Malachy Clerkin: Ashling Murphy’s murder reminds us of the dread women feel in the world - now is the time to talk about what we can change

Is it okay for us to talk about this now? Is today the day? Are we there yet? Can we speak?

Because when Ashling Murphy was murdered, long and loud were the voices – men’s voices, predominantly – telling us that this wasn’t the time. That we were using her death for our own ends. That we were taking advantage of this poor woman and jimmying her awful demise into a debate about women’s ability to live in the world in a way that was unseemly. Weaponising her to suit an agenda, apparently.

And then, of course, once Jozef Puska had been arrested and charged with her murder it was only right that we took care to give the whole thing space, to allow due process to play out. But now that his guilt has been established, now that the facts of that brutal afternoon in January 2022 have been laid out, now that he is going to rot in jail – now can we do this?

Can we talk about the dread women feel in the world? Can we accept, as a basic fact of human existence, that women spend so much more of their time strategising for their safety than men do? Can we agree that something as free – and freeing – as fresh air and exercise comes with a price for women that never, ever enters our heads as men?

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And if we can do that, if we can grant half the population that small concession, can we then ask what we are doing about it? What can we change about society, about our towns and cities, about our attitudes? Can we do anything?

This is not a comfortable conversation, obviously. You have to swim through a lake of caveats before getting on to any sort of level ground on which to begin it. So, for the avoidance of doubt, of course not all men are a threat to women’s safety. Of course not most men, for that matter. Very, very few men, in fact.

But once again for the people in the back: that’s not the point. The point is the threat feels real to all women, whether it is there or not. When Puska was cycling around Tullamore sizing up potential victims that afternoon, he would have known that he had the wherewithal to end anybody’s life – male or female. He killed Ashling Murphy by stabbing her 11 times in broad daylight. Theoretically, he was as much a threat to the men exercising along the canal as he was to the women.

That’s not reality though. No men felt threatened by Puska in January 2022. But we know from the trial that Ashling Murphy was at least the third woman he followed over the space of a couple of hours. A man with murderous intent was cycling around an Irish rural town looking for a woman to kill. He found her exercising alone by the canal. That’s the reality.

[ Men cannot really know the fear faced by women runners ]

Yes, Puska is an outlier. Of the 263 women killed in Ireland through gender-based violence since Women’s Aid began keeping record 1996, the vast majority have died at the hands of someone known to them. A case like this, a stranger picking off a woman seemingly at random while she was outside starting her new year fitness kick, is incredibly rare.

But it ripples out. It shapes and moulds the society around it. The vigils for Ashling Murphy, the outpouring of grief and anger, the chill felt by women across the country – they were at least in part due to the confirmation of women’s worst fears. You can’t go around telling women it’s all in their head when something like this happens. Why would you even want to?

So instead, let’s start talking about what can be done. Can we make positive changes to help women and girls feel safer? We must accept, from the outset, that it’s likely nothing would have changed that facts in this specific case – all the testimony and evidence in the trial pointed to Puska being a gruesome aberration. But there are things we can do, nonetheless.

For one thing, we can – as men – be conscious and generous about the advantages we have in life. As the winter months come around, we can go out for a run in the evening, in the dark. Where we can see mostly other men, out for a run in the evening, in the dark. We don’t see very many women because they tend to do their exercising in daylight hours, like Ashling Murphy did.

And so armed with that knowledge, maybe we can try to change the way things are done. Maybe we can ask sports clubs or local councils to light up parks and grounds on winter evenings so everybody can come out and feel safe doing a bit of exercise. Plenty already do that up and down the country but the cost of living and energy crisis of the past two years means fewer do it than could be the case.

So maybe the Government puts something in the budget to offset the cost. Maybe communities make it a thing – call it Lights On For Everyone or some such. Maybe we make it welcoming and communal, the sort of thing nobody gives a second thought to turning up for. In precisely the way no man pulling on his runners this evening or any evening gives a second thought.

And maybe we do other stuff too. Deeper stuff, like better designing the spaces we inhabit and the places girls and women would like to spend time in. Maybe we start early, with something as simple as playgrounds.

There’s a UK organisation called Make Spaces For Girls that studies this stuff and they cite playgrounds in Malmo, Sweden where the ratio of boys to girls is 50:50 as opposed to the norm, which is 80:20 in favour of boys in other parts of the city. The big difference? They installed gymnastics bars, a climbing wall and a performance area. Small changes, initiatives of which most of us are entirely, blithely ignorant.

Here in Ireland, there’s a non-profit group called A Level Playing Field who have done really good projects in Dublin’s inner-city by getting teenage girls to design how they would like to see a city for girls look. A lot of this isn’t overly complicated. Teenage girls like spaces to hang out – seats, benches, decent lighting. Places that feel safe and easy and unfussed. We should start there.

The big things aren’t simple. And none of it will bring Ashling Murphy back. But if we’re not going to talk about these things now, when will we? And if we don’t talk about these things – yes, stuff like misogyny and everyday sexism and all that dreadfully woke nonsense – if we don’t talk about them now, who does that suit? Who does it help?

Not women, that’s for sure.