Violence against women: Savagery under very thin veneer

It’s just over a month since the Belfast rape trial dominated the headlines. A few weeks earlier, the 1984 Kerry Babies scandal was briefly reopened and a new generation learned of a dark episode in our past. Yesterday’s arrest of two men over the murder of German teenager Inga Maria Hauser in the North 30 years ago is another.

Last week’s murder of Leixlip schoolgirl Ana Kriegel is a more contemporary reminder of the brutality faced by women from men with a sense of entitlement far, far beyond anything a civilised society can tolerate. That detectives searching for Wicklow student Jastine Valdez, randomly abducted last Saturday afternoon, discovered her body in south Co Dublin yesterday afternoon, is yet another example of bestial savagery unloosed by sexual predators.