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Jennifer Horgan: Violence is violence, whether the victim be a loved one or a stranger

Domestic violence is just as devastating and as deadly as the violence we might be unlucky enough to suffer on the streets. So why do we view them differently?
Jennifer Horgan: Violence is violence, whether the victim be a loved one or a stranger

Domestic abuse is often dismissed as somehow less violent than attacks on strangers in public. Picture: Dominic Lipinski/PA

We are all shocked by random acts of violence against innocent people, and rightly so. Most of us abhor violence. It is also because we possibly imagine ourselves in the place of the victim. We could have been the person walking down that road, that path, at that hour. Or, it could have been our husband, our sister, our mother, our child, our friend.

It feels close to the skin, and the very random, very public acts of violence stand alone in a way, in a vast sea of violence, and stay in our consciousness. For these acts we use words like ‘disgusting,’ ‘evil,’ ‘heinous,’ and they feel warranted.

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