Colman Noctor: How do you explain the incomprehensible to our children?
Ashling Murphy. Colman Noctor writes "we need to prepare our children for the world they are navigating now rather than an ideal one that will hopefully exist in the future."
When my nine-year-old daughter went to her gymnastics class last week, I went for a walk for an hour, as I often do. It was the evening after Ashling Murphy was killed and I realised that, unlike most women in the country, I didn't have to carry my keys in my hand, I didn't have to vary my route, I didn't have to wear my earphones with no sound on, and I didn't have to have a geo-location tracker on my phone.
People may label my position as evidence of 'privilege'. But regardless of anyone's gender, the ability to walk or run down the street should not be seen as a privilege; instead, it is a fundamental human right.
Ashling Murphy's death has profoundly impacted the country. By all accounts, she was a remarkable young woman who was talented, kind and gentle. She was also wonderfully 'normal'. The circumstances of her life are very relatable. Ashling could have been our daughter, our sister or our child's teacher. And for this reason, we can all the more empathise with her devastated family, friends and pupils.
We rely heavily on sense and sensibility when it comes to our everyday lives, and we believe that by being sensible, little or no harm will come to us or our children. However, the events of last week have disproved this assumption.
On January 12, Ashling Murphy did all the sensible things we tell our children to do. After finishing work, she went for a run, a healthy lifestyle practice. She did this in daylight. She took a route well known to her. She ran along a path frequently taken by others. She did all of this expecting she would make it home afterwards.
Her death has made us confront the reality that no matter what we do to eliminate risk, it may not be enough. This is a deeply disturbing realisation.
Psychologists visited Durrow National School for the incident debrief - their conversation with her seven-year-old pupils must have been difficult. It is likely Ashling taught these children about topics such as road safety or stranger danger. How do you explain to them that the person who taught you about doing the 'right things', and who did everything right had such a tragic end?
We all need basic ground rules in our lives to feel safe. But Ashling's death last week has shattered our understanding of safety precautions. And it has brought home that while taking precautions can reduce risk, it does not eliminate it. We tell children that when crossing the road they must go to the pedestrian crossing, wait for the green man, and then cross the road. But this is no guarantee that a drunk or distracted driver will not come around a corner and knock them down.
The broader debate of how or what to tell the children about what happened to Ashling is well documented. I've written that it depends on the child and their developmental awareness in previous columns. Some children will need less detail than others, and striking a balance between teaching children to be aware of potential danger without terrifying them or removing their right to childhood innocence is difficult.
The events of last week may mean parents will have conversations where they will tell their daughters to be responsible and act in a certain way to keep themselves safe. Other parents may talk to their sons about the concepts of respect, consent and keeping safe too. Some will say we should not have to tell our daughters to take fewer risks, that instead, we need to tell our sons to be more respectful of women. However, we need to prepare our children for the world they are navigating now rather than an ideal one that will hopefully exist in the future.
Casual sexism, which is deeply ingrained in our culture, needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency if we are to see any progress. I am repeatedly taken aback by the accounts of young women I talk to who describe experiences of being harassed, groped and cat-called with disturbing regularity by their peers. The most worrying aspect of these accounts is that they are rarely seen as unacceptable, with many resigning themselves to the fact that it is 'just part of a night out'. This tolerance has to change at all levels of society.
I don't have readymade answers on how the right to freedom of movement is achieved, and I don't know if education, stiffer prison sentences or awareness campaigns are the solutions. But I do know that for the sake of my daughter, I have to try everything I can to create the essential change we desperately need.
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