The Stolen Lives archive, published in Weekend Review today and in more detail on irishtimes.com, lists the names of 239 women and girls who died violently over the past 26 years. It makes for distressing reading as brief summaries of their lives offer glimpses into their personalities, their hopes and plans, the lives they were building, and the devastating loss still felt by those who loved them.
It also underlines how vulnerable women and girls remain to male violence. These were daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, friends, neighbours – leading ordinary lives that were stolen, in many cases by apparently well-functioning men.
There was Patricia Murphy, who died aged 33, on May 28th 1996, her body found beside a skip in Glasnevin, near her home in north Dublin. Her husband was convicted of her murder in December 1998. Their small children gave video-link evidence. “One boy, five at the time of giving evidence, testified to having seen ‘Daddy hammering Mammy’.” Or Lorraine O’Connor, who died aged 19, on October 23rd, 2001. Her boyfriend of two years, Noel Hogan, then 30, later admitted to her murder. Her strangled body was found under a bed in the flat they shared.
[ Stolen Lives: 239 violent deaths of women in Ireland from 1996 to todayOpens in new window ]
Repeatedly we read how men said afterwards they had “snapped”, had been “provoked”, had “lost control”, had been “jealous” – in other words, that the woman or girl was somehow culpable in her death. These tropes are still being used to defend violence by men every day.
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The everyday nature of male violence is seen starkly in reports like the most recent from Women’s Aid. It states that 26,906 contacts were received last year, during which there were 33,831 disclosures of abuse against women. Some 4,707 related to physical abuse and 1,104 of them sexual.
Assaults with weapons, constant surveillance and monitoring, relentless putdowns and humiliation, taking and sharing of intimate images online, complete control over all financial expenditure, sexual assault, rape and having their own or their children’s lives threatened, are among everyday realities for thousands of women and our children.
Minister for Justice Helen McEntee identified tackling domestic, sexual and gender-based violence as a key priority. The publication of her department’s €363 million, five-year “zero-tolerance” strategy last month is an important start.
Seeing that strategy through will require the coordinated involvement of departments and agencies across the public administration, from housing to social welfare. But challenging the epidemic of misogyny, victim-blaming and violence against women is not the responsibility of Government alone. Is it a task for the whole of society and one that stretches from the classroom to the criminal courts.