Madam, - Regular readers of The Irish Times may become immune to the rantings of your columnist Kevin Myers and most, I suspect, have long ago decided to ignore his factual inconsistencies and hysterical verbal assaults on whomever it is he decides to use as journalistic cannon fodder for his own entertainment (and profit!). However, his vituperative attack on Women's Aid in your edition of December 1st cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. Please allow me to correct just two of the most obvious factual inaccuracies in his column.
Firstly, Mr Myers is right when he states that men are more likely to be murdered than women - but the only question that is relevant in the context of the work of organisations such as Women's Aid is: by whom are men and women murdered? The international figures are unambiguous and clear (though apparently not to Mr Myers): both women and men are far more likely to be murdered by men in both the public and private spheres.
British Home Office figures show that 40 per cent of women are murdered by their partner or former partner. Of male victims of murder, 4 per cent are killed by their current or former female partner and the majority of these murders are by women who are responding in self-defence after years of systematic abuse. No similar pattern of self-defence exists for the murder of women by their male partners.
The second inaccuracy is the oft-repeated mantra that half of all domestic violence is started by women. It is now well established that the research on which this figure is based erroneously compares "common couple conflict" to the form of abuse which leads to injury and death. This latter form of abuse cannot in fact be called conflict, because it is essentially not about disagreements and marital arguments. Its purpose is to control and isolate, and not to resolve differences.
The former "common couple conflict" which is less severe and less likely to result in injury, is as likely to be initiated by a woman as a man, and should not surprise us. The form of partner violence and abuse which Women's Aid, the Garda, the Courts, the refuges and health services see and respond to is better known as "intimate terrorism" and leads to serious injury, hospitalisation, fear and, in the case of 107 Irish women, death. This form of abuse is almost exclusively perpetrated by male partners.
I am loath to confuse Mr Myers with the facts as I realise they are far less sensational than the half-truths and fiction on which his column relies. Nevertheless the deaths of 107 women, and the work of organisations like Women's Aid, deserve better than that from a reputable newspaper. - Yours, etc.,
MARY ALLEN,
College Lecturer,
Department of Social Policy and Social Work,
UCD,
Dublin 4.