The Mocker: Feminists dictate their own narrative over family violence

Seven news reporter Robert Ovadia pictured reporting on site in Margaret River following the family tragedy. Picture: Seven News

Is there any tragedy so horrific that some self-righteous windbag will not exploit it? Not if the reaction to the mass shooting in Margaret River, Western Australia on May 11 is any indication. Consider the following excerpt that appeared last week in the letters to The Age.

“I am not intending to diminish in any way the great tragedy that occurred in Western Australia last week,” wrote one reader, referring to the murders committed by Peter Miles of his wife Cynda, daughter Katrina, and grandchildren Taye, 13, Rylan, 12, Ayre, 10 and Kadyn, 8. “But I do object to it being labelled the worst mass shooting since Port Arthur, Tasmania.” What was the reason for her objection? “This labelling negates entirely the mass killings that occurred in these states during the Frontier Wars and beyond,” she postulated. “Let us stop looking at these events through white eyes only.”

What a load of sanctimonious drivel. This is the worst mass shooting since the Port Arthur massacre of 1996, and describing it so does not whitewash or downplay the historical massacres of indigenous people. Unfortunately this fatuous display of grandstanding was by not confined to the letters page, as Channel Seven senior journalist Robert Ovadia discovered much to his bemusement.

A veteran Sydney crime reporter, he has covered some of the city’s worst atrocities, including the murder of five members of the Lin family in 2009 by Lian Bin ‘Robert’ Xie. He was in Margaret River last Sunday week when a devastated Aaron Cockburn, the father of the four children and estranged husband of their murdered mother, struggled to describe what he remembered of his father-in-law. Miles, he said, was an “awesome man”.

“He was like my best friend and I still love who he was,” said Cockburn. As Ovadia notes, this was a father still in shock at the loss of his four children. While his praise for his father-in-law was disconcerting, this was no time to judge. That said, Cockburn’s comments were partly corroborated by the neighbours and associates of Miles who Ovadia had interviewed. The dismayed residents recalled that Miles, who was suffering from depression and had deteriorated markedly just before the tragedy, was a “good bloke”.

It takes a lot to surprise Ovadia, but the reaction from Fairfax columnist and feminist Clementine Ford did. “Turning murderers into ‘Good Blokes’ only reinforces an underlying community belief that there are circumstances in which men can be driven to this kind of response,” she wrote the following day.

This was a misleading portrayal. Ovadia and other journalists, as is their job, had merely provided background information on the suspected killer. “Nobody thinks he’s a good bloke after the fact,” wrote an exasperated Ovadia in response. “Surely that’s implicit — surely? Do we really need to spell out that mass murderers are bad people?” According to Ford, yes — at least when the murderers are male.

Not only was Ford misleading in examining the media’s reaction: she also perpetuated a falsehood. “It’s always men, because nobody defends women who murder children or describes them as ‘awesome’,” she wrote. Really? Let’s look at another domestic atrocity involving the murder of children in Western Australia.

In 2011, Port Denison resident and nurse Heather Glendinning killed her two youngest daughters, Jane, 12, and Jessica, 10, in a murder-suicide which was described as “one of the worst police have encountered.” The West Australian included an account from an old schoolmate of Glendinning who described her as “a nice girl who got into lots of mischief but had a really good fun personality.” Another friend said she was as a “’lovely mum’ who never smacked or told off her ‘caring and respectful’ children.”

To paraphrase Ford, this next description is a case of turning a murderer into a good woman. The Newcastle Herald provided accounts from Glendinning’s friends who said “she deserves to be remembered as a loving mother.” Here’s a suggestion: do a Google search on Ford, who was a columnist in the year this tragedy occurred, and see how many words she wrote condemning these glowing descriptions. But you already know the answer to that.

“Stop using ‘poor mental health’ as a scapegoat for domestic homicide and men’s violence,” tweeted Ford on the day of the Margaret River tragedy.

I'm thinking today of the two women and four children who were murdered in Margaret River yesterday. There isn't enough rage in the world. Stop using "poor mental health" as a scapegoat for domestic homicide and men's violence. Those dead women and children deserve better.

— Clementine Ford (@clementine_ford) May 12, 2018

On that note, what does she have to say about the case of Raina Thaiday, which was one of Australia’s worst domestic mass homicides? In 2014 the Cairns mother fatally stabbed seven of her children and her niece. Last year a court ruled that she would not face trial as she was suffering cannabis-induced paranoia schizophrenia at the time of the killings. Does Ford regard the invoking of poor mental health as a ‘scapegoat’ for women’s violence?

It is not hard to imagine her reaction if a father was found unfit for trial in similar circumstances. Writing about the court’s decision in an article titled ‘Cairns children killings: What drove Raina Thaiday to slay eight kids?,’ ABC journalist Kristian Silva said: “Ongoing mental health issues had never been treated, and the financial and emotional pressure of being a single mum had become insurmountable.” Is this not exactly what Ford was condemning when she wrote last week “The Good Bloke narrative reinforces to these men that they aren’t truly in control of their actions, that they’re pushed into it by external factors”? Again, where was her criticism?

Like Ford, Guardian columnist and fellow feminist Van Badham criticised the media’s coverage of the Margaret River tragedy, singling out Ovadia’s protest that the media should not be afraid to report residents’ recollection of Miles. “The narrative of the ‘good bloke’ who “snaps” and kills his family is myth,” she wrote, “And maintaining it as a frame for news reporting provides external validation to potential murderers that their inclinations towards violence are not unconscionable. Indeed, “good bloke” memorialising around suspected killers instructs that you can both murder your family and retain your reputation.”

Take a moment to reflect on the inanity of Badham’s argument. If a man is weighing up carrying out the biggest mass shooting in over 20 years, would he not be well and truly beyond caring about retaining a positive reputation, especially when his grandchildren will be among the victims? But if Badham is all for prevention strategies, she should focus on her home state of Victoria and the lenient sentences handed to mothers who kill their children.

In 2016, Victorian mother Sofina Nikat, who was suffering depression, smothered her 15 month old daughter Sanaya, and dumped her body in a Melbourne park. She lied to police and told them that a man of African appearance who smelt of alcohol had abducted her child. After pleading guilty to infanticide, she walked free from court. In imposing a 12 month community corrections order, Justice Lex Lasry observed “Your pre-sentence custody of 529 days is, on any view, a period long in excess of any sentence of imprisonment I would have considered imposing on you.” Commenting on the sentence, Sanaya’s aunt Zahraa Sahib, was appalled. “We had no justice for her death,” she said.

Amended in 2005, the offence of infanticide was expanded to cater for mothers who had killed a child of up to two years old (previously 12 months). It provides a lesser and alternative offence to murder, but for female offenders only. When the amendments were proposed, Joe Tucci, of the Australian Childhood Foundation warned of the consequences: “I don’t support it; I think it sends the wrong message by taking the focus off the rights of the children. Society should be strengthening the laws that protect children, not weakening them.”

The offence provides for a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment, yet since the amendments only one woman has been jailed in Victoria for infanticide. That was Akon Guode, who in 2015 deliberately killed three of her children, and attempted to murder another, by driving her car into a lake. Notably, prosecutors did not seek a life sentence for the murders.

Could it be the combination of lenient legislation and sentencing for women offenders has minimised or even removed deterrence? According to figures from the Australian Institute of Criminology for the ten year period 2002-12, women accounted for over half (52 per cent) of offenders who committed the crime of filicide (the act of killing a child by either mother or father). That said, women overwhelmingly (75 per cent) featured as victims in intimate party homicides. And while there is no single definition of domestic violence, it is agreed that the majority of offenders are male.

“We do not owe sympathy to perpetrators,” wrote Badham last week. “We owe it to the abused, dead and living, to condemn their suffering without equivocation. When we personalise tender excuses for male violence, we don’t, actually, minimise the hateful horrors that curdle beneath it. We do, alas, encourage them.” Alas, feminist condemnation of parents who kill their children is restricted to 48 per cent of offenders.

“Perhaps it’s just the dogmatic feminist in me speaking, but I feel like slaughtering your whole family has to be where we draw the line at being honoured with [the ‘good bloke’] title,” wrote Ford. Perhaps it’s just my belief that all those who intentionally kill children should face the consequences of their crime irrespective of their gender, but sadly the dogmatic feminists seem more concerned about censoring and dictating the media’s reporting to suit their narrative.