Aftermath

June 14, 2023·1 hr 9 min·5 clips

Marion Barter vanished in 1997, and her daughter has spent four and a half years searching for answers.

The episode opens by putting the case back on the table. Marion Barter is named first as a mother, teacher, and friend, missing for 26 years in circumstances still described as bizarre. Public hearings have ended, and millions of people around the world are waiting for Coroner Teresa O'Sullivan to deliver findings at a later date. Sally remains closest to that wait. Four and a half years after the hosts began the search with her, they return to the daughter still asking for justice and truth. The tone stays careful. The episode does not pretend the hearings settled everything. It lingers in the space between a public process that has finished and answers that have not arrived. One speaker looks back at Marion's life and the people around her. She talks about love, care, relationships, and whether male attention may have played a part in what happened. The answer does not land cleanly. Another speaker pushes back on treating younger Marion's relationships as an easy explanation for her later disappearance. Marion is remembered as loved and cared for, not as someone plainly without support. The conversation also moves through one woman's return to study: HSC at TAFE, university, linguistics, and then teaching. From there, the episode widens. Feminist commitment, shame, and solidarity come in as women affected by the same man are described as finding one another. There is no tidy release, which feels right for this part of the story. The hosts leave room for hesitation and half-remembered detail, because this excerpt is built from fragments rather than proof. The call for information remains open. Listeners are sent to the series website and anonymous tip line, a plain reminder that one missing piece could still matter. Credits close the episode, naming voice actors, translation and transcripts, producers, and reporters, and showing the amount of work behind the search.

As heard by us

A restrained aftermath to Marion Barter's inquest hearings, centred on Sally Layden, unanswered questions, and the women still speaking up.

Aftermath picks up after the public hearings in Marion Barter's coronial inquest, with Coroner Teresa O'Sullivan's findings still to come. Alison Sandy and Brian Seymour keep Sally Layden close to the centre of it: a daughter still waiting, after years of searching, for…

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Why you'd press play

The inquest has closed its public hearings, and Sally Layden is still waiting for the findings on Marion Barter.

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