Crime victims rally in Harrisburg Monday - Tribune-Review

Updated 17 minutes ago

Bobbi Jamriska never expected to be a victim.

Then, in 1993, her little sister was murdered. And on Monday, she will speak at a rally in Harrisburg as part of National Crime Victims' Rights Week, which seeks to highlight how changing laws impact victims of crime.

“I never wanted to be a victim,” Jamriska wrote in her speech, which she shared with the Trib in advance of her appearance. “I struggled with wearing that description for years after it was assigned to me. But I learned, over time, that it's ... just a thing that happens that impacts your life and who you are.”

For any victim of crime, she continued, “there's a distinct line in your life: Before and After. The real decision that any victim has is, what now? This terrible thing happened, now what am I going to do with that? I never set out to be a victim, or a voice for victims. My circumstances led me here.”

Jamriska was 22 in 1993 when her sister, Kristina Grill, met her boyfriend, Maurice Bailey, at an Elliot schoolyard to tell him she was five months pregnant with their baby. They were 15.

Later the evening, some neighborhood children found Grill's severely beaten body. She had 11 stab wounds around her neck, and investigators said there were bloody shoe prints on her abdomen, as if the murderer was intent on killing the unborn baby, too.

Tried as an adult, Bailey was convicted of first-degree murder. He received the mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.

But in 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that mandatory life in prison without parole sentences for juveniles was unconstitutional. The ruling had a huge impact on Pennsylvania, home to about 450 juveniles serving life sentences, or one-fifth of the global juvenile lifer population.

For convicted criminals such as Maurice Bailey, the ruling meant a chance at parole.

For crime victims such as Bobbi Jamriska, now 45 and living in Denver, it meant the reopening of old wounds every time a parole hearing is scheduled.

“We moved on, relatively speaking,” Jamriska wrote. “You never get over any of that, you find a way to live with it. I'm pretty sure I have PTSD from all of it. I've had nightmares, bouts of IBS, and panic attacks from the stress on my body, on my mind. We thought we were done with the judicial system.”

Legislators first considered a rollback of juvenile lifer sentences in 2008.

That's when Jamriska became a reluctant spokeswoman for victims.

There were hearings in Harrisburg, Philadelphia and Washington. At each one, family members of juvenile lifers and legal and psychological experts testified about the cruel and unusual nature of sentencing a child to life in prison.

Then Jamriska stepped forward and delivered her and others' opinion: Sometimes a kid does indeed deserve life in prison without parole.

“I'm not sure where the script got flipped and he became the victim,” Jamriska told the Trib in a 2015 profile. “My sister was the victim. He beat her, he stepped on her, he left her for dead. … You can watch the story on the news and think you know for certain what should happen, but until you've been in it yourself, until you sit in that courtroom and look at pictures of your dead sister and listen to descriptions of how she left this earth, I don't think you can form that opinion.”

The rally is organized by the Crime Victims' Alliance of Pennsylvania and the Victim Advocate of the Commonwealth of PA.

Jamriska is one of eight people scheduled to speak at the rally. Others include Carol Lavery, chair of the CVAP; Monica Iskric of the Center for Juvenile Justice Training and Research of Juvenile Court Judges' Commission; Jennifer Storm, Victim Advocate of the Commonwealth of PA; and several other crime survivors such as Jamriska.

“As each state sorts out what they want to do with the rulings, there are victims all over the country in limbo,” Jamriska wrote in her speech. “Friends and acquaintances from the work I do advocating are back in the thick of the trauma: nightmares, anxiety attacks and PTSD. There is no easy way to find solace in the rulings and what they have done to all of us.”

Chris Togneri is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 412-380-5632 or ctogneri@tribweb.com.

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