An isolated incident
The lie sold to us about domestic violence.
Three British women were subject to horrendous violence in their home this week in what looks to have been a targeted attack by a man known to them. None of them survived their injuries. It is a deeply upsetting story.
When these news items rear their ugly, monstrous heads in the tabloid press, there is a well-worn tradition of trotting out various minimising tropes, almost all of which have been employed in this most-recent case.
The murderer is usually shown to be ‘your average bloke’, the papers printing flattering photos taken from their social media. There may even be smiling snapshots of him cuddled up with his victim(s).
Friends, neighbours and ex-colleagues are each consulted, all of whom express surprise. ‘But he seemed like such a nice and normal guy’.
And the usual official statement which manages to say so much with its sparsity. ‘Police are not looking for anyone else in connection with what appears to be an isolated incident’.
The story takes up newsprint and megabytes for a couple of days until the next isolated incident emerges to take its place.
Rinse and repeat.
Rinse and repeat.
Rinse and repeat.
An epidemic of isolated incidents
Because this is the lie sold to us about domestic violence. That each murder of a woman at the hands of her partner, ex-partner or family member is an isolated and unpredictable anomaly.
Something which happened “over there, to them”, instead of something that is happening across our society to women and girls who should be living without fear.
The number of women murdered a week has not changed in the United Kingdom in over fifteen years.1 A woman is murdered by a partner or ex-partner every 5 days.2 In 2023 almost half of all UK adult female homicide victims were killed in a domestic homicide.3
These numbers are depressing in their familiarity, and yet the way the media reports on them, you would think each murder was random and unexpected. Because the media talks about violence against women with the same perverse whataboutism as it does about climate change.
Each attack is written as if it’s a natural disaster: a hurricane appearing out of nowhere, unable to be stopped as it devastates the homes they pass through. But these horrific murders of innocent women are not the natural order of things, and talking about it like just another statistical anomaly distracts us from the terrifying anti-women rhetoric we’re seeing build in our governments and larger society. In the USA nearly half of Gen Z men now believe men are more discriminated against than women4 and here in Spain, an estimated one in five men aged 15–29 believe that male violence against women does not exist.5
This ‘natural disaster’ type of reporting also conditions us to think about these shocking events as ones which we have no power over to prevent: a status quo we just have to accept with a shrug of the shoulders. But that’s not true either.
These deaths are predictable and preventable
Jane Monckton-Smith’s excellent book In Control6 is just one example of a deeply-researched and comprehensive approach to domestic abuse which can be used to support victims (both men and women) and stop abusers escalating to life-threatening last resorts. Her eight-step framework is already being used by some local authorities as a useful way to quickly bring order and understanding to what can seem like non-chronological timelines of abuse, allowing authorities to predict when people are at risk, and act quickly and appropriately.7
Campaigning by multiple groups like Killed Women8, created by the families of domestic abuse victims, are also helping to overturn inequalities in the justice system that mean a murder by stabbing carried out in the home still results in a maximum sentence of 15 years compared to 25 if the same murder took place outside the home. A proposed change to the law is currently under consultation.9
The charity Level Up is also doing some incredible work already on this issue, campaigning for policy changes to bring guidelines for media reports on domestic abuse murders in line with the strict ones already in place for reporting on suicide. To date they’ve trained over five hundred journalists.10
These are some huge chips away at a rock of a problem. But to have a better chance of taking a sledgehammer to violence in the home, the media has to get on the side of women and girls and report about the issue like the systemic problem it is.
Each time we hear another awful, gut-wrenching story, the media presents it as a one-off act which couldn’t be predicted. We see a smiling, attractive man and think ‘how could this happen?’
All this to help no one but the newspapers, who cause us to throw hands up in horror before reaching for the phone or paper for all the grisly details. Double-paged spreads into one man’s supposed ‘sickness’ will always sell more papers than tackling the bigger picture issue: that over 120 women are killed every year by men they knew, loved, or trusted.
Prioritise saving lives over selling papers
Sadly I could have written this story on any number of days. I could have written about it when Banaz Mahmoud was killed, or Ellie Gould. Jan Mustafa, or Megan Newborough. Fawziyah Javed, or Tracey Kidd. Khawla Saleem and Raneem Oudeh.
All women of different ages, races and backgrounds who were murdered by people close to them.
Each one an ‘isolated incident’.
Each one masking the hundreds more women who are living in fear as you read this: women whose lives are made a living hell by the men who supposedly love them.
I don’t want violence against women to be seen as the ‘natural order of things’, an unstoppable race to the bottom for our society. I want it to be seen the same way climate change should be: a terrifying existential threat, but one which is preventable if we can band together effectively against it.
There’s so much to do for us to be able to stop it. But let’s start by putting pressure on the media to start reporting it as the societal problem it is, and stop this drip-drop of women’s names, published next to the smiling faces of the ‘normal blokes’ who killed them. It might sell fewer papers, but it will save more lives.
Since writing this essay Level Up have also called out the Sun’s reporting on the Hertfordshire story and the failure of their journalists to adhere to the AIDA domestic abuse guidelines given recent training on this issue.
Until these media guidelines are brought in line with those on suicide reporting by IPSO (the largest press governing body in the UK) no changes will be made. Sign the petition here and hold our media to account.
“One of the most depressing findings of the Femicide Census is that the rate of men’s fatal violence against women in the UK has not shown a tangible decline since the first year we monitored, 2009”, taken from Data Matters- Every Woman Matters, Femicide Census.
‘Homicide in England and Wales: year ending March 2023’, UK Office for National Statistics.
‘Why young men are turning against feminism’, American Survey Center.
‘Uno de cada cinco jóvenes varones en España cree que no existe la violencia machista, el doble que hace cuatro años‘ El País, via this excellent (if depressing) read by Brendan Boyle of
on ‘Spain’s gender violence epidemic’.In Control: Dangerous Relationships and How they End in Murder, Jane Monckton-Smith (2022)
Intimate Partner Femicide: Using Foucauldian analysis to track an eight stage progression to homicide, Dr Jane Monckton-Smith, published in Violence Against Women, 26 (11), 2020, pp. 1267-1285
“Killed Women is a campaign organisation and network for bereaved families whose daughters, mothers, sisters or other relatives have been killed by men”, Killed Women.
Well written Emma! 👏🏻
Excellent and important piece!