COMMENT
For the fourth time in the past year, Australians are deep in conversation about women’s right to safety in public, following the “horrendous” murder of 25-year-old Courtney Herron in Melbourne’s Royal Park last weekend.
Herron, a former government worker who’s been described as “friendly and funny”, suffered extreme violence, according to police, her body partially hidden behind logs in the inner-Melbourne parklands, where it was found on Saturday morning by a dog walker.
As has been widely reported since the discovery of Herron’s body, she is the fourth woman to be killed in a public space in Melbourne in the past 12 months, following the (unrelated) murders of Eurydice Dixon, Aiia Maasawre and Natalina Angok – whose body was discovered in an alleyway in Chinatown last month.
The murders have each sparked renewed discussion from across the political spectrum on where responsibility lies where women’s public safety is concerned.
The key point is this is about men's behaviour, it's not about women's behaviour.
And, at last, there appears to be some progression in the so-called “debate” about men’s public violence against women. Speaking near the site where Herron’s body was discovered, Victoria Police’s Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius was crystal clear when he identified those parties responsible for Australia’s unceasing wave of gendered violence.
“The key point is this is about men’s behaviour,” Cornelius told the media, “it’s not about women’s behaviour. And every time I hear of a woman being attacked in our community . . . as a man it gives me pause for reflection . . . about what is it in our community that allows some men to think it’s still OK to attack women, or to take from women what they want for whatever reason.”
This tonal shift is stark when compared with past police responses, which have centred victim behaviour in warning about public incidents of male violence against women. When 17-year-old Masa Vukotic was murdered in a park in Balwyn in 2015, then-Victorian homicide squad head Mick Hughes told ABC Radio, “I suggest to people, particularly females, they shouldn’t be alone in parks. I’m sorry to say that this is the case. We just need to be a little more careful, a little more vigilant.”
There is at least a nugget of progress in these improved responses from many in the media, as well as police and politicians.
Unlike most statements we’re used to hearing from police, which tend to take a similar tone to Hughes, Assistant Commissioner Cornelius’s recent statement falls more in line with the prophetic advice to the force given by former Victoria Police Commission Ken Lay in 2014.
Lay spoke of men, both inside the police force and outside it, “whose behaviour towards women is reprehensible”. Regardless of intention, Lay said, “it is always based on a skewed idea of what it is to be a man. It’s based on a sense of entitlement that he holds the power and has a right to use it to take advantage.”
Even in 2014, Lay appeared to understand how controversial it could be to call out men for their own bad behaviour. “This is not about blame,” he said, “but it is about accountability.” He reflected how often he had to ask men to “own this problem”, to “address it and behave decently and appropriately”. Now, it appears, the messaging from Victoria Police is finally getting back on track.
But amid this small step forward in the ongoing fight for women’s right to safety, there’s still the death of Courtney Herron. At 25, Herron was reportedly experiencing extreme vulnerability with a transient living situation, mental health issues and a substance use disorder, would often sleep rough in the park where her body was found. Like many women who struggle with homelessness in Melbourne, it may be that Herron did not have a reliable place to stay where she felt truly safe.
Lay said, “it is always based on a skewed idea of what it is to be a man. It’s based on a sense of entitlement that he holds the power and has a right to use it to take advantage.”
Herron is the 20th Australian woman to be killed by violence in 2019, according to the Counting Dead Women project, run by Destroy the Joint. The project’s aim is to ensure that women’s violent deaths at the hands of men do not go unnoticed, as has often been the case in the past. It’s worth reflecting that, in the past, the death of a woman in Herron’s position might not have received the same media attention and public sympathy. And so, while Australia still has a long way to go in our response to and prevention of this violence, there is at least a nugget of progress in these improved responses from many in the media, as well as police and politicians.
As police investigated Herron’s death early this week, the new leader for the opposition, Anthony Albanese, announced his intention to hold a “summit” on Australia’s national crisis of domestic violence. “We can bring together experts to just talk about a way forward, to listen not just to women but also to men about how this is occurring,” he said.
Albanese commented that “it’s just an outrage that women don’t feel safe at night”. But, on the subject of Herron’s murder, he insisted that politicians needed to focus not just on such “incredible tragedies”, but on the broader picture of violence against women. Albanese makes a valid point. The cycle of keeping vigil for the outrageous public “monster” murders of (some) Australian women can tend to obscure the extreme problem of male violence against women that occurs most often privately – in the home, in the workplace, away from public eyes.
Nevertheless, it remains virtually impossible to find the right way to respond when a woman is murdered so brutally and publicly by a man when she simply deserved to move through the world with some semblance of safety.
