Yesterday marked the end in a long journey for justice for four girls who lost their youth, innocence and self-esteem to sexual predator Ricky McLennan.
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If the case has been tough on these girls, you could argue it has been even tougher on their parents.
Each day they are there to hold their daughters’ hands, wipe away their tears and reassure them everything is going to be alright.
They can’t fix it, they can’t make it better, they can’t take away the pain, all they can do is lend their support.
You can see the guilt, a shroud of stress and melancholy.
As McLennan was taken away yesterday one mother started yelling, “I hope you die in there. I hope you die.”
Minutes later she confided that she didn’t know what came over her.
Ricky McLennan leaves court on Monday.
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“I’m not usually like that,” she said.
The father of another victim stood stoically by.
When asked how he could restrain himself from striking out at McLennan he had a simple reply:
“I don’t want to end up in a three-foot cell like I know he is,” he said. “I know right from wrong.”
At the sentencing yesterday there were tears from the parents, but there was also laughter and a sense of victory, the feeling that McLennan had finally been beaten.
These victims and their families have taken the higher road.
While McLennan will be spending the next decade in a jail cell these girls will be free of the man who has so deeply scarred their lives and free to build their futures in defiance of what he did.
As one of the young women said, “we are not victims, we are survivors”.