Radio 4: balance for women victims of DV

[thatdamnwoman]

Clumsy thread title, sorry. This evening I've listened to a half-hour feature on the awful story of Mark Van Dongen, a Belgian man living in Bristol who was so terribly injured when his former partner threw sulphuric acid over him that he chose euthanasia. His former partner (female) is now serving a life sentence. Very sad story and awful to realise what the family went through.

But for every man murdered by his female partner or ex-partner here in the UK there are around 11 women killed by their male partners or exes. I can't remember when I last heard a half-hour feature on the life of a single one of them. So I've emailed Radio 4 and asked them, in the name of balance, to please now produce 10 half-hour features on women killed by male partners. I've pointed out that if they insist on fairness to the extent of including UKIP in political debates, they need to extend the same fairness to women.

If anyone would care to email Feedback at Radio 4 then this is the link:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006slnx/contact

I'd also be very interested to know if there is a project anywhere that records the lives and circumstances of the women who are killed each week. I understand that there's a list recording their names but is anything more going on? With so many media courses in colleges around the UK, would it be so very difficult to coordinate a project where, for a year, media students produce an item about each and every woman killed?

Hi OP,

Have a look at this blog by Karen Ingala Smith:
Counting Dead Women

The fabulous @jeanhatchet here also raises awareness by riding for murdered women.

Yes, it was Counting Dead Women that I was aware of — though had forgotten the exact title of the project.

It seems clear to me that mainstream media has no interest in the individual women killed as a result of DV and so I was trying to think of a way to get the stories out there. If I could just afford to stop working and concentrate on getting something important done...

Appalling fact I learnt today- 5 women a week die in the U.K. because of domestic abuse. The 2 a week who are murdered, and a further 3 a week who commit suicide.

www.refuge.org.uk/our-work/campaigns/more-refuge-campaigns/taking-lives/

5 women a week.

It’s an epidemic. And so tragic that the only way that those poor women can see to escape is to kill themselves

That's sobering OfSpartacus.

This is the counting dead women site run by Karen Ingala Smith.

kareningalasmith.com/counting-dead-women/

I'm not comfortable with this. Its not balancing out if men talk about male circumcision when we talk about FGM.

I don't see any need to balance it out, that case was not from the UK, extreme and extremely rare.

Upstart Crow, the case occurred in the the UK, in Bristol, although both victim and perpetrator were born elsewhere.

I think the fact that it was a rare case of female on male violence makes it all the more important to, at the very least, point out that two women a week are murdered by partners or former partners.

Yes, that was an absolutely shocking story and I feel so much for the young man and his family.

But the reason it was so newsworthy is because it is so incredibly uncommon for women to cause such devastating injury to men.

And yes, it happened in Bristol.

That poor man - and his family, absolutely horrific.