Brave widow who deserves respect of community

I cannot help but feel huge sadness for Janice Tait.

Instead of enjoying her retirement in the Bay, this 70-year-old is today reflecting on how her life has been ripped apart after her son murdered his father in the family home they all shared.

Murray Tait, 46, was yesterday jailed for life with a minimum non-parole period of 10 years after bludgeoning 76-year-old David Noel Tait with a claw hammer.

It was a particularly vicious crime, the sort you hear about in a home invasion or gang attack rather than one involving father and son.

I remember feeling sick as I read the details when the trial was held in July this year. How could anyone do that to their father?

Mrs Tait has been left without a husband and has essentially lost her son for a long time. For most of us, it is impossible to comprehend the pain she and the rest of her family must be going through.

But while I feel sad for Mrs Tait, I also have a huge amount of respect for her.

In what must have been a challenging interview, Mrs Tait has spoken openly about her family, what happened in the lead-up to this terrible crime and her thoughts now.

She and her other children have also fronted up to Murray in a restorative justice meeting - something I think must have taken incredible courage.

Her plea is that her family tragedy serves as a warning to mental health providers and other support agencies about the advice they give to families seeking help.

In the days leading up to the fatal attack, the Taits acted on advice from Tauranga Tough Love to put in place tough-love strategies aimed at forcing their increasingly reclusive son to start contributing to the family household finances.

This ended horribly.

Mrs Tait's call for agencies to learn from this tragedy is a sensible one.

Every agency associated with helping mentally ill people and their families should spend time to read up on this case and take some learnings from it.

Mrs Tait also takes aim at our privacy laws after she and her husband were unable to access their son's medical records.

This is a rather thorny area and would need a lot of thought before restrictions surrounding such records were ever relaxed.

Having said that, the Privacy Commissioner's office is another agency that should see if there is anything to be learned from this.

Murray Tait will now spend at least a decade behind bars. This sentence does seem rather light given the violence involved, but some will say there are some obvious special circumstances.

Tait has been diagnosed with severe obsessive compulsive personality disorder while in jail and has been urged to take advantage of any treatment regime. This is sound advice that he must follow.

He must not be released until experts and the Parole Board are satisfied he is well again and poses no risk to anyone else.

This case makes me wonder just how many ticking time bombs are out there.

Hopefully something good comes from this and it is used to help prevent another, similar tragedy.