‘Just Say Goodbye’ (January 2013 online edition)

‘Just Say Goodbye’According to Kaya, she regularly called the police to the house when Rajeshhit her. Kaya’s mother encouraged her to leave and take the children backto New Zealand. Kaya said she ‘couldn’t do that ‘cause he would follow me.He threatened me so many times, if you ever take the children anywhere Iwill find you and I will kill you’ (Native Affairs 2010). She said that she believedthat leaving was the only choice and that it would be better for the children ifshe left.I was sick of seeing my children grow up in a violent relationship … I didn’twant that to happen to them. I didn’t want them to be psychologicallydamaged because I was … I had such high dreams for them and I knew inmyself that they would get there. But I seriously believed that they would notget there if I still lived with them and they were growing up like the way theywere growing up – witnessing everything (Native Affairs 2010).Kaya also told the Sunday Herald Sun that ‘He [Rajesh] was very violent.Every time we argued and fought my eldest daughter, Asia, would group theother two siblings together and she would hide in the room and cry’ (Houlihan2010).Kaya said she fled the relationship and lived in a homeless women’s shelterbefore establishing a new life. She said Rajesh Osborne took steps to stop hergetting her children back. He did not allow her to have any contact with thechildren after they separated.‘They weren’t even allowed to say my name out loud,’ she said. ‘I would driveto their school and I would just watch them walking home and as soon as theirfather would find out he would change schools and residence’. She said shecarried on with life by ‘putting a rock in my heart’ (Houlihan 2010).Kaya watched her children grow from a distance, secretly communicating withher ex-husband’s sister about their progress. ‘Whenever there was a birthday orsomething she would ring me and the children would be in the background. Iwould just hear their voices,’ she said (Houlihan 2010).Native Affairs reported that Rajesh Osborne left a suicide note to his secondwife in which he blamed her for his situation and told her that she was thereason for killing the children. They said there was a suggestion that she wasgoing to ‘out’ him publicly as a violent and abusive man.When the children’s mother, Kaya, was asked why she thought Rajeshkilled his children, she said she believed it was connected to his violencetowards her:45