By CASEY VEAL
In April this year, a Supreme Court jury in Victoria found 19-year-old Harley Hicks guilty of entering the home of Casey Veal at Long Gully in Victoria in the early hours of June 15, 2012, and beating her son Zayden to death with a makeshift baton. Hicks was high on the drug ice when he murdered the 10 month old boy.
In sentencing Hicks to life imprisonment, Victorian Supreme Court Justice Stephen Kaye described the killing as a “totally and utterly evil crime”.
Here Casey shares in her own words what it was like to sit through the trial and how she has found some hope in the midst of such tragedy.
Now I will read the jury’s verdict … “Guilty.”
A day I had waited for with a torn heart, a day I had feared would never come. A day I can finally say that we helped deliver justice for Zayden. A day that finally came on the 9th of April 2014
For 34 days I had sat through court – some days fully; some days for only half. A few days I just couldn’t face that monster [Hicks] or the anxiety that followed. Overall, it was a long emotionally draining ordeal.
I heard every piece of evidence: all of the injuries my son suffered (which a lifelong forensic pathologist delivered with deep anguish), the evidence of health professionals and the evidence of Harley Hicks’ associates and family.
Most were talking about my son as a piece of evidence, a job that they each had to cover.
How could I blame them for such emotional detachment? But knowing this rationally didn’t stop the pain I felt each moment.
I knew that justice through the legal system could never bring my baby boy back, as much as I silently hoped and prayed that maybe, just maybe, they could find a way.