September 2024

 

Hello and thank you all for coming to join us this evening.

 

We meet here on the first Monday of every month to remember the UK women who have been killed by men, and to honour all of the women who have suffered from VAWG.

This is the start of the fourth year of our vigils, and I was drawn to review things…

We still use the information from the brilliant Karen Ingala-Smith’s website and Twitter account ‘Counting Dead Women’. We still do that because it is the only source we can find that collates the information. 

A woman is killed by a man every three days and yet no government or police body has thought to look at these numbers separately to overall numbers.

 

Since our first vigil in September 2021, 318 women in the UK have been killed by men.

Just about 9 every month, or one every 3 days.

We stand here and talk about this every month, but I don’t think I’d stopped to think about how the numbers were adding up.

 

And we also need to remind ourselves every month that these women are not just numbers, they are daughters, mothers, sisters, aunts, nieces and friends.

 

The Guardian says it aims to report on every one of these deaths and in its summary of the first 50 of this year it did a great job of humanising these numbers and give faces to the faceless statistics.

I’m going to try to read a few… 

Courtney was 26 when she was killed. She was vey intelligent and could read any room. She was extremely funny and was the life and soul of any gathering. Her three young children will grow up without their mother.

 Alana also had two young children and had just found out she was four weeks pregnant when she was killed aged 32.

Lauren aged 22 worked for the ambulance service and was due to start a career in mental health nursing. 

Rachel’s smile was one of the many things remembered by her family, along with their closeness and shared jokes. Her estranged husband strangled her. 

Frances was a much-loved daughter, mother, nan, sister, auntie, mother-in-law and friend.

 

THIS is why we do this – they were all someone’s daughter and should never be forgotten.

I sometimes rant a bit when I speak here, today I am just sad rather than angry.

 

Let’s take a moment now to remember the 12 new tragedies we have been made aware of since we last met:

Delia Haxworth, 85 was found dead at a property in Bath. William Haxworth, 87 has been charged with murder.

Maxine Clark, 36, was found beaten to death at a property in Glasgow. Mark Keel, 32, is charged with murder.

Sophie Evans, 30, was found dead in a house in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire. Richard Jones, 49, who was known to Sophie, is charged is her murder.

Scarlett Vickers, 14, was pronounced dead at a property in Darlington. She died of a stab wound. Her father, Simon Vickers, 49, has been charged with her murder.

Olivia Wood, 29 was found dead at a property in Frome, Somerset. Keiron Goodwin, 32, has been charged with her murder.

Courtney Mitchell, 26, has been stabbed to death in Ipswich. Logan Burnett, 27, believed to be known to Courtney, has been charged with her murder.

Nina Denisova, 39, was stabbed to death at a property in Kent. Ernesto Juska, 20, is charged with murder.

Alberta Obinim, 43, was stabbed to death at an address in Gorton, Manchester. A man, 22, has been detained under the Mental Health Act.

Stephanie Marie, 19, was found with stab wounds in a car park at Crawley train station. Jason Pascal Flore, 26, is charged with her murder.

Sophie Watson, 57, was found stabbed to death at a property in Magherafelt, Londonderry. Andrzej Pajaczkowski, 43, is charged with her murder. 

Vicki Thomas, 45, was found dead at a home in Cardiff. Alcwyn Thomas, 44, has been charged with her murder.

Eve McIntyre, 57, was found at an address in Gateshead. A 42-year-old male has been charged with her murder.

 

And just one last point – the word ‘domestic’ in the phrase ‘domestic violence’ is starting to annoy me, it seems to trivialise the violence? I studied ‘domestic science’ at school. It wasn’t proper science, it mostly took place in the kitchen.

 Of the 57 women killed so far this year, more than half of them knew the person who killed them, which means they probably started as ‘domestic’.

But ‘domestic’ murder isn’t a ‘light, fluffy’ type of murder is it? Far from it. These women were probably murdered by someone they loved and tragically that includes 8 husbands, 8 partners, one brother, one father and 2 sons.

 

I hope you will be able to join us here again on Monday 7^th October, and I hope most sincerely that we can have some good news and a slightly less morose 15 minutes.