There was a time when Garry Lynch would probably have shied away when asked to stand up in front of a crowd and speak about how despicably horrible life can be. He was just an ordinary man leading a very quiet and ordinary life - just one of the many thousands of people who live the same way in the western suburbs of Sydney; who mow their lawns on a Saturday morning, shop with their wives on Thursday nights and watch the rugby league on TV on a Sunday evening.

You may have passed him at one stage in a supermarket in Blacktown or stood beside him in a queue in the bank; but you would not have noticed anything unusual about him because he was not a person who distinctly stood out in a crowd. Ordinary people rarely do.

But what happened on the evening of February 2nd 1986 changed Garry and Grace Lynch’s ordinary lives forever, placing them in the full glare of a media spotlight which would focus not so much on them but their 26 year old daughter, Anita, and what happened to her on that evening 22 years ago.

What happened to 26 year old nurse, Anita Cobby, became a watershed for the way the Australian people – and judiciary - viewed the victims of crime and the perpetrators of those crimes.  Anita was a young woman - so beautiful that she had won a beauty pageant – who had recently seperated from her husband and was living back with her parents, Grace and Garry Lynch, in their house in Blacktown west of Sydney. She worked as a nursing sister at Sydney Hospital and on that fateful, balmy Sunday evening had just enjoyed a meal in a restaurant with her friends after finishing her shift.

Her parents house was just a few minutes drive from Blacktown train station and Garry always drove to collect Anita when she got off the train rather than have her walk at night; but on this evening she was not to make her usual phone call to her father.

Barely minutes after leaving the station she was ambushed and dragged into a car carrying five men. Her fate over the following hours at the hands of those five men simply defies description. Two days later her defiled body was found in a local cow paddock by a farmer – Garry and Grace Lynch soon after answered a phone call which would change their lives forever.

Garry Lynch was accompanied by a detective constable to formally identify his daughter; on advice from detectives he had discouraged his wife from attending with him, so distressing was the sight of their daughter’s appearance in death. Garry Lynch lived for the rest of his life with the images of what he saw that day; within 22 days her killers were found and the ensuing court trial revealed details so horrific that millions of Australian’s began calling for the re-introduction of the death penalty. Petitions were gathered and presented to Parliament, even hardened journalists and politicians who had previously argued against capital punishment now joined the debate in favour of bringing back the death penalty.

The five men were sentenced to life without parole – their papers stamped ‘never to be released’ the issue of ‘truth in sentencing’ became highlighted. Grace and Garry Lynch, and Anita’s sister, were also sentenced to a life sentence from which they also would never find an escape. And it was through this unwanted fate that Garry Lynch found himself become overnight ‘the’ spokesman for the victims of crimes and their families.

I will never forget a comment Garry Lynch made at the time of his daughter’s funeral:

” This was not just a crime against one woman, it was a crime against womanhood itself “.

Appalled at how little assistance the families of murder victims received, shocked at how the rights of the accused were deemed to be paramount by members of the legal system, Garry started the Homicide Victim’s Support Group in 1993 along with Peter and Christine Simpson – themselves grieving the loss of their recently murdered little girl, Ebony(below).

Ebony Simpson.

The group’s objective was to support and assist in all ways the families and friends of victims of crimes; to provide the shoulder of support and grief counselling that was previously unavailable when Anita and nine year old Ebony were killed. Garry Lynch was at the very heart of the organisation and over the next 12 years personally comforted devastated and grieving families; supported them throughout harrowing court trials and became the much needed ‘conscience’ that the legal system had lacked for so long.

Grace and Garry Lynch, Peter and Christine Simpson were the first four people to become the HVSG – today the members, unfortunately, total 2,600 families. It is a ‘club’ which no-one actively wants to become a member of in the obvious sense; but the group has now become a major force in changing legislation, lobbying for victims rights and succeeded in the introduction of the Victim’s Impact Statement thus allowing families to speak on behalf of themselves and victims in a court of law.

Some years back he admitted that he still cried every day for his daughter, but this quiet and gentle man was still able to work for other’s experiencing the same pain in their hearts as he bore in his own.

Garry Lynch gave so many bereaved families a shoulder to cry on, words of compassion and counsel, advice, support - a hug whenever needed – and  he gave them the one thing they had never previously had – a voice.

Garry has recently passed away after a long battle with dementia at the age of 90 – he now rests in peace beside Anita.

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