For 30 years, The Homicide Victims Support Group (HVSG) has helped the many families who have been affected by homicide in NSW.
Created back in 1993, the group held its first meeting after the parents of murder victims Anita Cobby and nine-year-old Ebony Simpson first met.
Three decades on, and the HVSG has helped around 5,000 families whose lives have been forever changed by homicide.
Robert Taylor, Chairman of HVSG, said it is “unbelievable” the support the group gives to families that have suffered homicide.
“We’re always there, we’ve got a 24-hour helpline, because you wake up at two or three o’clock in the morning or you don’t know what to think and you call this helpline and there’s somebody there just to listen to you, that’s very important,” Taylor told Parra News.
“We help them with the victim’s impact statement when the court case comes up, we go to court with them while the court case is being heard and any cross examination.”
“We literally hold their hand and comfort them and I know for a fact that it is very comforting and a great assistance.”
For Taylor, the group holds a special place in his heart. It was the HVSG who first reached out to him and his wife to offer support when his son, Simon Taylor, was fatally stabbed right in front of him.
“Simon was badly stabbed and lacerated in his face, I was also stabbed, and both of us were rushed to RPA Hospital,” he said.
“I went to my first meeting with the Homicide Victims Support Group… and I sat around with my wife, my daughter and my son-in-law and we heard all these other families talking about the incident and what they were going through.
“It was just lovely to see all these people, there were a lot of families, just expressing themselves that they were in a group of people that felt exactly how they were feeling themselves.”
The HVSG showed Taylor that he wasn’t ‘Robinson Crusoe’, a feeling he now helps other members to realise as well.
“It’s just fantastic to talk to these people, I’d never dreamed that I would meet people like I’ve met through the Homicide Victim Support Group that’s suffered the loss of a loved one,” he added.
“It has helped me tremendously and to be able to put my arm around family members and help them get through this unbelievably sad episode of their lives, it never goes away.”
With both an office and op shop located on Church Street in Parramatta, HVSG has since opened the world’s first residential trauma centre for children, ‘Grace’s Place’, in Doonside, thanks in part to the funds raised through the op shop.
The group marked its momentous anniversary and the opening of Grace’s Place with a night of dining and dancing last Friday.
To find out more about HVSG and to donate, go to http://www.hvsgnsw.org.au.
Ellie Busby is a news reporter for Western Sydney Publishing Group. A graduate of the University of Hertfordshire and Western Sydney University, she is a journalism Major. Ellie has worked with Universal Media, The Cova Project and for a range of other organisations. In 2024, Ellie was named Young Writer of the Year at the Mumbrella Publish Awards.