After suffering years of sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather, a Victorian teenager accused of shooting him and dismembering his body has walked free.
The 19-year-old smiled and hugged her mother after Victoria's chief prosecutor dropped the charges against her on the grounds that a jury was unlikely to convict her.
She had endured four years of horrendous abuse at the hands of her stepfather since she was 14, the Victorian Supreme Court heard.
On the night of his death in March last year, the 34-year-old man threatened her with a loaded gun and forced her to perform a sex act on him in a shed in the backyard of their northern Victorian home, an earlier court hearing was told.
After she performed the act, the then 18-year-old picked up the gun and fired it at the back of his head to put an end to the abuse.
She told police she cut off his arms, legs and head with a handsaw and buried the torso in a shallow grave in the backyard, where it was found in April last year.
She then took the arms, legs and head in rubbish bags and dumped them in long drop toilets in a nearby camp ground.
The girl had pleaded not guilty to murder, but Director of Public Prosecutions Jeremy Rapke, QC, on Friday withdrew single counts of murder and unlawful interference with a human corpse.
Rapke told the court there was no reasonable chance a jury would convict the woman.
But he warned the case was exceptional and not a green light for people to take the law into their own hands.
"The physical, sexual and psychological abuse to which (she) was subjected since the age of 14 ... make it extremely unlikely that a jury would convict her," he said.
Justice Philip Cummins said the decision was "responsible and necessary" before telling her she was free to go.
Among the acts of abuse suffered by the girl, her stepfather took almost 10,000 pornographic still and video images of her to blackmail her into submission, an earlier hearing was told.
The images dated from 2004 to 2008.
She told police if she had not killed her stepfather, she would probably have killed herself, "because I couldn't live the way I was".
She had also told a male friend that her stepfather had threatened to stab her "straight in the heart" if she told police about the photos.
Her stepfather would not allow her to have a relationship with the male friend.
But he and the young woman's mother both confronted the man about his relationship with his stepdaughter.
The stepfather told the male friend there would be nothing wrong if he and his victim became a couple because they were not related by blood.
During the hearing, the woman's mother described her de facto husband as a "control freak" who in the early part of their relationship had exercised staunch control over her life.
She said she regularly confronted him and her daughter about their relationship, but he would laugh off the suggestion.
Outside court, the young woman's lawyer Brian Birrell said the defence believed it was a case of legally justifiable homicide.
"My client is very happy that the Director of Public Prosecutions has taken a similar view and avoided my client the anguish of a trial," Birrell said.
She had endured an "incredibly difficult" time.
"She's now able to get on with her life," he said.
