In 2019, 24 women have been violently killed in Australia. We know this because of the difficult work of the Counting Dead Women Australia researchers of Destroy The Joint. They keep a record of the names and ages and circumstances of women killed each year in Australia.
It provides a sobering and tragic snapshot of the most extreme toll the epidemic of violence against women exacts in this country.
"In homes across Australia, abusive men — furious that women are getting all the attention while their suffering is ignored — are taking out their humiliated fury on their girlfriends, wives and children." @jessradio's mission to understand abusive men: https://t.co/7fpR9pOPsI pic.twitter.com/Bphdd7yK5j
— ABC Religion&Ethics (@ABCReligion) June 25, 2019
It doesn’t count the women hospitalised, the children traumatised, the lives shattered – daily – by the same epidemic. But it provides necessary perspective of the scale, and human face, of this deadly scourge.
On Wednesday the body of an unnamed woman, whose age is not yet known, was found by police at her home in Melbourne’s south-east. A 33-year-old man, reportedly known to the woman, was arrested at the scene and has been charged with murder.
Another woman. Another woman killed in the “safest country in the world for women”.
A woman’s body was found at 7.30pm last night at a property in Gardenvale, in Melbourne’s inner south-east.
— Tarang Chawla (@tarang_chawla) June 25, 2019
This is not unusual. It is estimated that 75% of the women killed each year in Australia are murdered by a man who is known to her.
Also on Wednesday an 83 year old man was charged with murdering his 74 year old wife in March this year. She was found dead by paramedics at her home in Gippsland, Victoria.
In May Gihan Kerollos, 47, died of stab wounds in Randwick. Her husband was arrested and charged with murder.
In April Natalina Angok, 32, was found slumped against a wall on a Melbourne street. She died at the scene and her partner was arrested and charged with her murder.
Also in April, but in NSW, the body of Syeda Hossain, 33, was found in the garage of her house. Her husband was arrested at the scene and has been charged with murder.
These are just five of the horrific cases in which women have been killed this year. In 2018, 69 women were killed violently. In 2017 it was 53.
And these are the worst of the worst. The women who lose their lives. The number of women carrying the scars, walking on egg shells, being admitted to hospital, living in fear of losing their lives on any given day is far, far, higher.