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.

These anti-women barbarisms are deeply shocking but, in a society where the dominant cultural force for so long imposed a second-class citizenship on women, they can hardly be surprising. In a society where anti-democratic violence is routinely rewarded with a seat in government, it is not surprising that some see violence as a way to achieve their aims.

If these atrocities — what else are they? — are to be confronted, we need a new way of teaching respect, discipline, and basic humanity. The deaths of Ana and Jastine can’t just be the latest reminders that what we have been doing for generations is simply not working.