Domestic violence campaigner Lesley Elliott dies
Lesley Elliott, domestic violence campaigner and mother of Sophie Elliott, has died.
The 76-year-old had been suffering with Parkinson’s disease and dementia and passed away at Ross Home in Dunedin on Sunday.
Following the brutal murder of her daughter Sophie by her former boyfriend in 2008, Elliott set up the Sophie Elliott Foundation and toured New Zealand teaching young people about safe and healthy relationships and the warning signs of abuse.
Gil Elliott paid tribute to his former wife of 50 years, who became a tireless campaigner after their daughter’s death.
That included talking to young women around the country about abusive relationships.
He will deliver a eulogy at Friday’s service, and noted that their two sons ‘‘had been robbed of the two women in our family’’. Her declining health over the last two years had been ‘‘incredibly difficult’’ for the family, he said.
Leslie Elliott co-authored a bestselling book about her daughter’s death with Bill O’Brien, Sophie’s Legacy. At least eight women credited it as being the catalyst for leaving their violent partners.
The Dunedin-based author said after the high profile trial he approached Elliott about the book ‘‘to give her a voice’’.
‘‘There were days when I would sit down at her home to do an interview, and she would take out a note that Sophie had written and just lose it . . . so we would go for a walk on the beach and have another go the next day.’’ That book, and the Loves-Me-Not programme, a programme aimed to prevent abusive behaviour in relationships, resulted in the pair receiving hundreds of positive responses from people who had been in unhealthy relationships.
‘‘I firmly believe if Sophie had a programme like Loves-Me-Not in her final years at school she would have known when things went wrong in her relationship,’’ Elliott told in 2014. Her ill health led to the programme being handedover to the Police, and it continued to cater for year 12 students across New Zealand. ‘‘An incredible lady, she used to say, ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about, I’m just a nurse and a mother’.’’