CW: CONTAINS THE NAME & PHOTO OF A MURDERED ABORIGINAL WOMAN
Adam Winmar’s abuse of Kiara Ferguson was brutal and ongoing. When Winmar’s homemade gun killed Kiara in April of 2023, the context of his domestic violence attacks on the 27-year-old barely influenced the outcome of the legal process.
The official story goes: He had a homemade gun in the house. Kiara’s daughters found the weapon inside a couch at their home in Shepparton. Kiara took the weapon into Winmar and told him off. The gun (allegedly) fell to the floor and discharged.
A single bullet killed Kiara. She was six months pregnant. He was charged with negligent manslaughter but the Victorian Department of Prosecutions withdrew the charge and he pleaded guilty to reckless conduct endangering life and possessing a firearm as a prohibited person.
Winmar – a man with a long criminal history steeped in domestic violence and other offending – was sentenced to three months and a 12-month community corrections order this week. He will spend less time in jail over Kiara’s death than he spent for assaulting and choking her – that sentence was four months.
The judge decided to be so gentle on this killer because he ‘lost his partner’, was not allowed to see her children and he suffered ‘extreme guilt and devastation’.
After sentencing, Kiara’s family spoke not just for their incredible woman – they spoke on behalf of all domestic violence victims whose lives are treated as footnotes in the legal system’.
“Kiara was killed in an act of domestic violence – an act that was preventable and final,” her family says.
“Yet the sentence fails to acknowledge the full gravity of what was done to her, her daughters, to us, and to our community.”
When women are killed and there are no witnesses, the police, lawyers and judges base their decisions around his narrative.
The one person who knows the truth of that day, died on a cold bathroom floor just metres away from the little girls she loved so much. Misidentification of homicide is far too common in Australia.
I’m guessing, if Kiara were a middle-class white woman from the suburbs whose murder attracted national media and political interest, the decisions made by police, prosecutors and the judge would have been very different.
Kiara is another woman failed. She deserved more than this. Her daughters, her mum, her family, her friends and her community deserve more than this.
This is not justice, it’s a deeply shameful moment in a long list of deeply shameful moments.
“We ask that her memory be honoured with the seriousness and justice she deserved in life and in death,” her family says.
KIARA FERGUSON MATTERS!❤️
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