That was the sentence that commenced a horrific news report in Fairfax Media on Saturday.
Three women in their 30s had their lives brutally taken by their partners or former partners in a single state in a single week and the shocking thing is it didn’t make front page news or lead news bulletins.
A stabbing, two hammer attacks & a strangling in a single week in NSW. Three lives taken. Utterly abysmal. https://t.co/pR2RuFaFYe
— Georgie Dent (@georgiedent) October 1, 2017
A 34-year-old woman was left “unrecognisable” after allegedly being attacked with a hammer by her 51-year-old partner who has been charged with attempted murder.
A 35-year-old mother of two was allegedly suffocated and strangled by her former partner.
A 30-year-old woman was allegedly stabbed to death by her partner.
These three women, whose lives were cut far too short in the most abysmal of circumstances, take the domestic violence death toll to 38 women this year according to the Counting Dead Women Australia researchers of Destroy The Joint. Thirty eight.
It is unconscionable.
"She was really happy…but then he started changing": Sydney mother-of-five killed in third fatal DV case in 5 days https://t.co/YlZBSgKiB0
— Ava Benny-Morrison (@avabmorrison) September 30, 2017
How many lives have been irrevocably affected by those 38 murders? How many children have lost a parent? How many parents have lost a child? How many men and women have lost a sibling? An aunt? An uncle? A cousin? A niece?
Thirty eight is just the beginning.
How many others will carry the psychological toll of those attacks forever? The emotional scars?
How many more women were attacked last week in NSW but not fatally? The answer is roughly 1250 according to data from the year 2014-15. Australian police deal with 5,000 domestic violence matters on average every week which is one every two minutes.
Among women aged between 18 to 44 years family violence poses a bigger health risk than smoking, drinking and obesity.
And yet three women dying in a single week doesn’t make the front page. If that is not a matter of national concern what is?
Domestic violence is condemned, yes, but it is not treated as the damn urgent crisis that it is. Until it is the horrors will continue.