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David Bain addresses and international justice conference. - Source: ONE News -
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David Bain campaigner Joe Karam was in tears in Perth yesterday when he followed Bain as a speaker at the International Justice Conference.
Bain spoke for 40 minutes, in his first public appearance since his release from prison.
Karam walked onto the stage and was prepared to speak, but was too emotional and maintained silence for a time before regaining his composure.
He told the delegates that to see Bain standing there before them, a free man, was a proud moment for him.
Karam told them he met David Bain when he, Karam, was 43 and he is now 60.
At a media conference following the speeches Karam stopped Bain from answering a question about his affection for his father.
Bain recounts 'Pacific paradise' childhood
David Bain spoke lovingly about his murdered family at an international justice conference in Perth yesterday.
The 39-year-old smiled as he described their life in Papua New Guinea before they came to Dunedin in 1988, saying it was a "Pacific paradise" filled with family trips to the beach and church events.
"Life in Papa New Guinea was a child's ideal. We grew up in a paradise where running around in nothing but a pair of shorts and sunscreen was the norm," he told the crowd of international criminal experts and media today.
"It was all just one big playground".
However, Bain became sullen as he recounted the morning in 1994 when he returned from a paper run to find his family murdered in their Dunedin home.
He said he went into a state of shock when he found his mother still in bed with blood pouring down her face and may have fainted before going from room-to-room to find the rest of his family.
"I found my brother Stephen curled on the floor of his room. I saw Laniet in bed and Arawa also on the floor of her room, twisted into an unnatural position.
"I then remember finding Dad on the floor in our lounge and then the impression of black hands taking away my family."
Bain was exonerated in 2007 after serving 12 years for the murder of his parents and three siblings in Dunedin in 1994.
In 2007, the Privy Council quashed his convictions on the grounds of a substantial miscarriage of justice and ordered a retrial, which took place in Christchurch in 2009, where a jury found him not guilty.
Bain attended the International Justice Conference along with other Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton, who was convicted of murdering her two-month-old daughter while on a campaign trip in 1980, despite claiming that a dingo had eaten her baby.
Creighton had her conviction overturned in 1988 and received $1.3 million in compensation from the Australian government four years later.