The Australian femicide count reaches an appalling number in 2024 - averaging one woman violently killed every four days

 

This year 2024 marked 50 years since the creation of Australia's first women's refuge Elsie in Glebe, Sydney, for those fleeing domestic violence and 50 years since the establishment of the Sydney Rape Crisis Collective in Redfern, Sydney.

It is 29 years since a female counsellor was gaoled for protecting the privacy of her rape victim client by refusing a subpoena by the accused rapist for the counselling notes petaining to his victim.

It is 10 years since Destroy the Joint started the online Counting Dead Women recording the monthly toll of women who died violently at the hands of partners, family members, acquaintances or strangers.

It is also 9 years since this campaign commenced....

Death toll based on media reports as of 18 December 2024

The RED HEART Campaign’s Memorial to Women and Children Lost to Violence is an ongoing journalism-based story-driven project tracking every known Australian woman and child killed as a result of murder, manslaughter or neglect from White Settlement to now. Simply tap a heart to read each victim’s story. To add a loved one, change an entry or request more information, email admin@theREDHEARTcampaign.org

NOTE: The Red Heart campaign includes in its count Australian women who died violently while outside the country.

Sixty-five long unsolved murders along the NSW North Coast made the news this week - 64 being females aged between 4 & 84 years & one a teenage male

The Daily Examiner/Daily Telegraph online, 22 October 2024:

A list of more than 60 women who were brutally murdered or disappeared on the NSW North Coast, but whose perpetrators were never caught can be revealed among fears some of them could be the work of one or more serial killers.

NSW Upper House MP Jeremy Buckingham will today receive a briefing from the NSW Police over the devastating list of women who were found dead or vanished between Newcastle and Byron Bay over a 30-year-period. In all these cases, no culprit was brought to justice.

For years police have suspected that some of the deaths or disappearances of the women were connected, but while some had operations set up to explore the potential connections, others may never have been properly investigated.

Former NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Mick Willing, who commanded the homicide squad between 2011 and 2017 said the way cold cases from decades ago are prioritised has led to many not being properly reinvestigated, leaving police open to missing possible connections between cases.

“There are a lot of these cases that just sit in databases and have never been reviewed,” he said.

“There are unsolved homicide cases that sit there - there are many cases that are not even looked at.

“So you could miss things that are connected to other things - ideally what you need is a database that links all these cases together across Australia.”

Mr Willing said while there had not been a serial killer identified in NSW since Ivan Milat murdered multiple hitchhikers along the Hume Highway in the 1980s and 90s, there was a possibility some of the disappearances along the North Coast could have the same perpetrator, though many would also be isolated incidents.

“You would think there’s a possibility that some of them could be connected,” he said.

“The thinking around a few of the cases was that maybe Milat might be responsible - but there is no evidence of that,” he said.

What people don’t realise about unsolved homicides is that most of them were solved by DNA but some of the old exhibits that were collected have been destroyed.”

A NSW Police spokesperson said there had been multiple investigations including taskforce Fenwick and strike force Arapaima had been established to investigate links between some of the north coast abductions...

Mr Buckingham will request parliament call for papers from police detailing how the unsolved crimes have been investigated including any possible connections.

“When I looked at the list of country towns, Coffs harbour, Taree and Grafton, what you see in all these towns stretching all the way down to Newcastle there were murders everywhere that had a similar modus operandi,” he said.

“That is young women who had been picked up hitchhiking, gone walking, seen getting in cars who had either disappeared or had almost egregiously been found dumped in remote areas.”

Criminal psychologist Tim Watson-Munro said the number of women who had been killed on the north coast was “extremely disturbing”

“If people are going missing at the same time and place it’s a massive red flag,” he said.

“Beyond Milat there may have been another serial killer or possibly two operating in the area.”

“With such a significant number of people involved, there’s an argument to reopen those cases and drill down a bit further.”

WARNING: linked news articles below contain the names and images of people who have passed away.

The full paywalled article can be read at

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/massive-red-flags-nsw-serial-killers-fears-over-dozens-of-slain-women-in-30year-period/news-story/ 00730a0e252c80f6fbfdbe475d52742e

Paywalled article with full list of names and images at

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/revealed-the-64-women-who-went-missing-or-were-murdered-on-nsw-north-coast/news-story/dc3e4a7df768e3706dd9c1be1a91db72

There has also been a NSW Police reappeal issued on 21 October 2024 concerning the murders of three children between 1990 & 1991 in the town of Bowraville in the Nambucca Valley on the Mid North Coast hinterland. With the aim of finally finding the remains of the eldest girl.

Cartoons of the Week

Marian Kamensky

Michael de Adder

Cathy Wilcox

Emad Hajjaj

Mary Leunig

Counting Dead Women: the ugly brutal statistic continues in July 2022

 

Counting Dead Women
IMAGE: Destroy The Joint

 

Violence against women and girls in Australia follows a distressingly predictable path in 2022.

By 20 July this year the number of women reported in the media as dying as the result of violent attack by another person stood at 25 dead.

That is roughly one woman being killed every 8 days.

This figure relies on media reports of such deaths, which often can mean a significant under reporting of the real number of women and girls who die at the hands of partners, former partners, family members, acquaintances or strangers over a given period.

Before going to a federal election this year the former Morrison Government drafted the fifth National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032.

It's hard to imagine this particular draft plan when implemented making much difference to the violent related gender-based death toll, when the preceding four (beginning in 2010-2013) have failed to bring this century's femicide count down below that 'one-a-week' sticking point in Australia.

BACKGROUND

Violence against women and children in Australia is mostly perpetrated by men. Around four in five, family and domestic violence offenders are male. Men’s violence against women, including intimate, partner violence, is more prevalent, more often used repeatedly and more likely to lead to serious injury, disability or death. More than one in three Australians have experienced violence by a male perpetrator since the age of 15, compared to one in ten by a female perpetrator. While men can also be victim-survivors of family, sexual and domestic violence, men are more likely to experience violence from a stranger…..

Family, domestic and sexual violence also causes a huge economic impact with KPMG estimating this scourge costs Australia around $26 billion each year, 40 with victims and survivors bearing approximately 50 per cent of that cost.

Importantly, while sexual assault and other forms of sexual violence can occur in the context of domestic and family violence, it can also be perpetrated by other people known or unknown to the victim-survivor. In order to be effective, it is critical that our efforts to prevent, address, and respond to sexual violence recognise both the intersections and clear points of difference between domestic and family violence and sexual violence…..

Family, domestic and sexual violence also causes a huge economic impact with KPMG estimating this scourge costs Australia around $26 billion each year, with victims and survivors bearing approximately 50 per cent of that cost.

[Australian Government, (January 2022), “Draft National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032, pp. 11-12, 15]