Spike in murders of women prompts Australian reckoning with male violence
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Floral tributes for victims of an April 13 stabbing attack in a shopping centre in Sydney. Five of the six fatalities were women.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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SYDNEY – In the early hours of April 22, Ms Molly Ticehurst, a 28-year-old Australian mother, was allegedly killed at her home in New South Wales (NSW) by her former partner who was out on bail despite being charged with sexually assaulting, stalking and intimidating her.
Ms Ticehurst was the 27th woman murdered in Australia in 2024, according to media reports, with at least seven more such deaths reported since then. That works out to one woman killed every four days on average in the country so far this year.
Ms Ticehurst’s former partner had been granted bail by a court, even though police warned that he posed a threat to her and her family. Sixteen days later, she was found dead. The case has galvanised the country and thrown a spotlight on the appalling levels of violence against women.
Australia was still in shock from an earlier brutal massacre when the murder of Ms Ticehurst occurred.
On April 13, a 40-year-old man with mental health problems went on a stabbing attack in a shopping centre in Sydney.
Discussing the attacks, NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb told ABC News on April 15: “It’s obvious to me, it’s obvious to detectives that... the offender focused on women and avoided the men.”
The growing toll has galvanised the nation and led to a push for action by state and federal governments to combat the troubling levels of violence against women. Thousands have attended public vigils, and calls are mounting for a royal commission into the deaths in NSW, Australia’s most populous state.
Describing the violence against women as a “national crisis”, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on May 1 promised extra funding for emergency housing for those fleeing violence, and an extra A$925 million (S$830 million) over five years to provide A$5,000 each to support victims who are escaping from violent partnerships.
He said the government was also looking to combat “misogyny online”, including access to violent pornography, and voiced support for state-based school programmes that teach students about respectful relationships.
“This is a national crisis,” he told Triple M radio on May 7. “(It) is having a devastating impact on women and children... How do we deal with not just the impact of violence, how do we stop (it)?”
In Australia, violence by a partner is the biggest cause of preventable death of women aged 25 to 44. And about 27 per cent of women say they have experienced violence, emotional abuse, or economic abuse by a co-habitating partner.
Despite the grim statistics, Australia has relatively low rates of violence against women compared with other countries.
A report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2019 found that about 17 per cent of women in Australia had experienced intimate partner violence at least once in their lifetime and in the previous 12 months, placing it 23rd out of 34 countries.
The highest rates were in Turkey, the US and New Zealand, while the lowest were in Chile, Switzerland and Poland.
But the recent spate of murders – in what seems like an epidemic of violence against women – has prompted a national outcry demanding action from the government. Though official data showed the rate of murders by partners in Australia had fallen during the past 30 years – from 1.1 women per 100,000 people in 1991 to 0.25 in 2022, the rate rose by 28 per cent to 0.32 in 2023.
Statisticians say it is unclear whether the recent uptick in killings marks a new wave of domestic violence-related murders or is a result of the end of Covid-19 lockdown curbs, which are believed to have resulted in a reduction in cases from 2020 to 2022.
The chief executive of a women’s shelter, Ms Narelle Hand, told The Straits Times that the government should focus on supporting early intervention programmes to assist women, and programmes like a scheme that encourages men who witness gender-based abuse and violence to report it.
The Northern Beaches Women’s Shelter headed by Ms Hand is a non-profit organisation that provides crisis accommodation and support services for survivors of domestic violence across north-east Sydney.
“The media has highlighted very recently a lot of the things that we have been exposed to for many years,” said Ms Hand, who has spent decades working to support women who have survived domestic violence.
“When we are talking about domestic violence, we are talking about power and control. Those behaviours might be increased at certain times – but that pattern of controlling behaviour is always there.”
Experts have called for a range of measures to try to address the scourge of male anger and violence towards women, including targeting mental health problems, drug and alcohol abuse as well as addressing long-term unemployment, which has been linked to higher rates of violence.
There have also been calls for tougher criminal justice measures like GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking of repeat domestic violence offenders and stricter bail laws.
State and federal governments have responded, but acknowledged that there is no simple fix.
NSW Premier Chris Minns announced on May 9 plans to introduce laws next week to make it harder for domestic violence offenders deemed at high risk of reoffending to receive bail.
The state government has also announced an A$230 million scheme to help protect women who escape violent relationships, including providing them with a duress wrist alarm which they can use to alert police if they are threatened.
Asked about the stabbing of a woman by her partner outside a gym in Sydney this week, which left the woman in hospital, Mr Minns told reporters: “We do need a change.”
But he added: “There are no easy answers here. I fully acknowledge if there was an easy answer, my government and my predecessor governments would have done it.”
