Julie Cross: We need to believe women, otherwise what’s the point of DV funding?
We can keep throwing money at dealing with Australia’s domestic violence problem, but first we need to believe women like victim Mackenzie Anderson when they seek help, says Julie Cross.
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After Mackenzie Anderson was viciously stabbed to death 78 times by her ex-boyfriend, one of the domestic violence advocacy groups she had gone to for help sent her an email saying it was closing her request, “because you’re now dead and no longer qualify for support”.
If that doesn’t expose a failing system, I don’t know what does.
This week a NSW court heard how 21-year-old Mackenzie had begged various agencies for help in the run up to her former boyfriend being released from jail on domestic violence offences against her.
You can tell by her requests how desperate and scared she was. She asked for security doors and cameras, anything that might help protect her from what she knew was going to happen.
But someone, somewhere, didn’t quite believe her story.
In the end, her ex managed to break into her home and kill her in the hallway with two knives from a set her mother bought her for Christmas.
Despite the millions of dollars being thrown at domestic violence, women like Mackenzie are being let down.
It was a point her mother Tabitha Acret made when she stood up in a court in Newcastle, north of Sydney, at her daughter’s killer’s sentencing.
She also spoke of how she wasn’t aware of the danger her daughter had been in because she had been too ashamed to tell her.
Just down the road another family is grieving after ironwoman Audrey Griffin, 19, was murdered on the way home from a night out, by a man with a history of domestic abuse and restraining order breaches.
They didn’t know each other, but he followed her and decided to end her life because he could. She was found dead in a stream.
He killed himself after his arrest, cheating Audrey’s family of answering some of the questions, only he could answer, like why?
His former partner this week spoke out to say how she had been living in fear of this man and that both she and Audrey had been let down by the legal system.
Most of the men that go on to kill their partners are already known to the police and yet, that doesn’t stop them.
The Australian Femicide Watch says 24 Australian women have been killed this year between January 13 and April 25.
It’s calling for more funding, better policy and more services because women are “falling through the cracks”.
For starters we need to believe women when they seek help.
We can keep throwing money at the problem, but if women like Mackenzie’s pleas for support are ignored, what is the point?
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Originally published as Julie Cross: We need to believe women, otherwise what’s the point of DV funding?
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