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The compensation board, in its written argument to the appeal court, fears compensating a juror would open the floodgates so anyone who sits through a extremely violent trial — judges, court staff, prosecutors, defence lawyers, police and journalists — will want compensation.

It argued that people who claim nervous shock with no physical injury or proximity to the crime shouldn’t be considered victims.

The juror, it argued, suffered her PTSD from hearing the evidence at the trial, not the crime itself.

The juror was a perfect selection for the trial. She had just moved to London, had no knowledge of the little girl’s death and went into the trial with a clean slate.

She said that she knew at the time of the verdict that something was wrong. “At the end, I bubbled up,” she said. “It was like you suppress everything for so long, it’s over.”

She accepted some help through the police after the trial, but it wasn’t going to be enough. She had been balancing her jury duties with her job throughout the trial. She decided that she and her two children needed a vacation and they headed to Niagara Falls for a week.

At the end of the trial, what we ask of them should end, but if it doesn’t, why do we ask the juror to deal with that all (alone)?

She was already experiencing some memory loss, but it was there she said she “just blew” and her anger started to pour out. Her doctor ordered her off work.

The woman said she got a dog and wanted to buy a horse. She said her finances were in such shambles she had to sell her home and move into something smaller.

She reached out to prosecutor Kevin Gowdey from the Crown’s office, who linked her up with help at Victoria Hospital. And, after she and another juror did their version of “Tori’s Walk,” revisiting all the places the little girl was before she died, she visited Woodstock police.

“I felt like I was walking on a treadmill in a glass bubble, all foggy and I can’t get off and I can’t get out,” she said. “I wanted help so bad so I could start living my life again.”

She said other jurors have experienced the same stress.

Her appeal will be heard Nov. 8 in Toronto.