The ‘badlands’ of Ireland: How our disappeared and murdered women inspire change
In series 2 of the TV series The Fall, DSU Stella Gibson — portrayed by Gillian Anderson — presents a piercing reminder of the impact of the patriarchal, misogynistic and violent forces that underpin our society.
A woman once asked a male friend why men felt threatened by women. He replied that they were “afraid that women might laugh at us”. When she asked a group of women why women felt threatened by men, they said, “we’re afraid they might kill us”
The incessant trend of male violence against women, particularly by men who are known to their victim, is the darkest and most brutal reminder of the legacy of male-dominated social orders. When women are marginalized and excluded from the organization of a society, it is not only their views and best interests that are disregarded, but their safety.
What is most devastating about the known (and the unknown) instances of the disappeared and murdered women of Ireland, is that a deep rooted hatred of women is embedded within all perpetrators. The killers hold beliefs that their feelings of jealousy, inadequacy and supposed challenges to their power, are legitimate reasons to commit the most heinous of crimes against women. By murdering them, these men render their victims more publicly known for their death than their lives.
As a society, Ireland has yet to devise a comprehensive approach to tackling male violence and aggression against women. Whilst not alone in this, the consequences of inaction are alarmingly high. It must change. For those who have gone before and those who may be next. It is abhorrent, but true, that we need to stop ‘entry-level’ aggression in order to save women’s lives.
The ‘badlands’
Murdered and their bodies secretly buried. These are the women who vanished in Ireland at various times of the day and night, and were never seen again by those who loved them. The last person they would have seen is the person who murdered them. Stripped of their dreams, rights and dignity.
In Northern Ireland, there has been Caroline Graham, Arlene Arkinson, Saoirse Smyth, Lisa Dorrian, and Charlotte Murray. A range of warm, loving and ambitious personalities, who Allison Morris has written extensively about . These personal reflections are too often forgotten in more descriptive accounts.
In the South of Ireland, in the ‘Vanishing Triangle’ alone — an 80-mile area outside Dublin — there has been Annie McCarrick, Deirdre Jacob, Fiona Pender, Ciara Breen, Jo Jo Dullard, Fiona Sinnott, Eva Brennan, and Imelda Keenan. A painfully long list of individuals who lived and loved, yet had their fate decided upon by men. Although they remain lost in death, may this not always be so.
What binds all of these women together is that they are all female victims of male violence. Behind the headlines are families praying for justice and the chance to give their loved ones a burial. The majority of these women were believed to have been killed by men known to them. Only one, Charlotte Murray, has resulted in a conviction.
The family of Lisa Dorrian, who went missing from a caravan park in Ballyhalbert in 2005, have long campaigned for her remains to be returned. Lisa’s sister, Joanne, has worked tirelessly to keep Lisa’s case in the public eye. Indeed, her family, along with Charlotte Murray’s, are successfully campaigning to change the law around how ‘no body’ murders are dealt with by the judiciary in Northern Ireland.
Both families campaigned for the creation of Charlotte’s Law, which could restrict parole for killers who refuse to disclose the location of their victim’s bodies. More importantly, the Law would be the first of its kind anywhere in the world to offer the murderer a reduction in their tariff should they successfully disclose the location of their victims remains.
The significance of this campaigning and the potential of Charlotte’s Law coming into force cannot be overstated. The Law would be a game changer in regard to encouraging disclosure. This work is helping to ensure that past and future cases will be dealt with in the best possible way at the stage of conviction and sentencing.
Although they should never have needed to be, the Dorrian and Murray families are the change makers who are empowering and dignifying their loved ones. In doing so, they are also protecting countless others throughout Northern Ireland and beyond.
Tackling ‘entry level’ aggression
This is not intended to be another entry in the parade of never-ending explainers about why women co-exist with the fear of what men might do to them. We should already know this. Disproportionately, year on year, the pattern is clear. Men kill women, men assault women, men harass women. Not all men, not even many men. But it is nearly always men, not women, who kill women.
In a recent Irish Times article, psychology professor Orla Muldoon wrote:
“Men who perpetrate life-threatening violence against women tend to build up to this point of their criminal careers. Perpetrators usually start with jeering, street harassment, exposure, groping. Yet we rarely intervene when men perpetrate entry-level violence”
Although Professor Muldoon may have been stating the obvious, try telling that to the men infesting the comment section under her piece. How dare a woman pen such an insulting portrait of the perennially put-upon male species? But while they might feel like society’s punchbag, they aren’t the ones absorbing the blows.
The light of the disappeared
Responsibility for the atrocities that took place in Ireland’s badlands and the Vanishing Triangle does not lie with all men. Women do not hold that view, no matter how many men might insist otherwise.
This is nothing that hasn’t been said about men many times before and it feeds into Professor Muldoon’s point about “entry-level” transgressions. They happen all the time. In work environments, in public spaces, at home, and, even, in school settings.
We must quit tolerating all the entry-level stuff. The ‘micro-aggressions’, as Professor Muldoon defines it. Men must help women win this battle. If anyone finds it hard to see, do it by the candlelight from the endless vigils that follow the latest disappearance or murder of an innocent women in Ireland.
There is a light that shines from those that have been lost and it is that light that will lead to change. By challenging at the grassroot level — stopping the entry-level examples — and instigating legislative shifts — most prominently Charlotte’s Law — the battle will be won. This will be the legacy of the disappeared and murdered women of Ireland.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Joanne Dorrian, Lisa’s sister, who provided significant insight and guidance during the writing of this article. To read more about the Dorrian family’s campaigning, click here.
This article was also inspired by the excellent BBC documentary series ‘Murder in the Badlands’, which examined the stories behind the unsolved murders of four women across four decades in Northern Ireland.
