Rest in peace, Warriena

Warriena Wright’s terrifying last moments should not have been broadcast to the world.

Warriena Wright’s face has been emblazoned across our media for the past few weeks, during the trial of the man who was charged with murdering her on the Gold Coast in August 2014. This week he was acquitted.

Every trial involving a sudden death contains a tragic story. Of victims whose lives were suddenly ripped away from them, in circumstances argued back and forth between lawyers in front of a judge.

As the case progresses, every detail of the relevant events is aired in court and painstakingly examined.

Often, relatives of the deceased are hearing certain information about their loved ones for the first time.

Usually only family members who are present and journalists in the press gallery hear this stuff, as they endure day after day of testimony, as a trial progresses.

The media reporting the case put the info out there and we, the public – if we’re interested enough – read about it in daily despatches so that soon, everyone gets to know the gory details.

As horrific as many trials are, this one seemed to have had an edge that made it different from others. In the coverage, there seemed an extra degree of salaciousness. Australian media have called it the trial of the year.

It seemed that the accused wasn’t the only one in the dock. Wright’s behaviour, and the morality of millennials in general, came under scrutiny. As if they are the only people who hook up or use online dating apps such as Tinder.

The extraordinary thing that caused all of this extra attention was the fact that the defendant, Gable Tostee, had made an audio recording of the night.

There can’t have been many instances in past trials where the court has heard the end of a person’s life – in this case the last three hours of Warriena Wright’s life.

But it’s one thing for the investigating authorities and those in the court to hear it. It’s another for it to be released in public so that the whole world can hear it.

The trial is done now, the analysis will continue for an age and Wright’s family must be left in peace as they grieve a lost daughter, sister, niece, cousin and friend. She was a much-loved young woman who departed this world in the most upsetting and stressful circumstances.

And most people in this country would have heard some part of that parting.

What was the public interest justifying its release so that news organisations could feature it in their coverage?

Hearing her anguished cries on the night as part of television and radio coverage was an unnecessary shock to what was already a very shocking story.

One’s first thought was immediately with Wright’s family, to wonder how they must be feeling at hearing this.

The second reaction was to consider how they would be feeling about everyone else hearing it as well. People who didn’t even know her.

Yes, trial proceedings – unless suppressed by the judge – become matters of public record. But Wright was not a public figure. There’s no reason why her death had to become so explicitly public as well.

It seemed to deny her a dignity that she deserved. Especially given the shocking way that she died.

Rest in peace, Warriena.