Dr Vicky Conway says the recent trial and conviction of Graham Dwyer from Dublin for the sadistic murder of Elaine O’Hara in 2012 highlights ‘a misogynist’s criminal desire to control, dominate, harm and kill a woman’.
In an article published in TheJournal.ie, ‘Graham Dwyer and the true nature of violence against women in Ireland’, Dr Conway argues it should be accepted that ‘this kind of thing really happens in our society’. She writes: ‘We must not exceptionalise this. We must not dismiss it as unusual, or like something from a book or film.
‘Comparing it to the stuff of fiction is, in a way, comforting, because we don’t have to think that this kind of thing really happens in our society. A number of media reports have played on this theme, articles replete with references to 50 Shades and so on.
‘But this is not exceptional. It is not unusual. We may not usually hear the kind of details we have in this case but in the 18 year period from 1996-2014, 206 women were killed in Ireland (see Women’s Aid’s work on this here). Some 99% of these killings were committed by men, 89% by men that were known to the victim (partner, ex-partner, father, son, brother). Nearly a dozen women a year are killed in Ireland, usually by someone that they have a close relationship with.
‘A previous study of homicide in Ireland by Dr Enda Dooley, which considered the period of 1992-1996, noted that homicide between partners was on the rise and that of the 205 deaths under consideration in that period 46 deaths were by men of women, and 15 by women of men. Many of the latter were classified as a response to domestic incidents or mental disturbances (so domestic violence was the trigger in many instances). Female involvement in homicide, either as victim or perpetrator is invariably connected to domestic or intimate partner violence. (This is very different to experience of men, who are more likely to be killed following an argument with friends or acquaintances, in robberies, for revenge, or through organised crime.)
‘Those who think that this case was different, that it deviates from more common forms of intimate partner violence miss the underlying causes: the desire within some men to control, manipulate and dominate women. They also miss the fact that little is known about the extent of consensual BDSM relationships in Ireland, let alone the frequency with which men push these relationships beyond the consensual.
‘We as a society are only starting to accept that when a woman engages in a certain amount of sexual contact with a man this does not automatically make subsequent intercourse consensual. I can’t begin to imagine the difficulties a woman would have arriving a garda station explaining that she willingly participated in certain acts but didn’t consent to others.
‘Exceptionalising the Dwyer trial will only achieve one thing: it will ensure that we do not prevent this from happening in the future, that we do not prevent other women from being injured or killed by such men. It might make us feel a bit better about our society, but it puts women at risk.’
Read the article in full on the TheJournal.ie website
Dr Conway has research expertise in policing, miscarriages of justice and criminology. She is the author of The Blue Wall of Silence on police accountability and the Morris Tribunal. Her third book, Policing Twentieth Century Ireland was published in 2013 by Routledge. For more information about her publications, visit Dr Conway’s staff profile page.