Three years after Ashling Murphy’s tragic death, Ireland’s fight against femicide and the silencing of women continues
Since 2020, 38 women have been violently killed in Ireland, with 25 more women killed in Northern Ireland over the same period. Many of the women who are victims of femicide or gendered violence aren’t described in news reports or even named, while an excess of information is given to male perpetrators.
My mother and I have always been obsessed with property. I remember her taking me to open houses as a kid, just because she wanted to look around. We send each other listings of insanely expensive houses just to marvel at how much money some people have – and how it doesn’t always come with style. One afternoon three years ago we were walking down the canal in Dublin when we saw a For Sale sign outside of a very cute house. Red brick, duck egg blue front door, window boxes with flowers. “Oh that’s adorable”, I said, expecting Mam to agree before we launched into our usual speculating about price and Googling to snoop on the house’s interiors. Instead, she looked up and down the path we were walking and looked at me solemnly. “Don’t ever live along a canal, will you?” I instantly knew what she meant. It was January 2022. All week, we had been listening to news reports about Ashling Murphy, the 23-year-old primary school teacher, camogie player and music lover who was viciously murdered in the middle of the afternoon in Offaly. She had been walking along a canal when she was attacked, dragged off the towpath and viciously stabbed to death. Mam and I didn’t go into our usual daydreaming about houses that day. Instead, I took her arm and we walked beside the water, silently. Two Irish women thinking about one who had taken too soon and another landscape tainted forever by the memory of violence.
This month marks the third anniversary of the death of Ashling Murphy, as well as the third anniversary of the death of Sarah Everard in the UK, who was kidnapped, raped and murdered by Metropolitan police officer Wayne Couzens while she was walking home from her friend’s house in London. Across Ireland and the UK, vigils and protests were held as women shared stories of gendered violence, misogyny and a growing sense of fear that nowhere was safe. In Ireland, Ashling Murphy’s murder led to a five-year initiative by the Government to try to tackle domestic, sexual and gender-based violence including pre-existing strategies that were hastily implemented. Some welcomed the news, some remained sceptical. This was the third strategy of its kind since 2010.
Since 2020, 38 women have been violently killed in Ireland, with 25 more women killed in Northern Ireland over the same period. Of the cases that have been solved and/or taken through the court, the majority of murders were committed by partners, ex-partners or someone known to the victim. At least eight women were killed by a family member.
Women’s Aid keeps an ongoing list of women murdered in Ireland called Femicide Watch, explaining that “We do this to illustrate the danger posed to women and to better understand how to increase protection of women and children. Our hope is to continue to try and break the pattern of male violence against women in the hope of preventing any further loss of life.” Women’s Aid notes that “Femicide is broadly understood as the killing of women and girls by men. It differs from male homicide in specific ways as most cases of femicide are committed by partners or ex-partners. It is a term used to describe killings of women and girls precisely because they are women and girls. Femicide is both a cause and a result of gender inequality and discrimination, both of which are root causes of all violence against women.”
The statistics of Femicide Watch note that 87% of women (where the case has been resolved) were killed by a man known to them. Thirteen per cent of women were killed by a stranger. One in every two femicide victims is killed by a current or former male intimate partner. While women of any age can be victims of femicide, women under the age of 35 make up over half of cases in Ireland. In almost all murder-suicide cases, the killer was the woman’s current or former male intimate partner.
It’s been three years since Ashling Murphy’s murder. Her death caught the attention of the nation not only because of the violent nature of the attack by a stranger, Josef Puska, her involvement in her local community and the efforts of her family who set up a foundation in her name to support the traditional Irish arts that she loved so much. She is still remembered, loved and mourned, not only by those close to her but by Irish people everywhere who were deeply affected by her death.
Ashling Murphy. Sandra Boyd. Mary Bergin. Ruth Lohse. Louise Mucknell. Lisa Thompson. Larisa Serban. Miriam Burns. Lisa Cash. Ioana Mihaela Pacala. Emma McCrory. Sharon Crean. Bruna Fonseca. Maud Coffey. Geila Ibram. Angela Canavan. Catherine Henry. Anna Mooney. Deepa Dinamani. Lorna Woodnutt Kearney. Claire Collins. Patricia Muckian. Deana Walsh. Vanessa O’Callaghan. Searon Naughton. Mirjana Pap. Paula Canty. Annie Heyneman. Gillian Curran.
Ashling Murphy’s name is known, but since her death, there have been twenty-eight more women who have been murdered by men in Ireland. Their names may not be as well known, but they too were loved, are missed and are no longer here because of the lasting and lethal impact of misogyny and gendered violence in Ireland.
Sandra Boyd. Mary Bergin. Ruth Lohse. Louise Mucknell. Lisa Thompson. Larisa Serban. Miriam Burns. Lisa Cash. Ioana Mihaela Pacala. Emma McCrory. Sharon Crean. Bruna Fonseca. Maud Coffey. Geila Ibram. Angela Canavan. Catherine Henry. Anna Mooney. Deepa Dinamani. Lorna Woodnutt Kearney. Claire Collins. Patricia Muckian. Deana Walsh. Vanessa O’Callaghan. Searon Naughton. Mirjana Pap. Paula Canty. Annie Heyneman. Gillian Curran. Twenty-eight women lost to femicide in three years.
The pervasiveness of gendered violence and femicide is shocking but the way we cover these tragic deaths in the news often adds to the objectification and silencing of women. Many of the women who are victims of femicide or gendered violence aren’t described in news reports or even named, while an excess of information is given to male perpetrators, including their professions, families and often references to their “good” character from family, friends and selected sources. This month, Kielan Mooney was jailed for eight and a half years for the rape of a woman in 2021. Many news outlets reported that Mooney had been described as a “family-oriented” and a “dedicated father”, with some testimonials from friends and family describing him as “idolising” and “adoring” his children and “striving for nothing but the best” for them.
These kinds of headlines and news coverage are a form of ‘himpathy’, a coin termed by feminist philosopher Kate Manne to describe “the inappropriate and disproportionate sympathy powerful men often enjoy in cases of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, homicide and other misogynistic behaviour.” Sympathy can come in the form of explicit victim-blaming or leniency but it can also come in more insidious forms, like focusing on only positive testimonials over the details of the crimes they have been accused of – or testimonials that give a far less favourable portrait of the accused. In response to seeing many headlines and news stories referring to Mooney as a doting father, two women who each had two children with Mooney said that he does not see their children or pay maintenance to them. One of the women said he is “not a good person, not a good role model and I will never let him near my children now.”
According to reporting by RTE, Judge Hunt who was presiding the case acknowledged how positive testimonials seemed like an emotionally manipulative ploy to create a positive image of Rooney, with Hunt saying he was concerned that he had been “significantly misled” by the material put forward on his behalf at the sentence hearing. He noted that references to Mooney’s children in a bail application had been phrased “with much emotion”, saying that he needed time to see his children before being sentenced.
The Mooney case is a clear example of how description and coverage can create huge discrepancies in how we view female victims and male perpetrators. By creating fully-rounded, descriptive, sympathetic images of men accused of gendered violence and reducing women to nameless, silent statistics, we contribute to the unconscious silencing and objectification of, and the normalising of violence against women and contribute to the idea that men are more fully-rounded beings, more human and more deserving of sympathy and acknowledgement than women. This subtle form of sexism contributes to the very misogyny that underpins all gendered violence.
This happens all the time to female victims of not only gendered violence but also other causes of death. Earlier this month, 29-year-old Leitrim woman Róisín Cryan died tragically in a non-violent death. In many headlines, she was not even named but was only described in reference to her partner. Kildare Now’s headline read ‘Woman found in River Moy named as the fiancée of Mayo GAA star Conor Loftus’ and the Daily Mail headline about her funeral read ‘Hundreds attend funeral for fiancée of Irish football star.’ At her funeral, Róisín Cryan was described by friends and family as kind, selfless, loving music, travelling and walking around Crossmolina. However, many headlines failed to recognise or acknowledge her as a person in her own right, reducing her to the nameless partner of a man. Even in instances where women die in non-violence, tragic circumstances, defining them solely by their victimhood and relationships to men adds to the erasure of women. It’s through the erasure, silencing and objectification of women that more violent forms of sexism grow and endanger women. We need to start tackling sexism and misogyny at its roots, including the inequality inherent in how we silence women in media and discourse while portraying men as fully-rounded, often sympathetic human beings.
I don’t live along a canal, but I walk along one most days as part of my commute. I think of Ashling Murphy often, and more this month on the third anniversary of her death. But I also think of all the other, unnamed, less-known women who have been victims of femicide and gendered violence in Ireland, and how we need to do better for them, to prevent those horrific numbers from rising.