Mia Ayliffe-Chung’s mother says she wants to forgive killer, as she prepares to have her daughter cremated

LESS than a week after a French man allegedly stabbed her daughter to death, Rosie Ayliffe says she wants to forgive.

Mia Ayliffe-Chung while working on the Gold Coast.

LESS than a week after a French national allegedly violently snatched her daughter’s life, the mother of young British backpacker Mia Ayliffe-Chung says she wants to forgive the accused killer.

In a remarkable column published on UK news site The Independent, Rosie Ayliffe said she plans to have her daughter cremated in Australia, and small vials of her ashes distributed to friends for scattering across the globe, so the slain young traveller can “visit places she hasn’t visited yet”.

Rosie Ayliffe pictured with a young Mia, in her Facebook profile photo.

But while anger simmers in those around her at the horrific circumstances of the 21-year-old’s death, Ms Ayliffe has apparently turned to her faith to find peace over the loss of her daughter and with the man who allegedly claimed her life.

“I know my brother’s message to Mia’s killer would be about hell, eternal damnation, and the salvation of Christ. Life’s easier in some ways if you live by the book,” she wrote.

“But having been raised as a socialist and within the church, what I choose to take from the scriptures and from socialist texts is that forgiveness and reparation are absolutely key, or violence escalates into something uncontrollable.

“And the person who killed Mia now has to live with the fact that they destroyed my daughter. If they feel no remorse, then surely they’re a monster in human form, and what kind of life is that?”

Ms Ayliffe-Chung died of multiple stab wounds at a hostel in the north Queensland sugar cane growing town of Home Hill last Tuesday, the apparent victim of an unrequited romantic infatuation.

French national Smail Ayad, 29, has been charged with her murder, along with the attempted murder of two men who came to her aid, and the assault of 12 police officers since he has been in custody.

Smail Ayad is accused of killing Brit Mia Ayliffe-Chung.

Ayad is also accused of slaughtering a pet dog in a stabbing frenzy that Shelley’s Backpackers owner John Norris said lasted hours.

One of the two men who came to Ms Ayliffe-Chung’s aid, Brit Tom Jackson, 30, remains in a critical condition in Townsville Hospital, after suffering multiple stab wounds to the head and torso.

His father has flown from the UK to hold vigil at his bedside.

Ms Ayliffe is also expected to fly to Townsville, where she said her daughter’s body will be cremated.

“I’m fully aware that her body is on a slab somewhere in a cold dark place,” Ms Ayliffe wrote. “She wouldn’t mind the dark, but she’s not good with the cold.

“I couldn’t bear for her to be kept like that for weeks and decided she needed to be cremated sooner rather than later.

“I know some of her friends are struggling with that, because they wanted her body brought home and a cremation or burial here in the Wirksworth area, but she has friends all over the place.

Mia had been working at a Gold Coast bar in her “beloved Australia”.

The 21-year-old traded bar work for farm work, which her mother said she was surprisingly ‘relishing’.

“Hence the plan to create a place of remembrance here, but also to give various people vials of Mia’s ashes to scatter in places dear to her or to them.

“That way she can visit places she hasn’t visited yet. Canada, New Zealand, Singapore.”

Ms Ayliffe-Chung had recently arrived at Home Hill to undertake three months of farm work, that would facilitate the extension of her working holiday visa in a country her mother described as “her beloved Australia”.

“The work she had been assigned was picking up rocks between the rows of sugarcane to prevent damage to the machinery,” Ms Ayliffe wrote

“You’ve seen pictures of Mia, 5’5”, skinny as a bird, and meticulous about her appearance. And here she was on a chain gang ... she kept referring to the experience as similar to the book Holes. “There’s even a warden Mum, and snakes!” But she was actually relishing the experience.”

Ms Ayliffe said she feared it would be a snake bite that would bring her rushing to Australia to be by the side of her “little English girl”.

“I asked whether she’d had any induction in what to do if she saw a snake (day four and she’d already seen a dead one and several spiders) and she said no,” Ms Ayliffe said.

“A little English girl in a cane field full of critters and no induction? I was concerned.

“I was expecting to be called out, I genuinely believed she was going to be bitten by a snake.”

Tom Jackson, right, remains in a critical condition after going to Mia Ayliffe-Chung’s aid.

Instead, the circumstances of what befell her daughter were infinitely more tragic.

Nearly a week on, Ms Ayliffe said she is trying to make sense of the nonsensical.

“At the moment, the only way I can really cope with our loss is to think, Mia’s time had come, and what happened in that hostel on Tuesday was her fate,” she wrote.

“It was always going to happen like that.

“She was lent to us for a period of time and now, in Ben Johnson’s words, she’s been “exacted by the Lord on the just day”. (I always struggled to teach that poem without welling up!)

“But I also think that wise little girl was here for a reason, and part of my journey will be to find out what that reason was.”

According to The Independent, Ms Ayliffe will travel to Australia to collect her daughter’s ashes.