a domestic homicide, she told her mother that it would be her.
She claimed Ms. Fraser told her, “Don’t let him get away with it.
Basham was found guilty in April of killing Ms. Fraser on July 23, 2018, at her home. He had been accused of raping his estranged wife months previously.
Evidence, according to the prosecution, showed Basham waited patiently before attacking Ms. Fraser in her garage, then strung a rope around her neck and staged the incident to appear as though she had committed herself.
In a pre-sentence hearing on Monday in the Victorian Supreme Court, his attorney Ashley Halphen maintained that the murder was not planned out beforehand.
Justice Lesley Taylor, however, disputed the submission’s conclusion that he at least intended to hit her.
According to the evidence, Ms. Fraser had taken numerous precautions to guarantee her complete separation from Mr. Basham.
And he understood that.