Tag: sexual violence

DAY ELEVEN: No it wasn’t different back then #2 -Tracing Rape Myths in Medieval Court Records

Challenging the notion of ‘it was different back then’, Mara Schmueckle draws attention to medieval Scottish notarial record on Janet Lausoun, who was abducted and forced into marriage. Lausoun’s story highlights the burden placed on women where their credibility is measured against expectations of the behaviour of “real victims.” 

Mara Schmueckle

Featured Image: “A lawyer speaking to an assembly” The British Library, Harley 947, f. 107.  

The prosecution of gendered violence remains a difficult topic. One particular challenge faced by victims remains the existence of “rape myths” – the idea that a victim of assault would behave in a certain way, and that victims who do not behave in this manner may have invented their allegation. 

The recent report by the Lord Justice Clerk’s Review Commission, which examined the management of sexual offence cases within the Scottish court system, explicitly recognised the existence of social expectations and their effect on the prosecution of sexual offence cases. Common myths include the suggestion that those subject to assault would resist or call for help (implying that assault without violence is consensual), that truthful allegations are reported immediately, and that false accusations are common. The Review Commission highlighted the ongoing, important line of judgments which forbids questioning designed to utilise these myths to undermine the credibility of the witness. Acknowledging the ongoing challenge in enforcing these rules, the review group nonetheless stressed the importance of restricting questioning to avoid re-traumatising witnesses. The Review Commission also warns that the outcome of cases can be affected by jury members who continue to apply these myths about rape. It recommends increased training and instruction for jury members to ensure that common (but usually inaccurate) understandings of sexual violence are not used to determine the truth of an allegation.

As a medieval historian, the parallel between the expectations placed on medieval women reporting sexual violence, and those still affecting the modern system, are striking. 

A few months ago, while searching Scottish notarial records for details of the legal process surrounding marriages, I came across a notarial record written in Scots. Many medieval historians experience moments when the experience of the people we study, who lived centuries ago, can feel enormously relevant to our own society, and this was one of those moments for me. The record, which details the abduction and forced marriage of Janet Lausoun highlights the burden placed on women where their credibility is measured against expectations of the behaviour of “real victims.” 

In February 1515 Janet Lausoun visited the home of a notary, accompanied by her (male) family members. The manuscript image featured in this post might help us to imagine this legal scene: a woman predominantly surrounded by men. She presented the notary with a pre-written statement, in which her abduction and forced marriage are described, and which details her formal renunciation of that marriage and any activities she undertook during this time. It is important to stress that while we do not know anything else about Janet Lausoun or whether there were any consequences for her abductor, her presence before the notary indicates that she must have been believed.

Janet met the burden of credibility. Her statement, however, also highlights the difficulty other women must have had in doing so. 

One of the challenges about medieval statements is that we have no insight into the process by which they were created. However, Janet Lausoun’s statement so closely mirrors the legal language of the time that it seems likely she had assistance in preparing it. This, combined with her status as an heiress and the presence of male family members to defend her honour, allowed her case to be recorded. The statement explains that, a few weeks before Christmas the year before, she was walking home from Edinburgh to Leith [a journey of about 2 miles] with her mother. En route, the statement goes on to say, she was violently abducted and forced into marriage. She states that she entered into this marriage in fear of her life. There are no details of the three months she spent with her abductor, but she is careful to stress the date and difficulty of her escape, the day before she gave her statement. 

In Janet’s case, reference to the violence of the abduction and to the speed with which she reported the case may have been necessary  to meet relevant legal tests, and thereby allow her to renounce the marriage which had been forced on her. 

But a comparison between the requirements placed on her and those placed on victims of sexual assault today suggests that long-standing legal ideas about how gendered violence looks and how a victim of gendered violence behaves did not simply disappear.  They have evolved and continue to affect public understanding of gendered violence in the present. 

Cases like Janet Lausoun’s remind us of the burden placed on women if we expect them to demonstrate that they are “a wholly blameless victim.”[1]

References

Final report from the Lord Justice Clerk’s Review Group, Improving the Management of Sexual Offence Cases, March 2021, available at https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/docs/default-source/default-document-library/reports-and-data/Improving-the-management-of-Sexual-Offence-Cases.pdf?sfvrsn=6

Gordon Donaldson ed, Protocol Book of James Young, Scottish Record Society OS Volume 74, entry 2081, in manuscript B22/22/15 f. 121r-v. 

Author’s Bio:

Mara Schmueckle is a PhD student in History at the University of Edinburgh.  She also obtained her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Edinburgh, before qualifying as a solicitor. Her research focuses on women and marriage in Pre-Reformation Scotland.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/30/details-of-sarah-everard-case-heighten-womens-sense-of-despair

DAY ELEVEN: No it wasn’t different back then #1 – Researching rape in 20th century US

‘It wasn’t different back then’ Mara Keire illuminates how this ahistorical rhetoric enables justification of men’s sexually predatory behaviour. Her research on rape in 20th century US shows clearly the falsity of that excuse.

Mara Keire

Featured image: ‘The Little Butterfly’, credit: Library of Congress, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

Defenders of men like movie producer Harvey Weinstein, architect Stanford White, actor Clark Gable, and director Roman Polanski rely on the argument that it was “different back then.”[1]  They use this specious ahistorical reasoning to justify predation. 

Studying the history of sexual violence serves three important purposes for me.  First, it provides the crucial evidence that “no, it was not different back then.”  Second, it illuminates the politics of power and networks of complicity that enable the ongoing oppression of women and children through sexual violence.  And finally, it allows historians to advocate for the victims they study. 

Learning about what people thought about rape at the time, seeing how victims and their supporters responded to attacks, and reading the commentary about legal cases large and small, provides a stark contrast to the representation of a sexually laissez-faire world where anything men did met with social acceptance. 

My work on sexual violence in early 20th century New York provides concrete evidence refuting the assertion that it was “different back then.” I hope that it will help anti-violence activists change this narrative exonerating predators for assaults that were not acceptable then and are not justifiable now. Studying the history of sexual violence also serves to obliterate the idea that rapists are solitary “bad apples.” Instead, researchers can uncover the networks of complicity that reinforce male power. 

Most recently, we’ve heard Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney, and Maggie Nichols testify how they reported Larry Nasser to everyone who they hoped would listen from US Gymnastics to the FBI, but no one acted. Larry Nasser continued his predation because authorities thought a quack medical doctor was more important than elite young gymnasts.[2] 

While in the present day we need to unravel these networks of power in real time, as historians we can show them whole cloth.

For example, when Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson kidnapped and raped Madge Olberholtzer in 1925, the Ku Klux Klan had already known about his predatory behaviour toward women for years, but they had done nothing to stop him because he was a popular leader and useful to the organisation. After Olberholtzer died from her injuries, the Klan repudiated him. But Stephenson’s trial for murder and the subsequent revelations illustrated to a chilling degree how male sexual entitlement worked and the degree to which the people around him catered to and covered up his violence toward women. [3] Exposing the networks of complicity in the past shatters the myth of individual bad actors in present day cases.

Refuting the contradictory myths that rapists are either misguided men of their time or solitary monsters makes studying the history of sexual violence a necessary venture. However, I find that advocating for the once discredited victims is the most fulfilling part when writing this history. I chose to research rape because of my present-day activism fighting women’s oppression. I am not objective. I am emotionally involved. I care deeply about the girls and women about whom I write. I am one of them. As a survivor, I have the unparalleled opportunity to believe my ancestors in trauma. 

Author’s Bio:

Mara Keire is a Senior Research Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford.  She is currently writing a book called Under the Boardwalk: Rape in New York City, 1900-1930.  You can find her far too often on twitter at @MaraKeire

[1] Weinstein – Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, “Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades,” The New York Times (5 October 2017): https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/harvey-weinstein-harassment-allegations.html

Stanford White – Paul R. Baker, Stanny: The Gilded Life of Stanford White (London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1989), ix-xi.

Clark Gable – Lou Lumenick, “We’ll never really know if Clark Gable actually date-raped Loretta Young,” New York Post (13 July 2015): https://nypost.com/2015/07/13/well-never-really-know-if-clark-gable-actually-date-raped-loretta-young/

Polanski – Michael Cieply, “In Polanski Case, ‘70s Culture Collides With Today,” (10 October 2009): https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/movies/11polanski.html

All accessed 26 October 2021

[2] McKenzie Jean-Philippe, “Simone Biles, Aly Raisman Bravely Testify Against the FBI’s Handling of the Larry Nassar Case,” Oprah Daily, 15 September 2021: https://www.oprahdaily.com/entertainment/a37610818/simone-biles-aly-raisman-testify-larry-nassar-hearing/ (accessed 25 October 2021).

[3] Mara Keire, “#MeToo, Networks of Complicity, and the 1920s Klan,” Process: a blog for American history (24 January 2019): http://www.processhistory.org/keire-networks/ (accessed 26 October 2021).

DAY TEN: Storytelling for Social Justice: The Story of Antigua and the Masked Serial Rapist

Stories have power. Stories shape how we understand our realities. Janeille Matthews offers a critical perspective into the story of the ‘masked serial rapist’ in Antigua and how it frames gender-based violence.

Janeille Zorina Matthews

Featured image: “there is something about facing the sea” by chamko rani is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

If you spend enough time in Antigua, you are bound to encounter talk about crime. And, when you do, you will likely hear claims that crime has increased significantly over the past 20 years and continues to do so largely unabated.  You may hear people lamenting the way in which criminals have become so bold – daring to commit armed robbery in ‘broad daylight’ or you may hear whose dogs are about to have pups and who may be interested in taking those pups because everyone knows that dogs are the best security system, ‘Black people tend to be afraid of dogs’ Antiguans say. 

You may even hear people recounting the tale of the elusive ‘serial rapist’ who once wreaked havoc in the country disappearing just as mysteriously as he arrived and discussions about how much people have had to adjust their daily routine and behaviour because of crime. In all of this crime talk, you may hear people calling for stiffer penalties including castration, or you may hear people lament that as a result of increased crime, life in Antigua is not like it was generations ago, or as Antiguans simply say, not like ‘before time’.   

If you read the local newspaper, headlines like ‘2007 Crime Stats Confirm Public Opinion’ and ‘One Raped, Another Attacked,’ would confirm that all you have heard is accurate. But, when you look at official police records from 1970 to 2020, you will realise that much of what you’ve heard is not borne out by the data.  For example, the rate of violent crime has remained relatively stable since 1970 and the rate of property crime is continuing to decline from its peak in 1995. 

More pointedly, while it is true that the rate of rape and indecent assault nearly doubled between 2007 and 2009 when it was alleged that the serial rapist was at large, a longer view of the data shows persistently high incidence of these sexual offences with rates nearly tripling in 2000 and at times accounting for as much as 20 per cent of the country’s violent crime. Despite newspaper reports describing the serial rapist as a masked man who would break into the homes of young women living either with small children or alone to rape them at gun point, over time, professional profilers hired by the government would find that the rapes were likely committed by more than one person and not a single ‘serial rapist’. Yet, like most other inaccurate stories about crime in Antigua, the narrative of the serial rapist persists.  

In a country born of state violence and structural oppression—in which high levels of sexual violence characterised the eras of slavery, colonialism and independence—it is the narrative of the serial rapist that heightened awareness and anxieties leading to a flurry of grassroots activism like “Take Back the Night” community events, more formal measures like the creation of a sexual offences unit in the police force and the creation of a high-level governmental taskforce, and promises of duty concessions and tax abatement on home security alarms. 

It is this narrative that recharacterised sexual violence in Antigua as a relatively recent phenomenon spiralling out of control and perpetrated by men with individual pathologies. By framing sexual violence in this way, the normalised everyday violence against women has gone unscrutinised. 

The masked stranger wielding a gun, invading homes and raping women in front of their children, became the quintessential enemy while innocent unsuspecting women, who could be anyone’s daughter, sister, aunt, wife or friend, became the quintessential victim. This narrative is an important example of how stories permeate our lived realities and why we need to be hyper vigilant about the stories that we tell ourselves and each other. 

Stories have power. They engage us, they persuade us, they change us, and they move us to action. Stories affect what people are able to see as real and as possible. In more structural ways, stories help to shape how we understand and respond to problems, including matters of law and policy. As Jack Zipes explains, stories enable listeners and readers to envision possible solutions to their own problems so that they can survive and adapt to their own environments.   

The alleged rapist—this bogeyman—for me, then, is a spectral figure. He is the ghost, or the jumbie as Antiguans call it, of a post-emancipation past that Natasha Lightfoot and Diana Paton describe in painstaking detail. He is the embodiment of a range of anxieties around the perceived influx of Guyanese and Jamaican nationals, a threat to middle class respectability, the fear of sex, sexuality and Black masculinity, and the justification for increased government expenditure and promises to increase the penalty for rape. He is the personification of a trend that was slowly creeping into Antiguan society long before his official arrival. 

The story of Antigua’s masked serial rapist led to positive changes, but these efforts were necessarily limited because if you misdiagnose the problem, you cannot effectively solve it. 

Antiguans need to hear a different story about crime and sexual violence, one that includes a historical understanding of the intra-racial sexual violence that existed during slavery and its post-emancipation aftermath and is grounded in 50 years of police data.

Shifting the narrative to emphasise both historical understanding and current significance can facilitate more effective interventions. If the story we told sounded more like the stories we tell of Sir Vivian Richards and the West Indies cricket team—comprehensive and contextual focused on individual events yet with statistics, trend analysis, forecasts, commentary and discussion— Antiguan criminal justice policy might be more comprehensive and less reactionary than it is currently. 

Author’s Bio:

Dr. Janeille Zorina Matthews is a multi-disciplinary criminal justice scholar who teaches courses in criminal law and criminology at The University of the West Indies Cave Hill campus in Barbados.  Dr. Matthews most recently authored an article entitled ‘Two Different Stories: A Mixed Methods Investigation of Crime in Antigua and Barbuda’ and a book chapter entitled ‘The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Reframing the Discourse of Sexual Violence in the Anglophone Caribbean.  She is currently engaged in work around decriminalizing minor offences and tracing colonial legacies in contemporary penal practices.  Dr. Matthews is the Research Coordinator of The UWI Rights Advocacy Project, a collective of UWI public law scholars committed to human rights and social justice in the Caribbean. 

DAY NINE: Statues and status: Mexican women change the face of history to combat gender-based violence today

Sarah Easy discusses how Mexican women are changing the face of history to combat gender-based violence today.

Sarah Easy

Image above: The Benito Juárez Hemicycle monument, Mexico City, defaced by anti-gender-based violence protesters in 2019. Credit: Santiago

Until recently, statues of Christopher Columbus quietly watched over major cities of the world amongst other bronzed men and marble slave traders, including in Mexico City. Public monuments are now flashpoints for activist movements worldwide, including the anti-gender-based violence (anti-GBV) movement. In October of this year, the governor of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, announced that a statue of the indigenous ‘Young Lady of Amajac’ would replace the statue of Christopher Columbus toppled 2 years ago by the anti-GBV movement, renewing debate surrounding the historical representation of women.

Protest and public monuments in Mexico

The anti-GBV movement in Mexico provides fertile ground for discussion; deemed ‘the most successful women’s and feminist movement in the history of Latin America’ by Associate Professor Edmé Domínguez, yet birthed from a patriarchal society with one of the highest rates of gender-based violence worldwide.

Originating in the #MeToo phenomenon, the movement reached boiling point during the student occupation of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in October of 2019 (ongoing to this day). Mass protests of hetero, trans and non-binary women subsequently erupted under the Ni Una Menos and Aequus collectives. Judith Butler describes the movement as “a realisation of a common social good and social bond, one that recognises that what is happening to one life…is also happening for others.” This collective approach provides an alternative to more individualistic modes of western feminism.

The most visible expression of the anti-GBV movement in Mexico is the defacing and dismantling of public monuments.

“the movement is anti-patriarchal and, in one aspect anti-capitalist, that’s why one of its forms of resistance is to intervene in these representations of historical figures and facts as forms of protest”. 

Prominent feminist collective Aequus

During the anti-rape glitter protests of 2019, slogans such as ‘the State doesn’t take care of me, my friends do’ were painted across Mexico City’s iconic Angel of Independence. This lasting imagery situates women in the public sphere, giving new meaning to spaces that previously celebrated masculine ideals of war and colonial rule.          

Image above: The Angel of Independence statue, Mexico City, defaced by anti-gender-based violence protesters in 2019. Credit: Santiago Arau

In September of 2020, anti-GBV collectives Aequus, Okupa and Ni Una Menos took further radical action by occupying the National Human Rights Commission and converting the building into a shelter where over 100 women sought refuge. Activists painted over portraits of the all-male historical figures that adorned the Commission, highlighting the female human rights defenders who have been erased from history.

This form of radical visual activism has become so infamous that president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador erected a 3 metre metallic barrier, or “macho wall of shame”, around the presidential palace in nervous anticipation of the International Women’s day March this year. Aequus Collective contends “if the State does not guarantee the security, integrity and the life of women, we should not respect figures symbolic of the State”.

Image above: Anti-gender-based violence protesters camp outside the National Palace, Mexico City, on International Women’s Day 2021. Credit: Santiago Arau

The most recent visual demonstration of the anti-GBV movement is the installation of a cardboard cut-out of a woman with a raised fist where a statue of Christopher Columbus was toppled two years ago. Activists renamed the site the ‘Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan’ (Women Who Fight Roundabout), painting the names of murdered women across its base. Aequus explains that “the demand not to commemorate anyone in particular is a way of expressing pain and rage in the face of violence, as well as a will to fight for the dead and disappeared.”

This example of an ‘anti-monument’ rejects the official discourse of the Mexican state which denies the corruption of the justice system, propagates the impunity of rapists and silences survivors of gender-based violence.

Whether the replacement of the cut-out with a replica of ‘the Young Lady of Amajac’ is genuinely progressive or purely performative remains heatedly debated in Mexico.

Image above: Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan installation, Mexico City. Credit: Sarah Easy
Image above: Anti-gender-based violence protesters paint the names of murdered and disappeared women in Mexico City on International Women’s Day 2020. Credit: Santiago Arau
Statue toppling as a global phenomenon

Dating back to ancient Rome, the practice of ‘statue toppling’ forms part of ‘damnatio memoriae’ (the condemnation of memory) in which public figures were erased from official accounts. We are currently experiencing a global wave of statue toppling that intersects gender, class and race campaigns, such as the mass removal of confederate statues during the Black Lives Matter Movement. Modern activism distinguishes itself through this fixation on history, re-examining and rectifying what is remembered, by whom and for what purpose.

In October 2020 in La Paz, Bolivia, activists from the group Mujeres Creando clothed a statue of the Queen of Castile, financier of Christopher Columbus’ expedition to the Americas in 1492, in a traditional hat, aguayo and pollera (the traditional dress worn by Andean indigenous women, or ‘cholas’).

Indigenous women in Bolivia experience compounded discrimination on grounds of gender, ethnicity and class, with gender-based violence most pronounced in rural areas. Perpetrators of gender-based violence justify their crime by debasing indigenous women. Consequently, the transformation of the statue of the Queen of Castile into a chola serves to elevate the position of indigenous women in society, reflecting their active participation in business, education and politics. 

Significance: statues as symbols or vehicles for change?

The question remains: is the dismantling of the old and rebuilding of new public monuments merely symbolic or can it engender genuine change? Professor Verity Platt defines statues as ‘ideological powerhouses: physical objects that compress whole systems of authority into bodies of bronze or marble’. Similarly, Perhamus and Joldersma (2020) argue that the toppling of statues is ‘more than symbolic destruction of representations, these ‘acts of takedown’ are concrete, physically manifested interruptions’ of the established order. 

From this, we can understand the recent substitution of the statue of Christopher Columbus with the indigenous Young Lady of Armajac in Mexico as more than a passive reflection of feminist ideology, but rather, an active tool for countering machismo.

Gender-based violence knows no bounds of race or class. Judith Butler stresses that ‘violence seeks to secure the class of women as killable, dispensable; it is an attempt to define the very existence of women’s lives as something decided by men, as a masculine prerogative.’

Put simply, a man who respects women doesn’t kill them; what we need is a cultural revolution. Aequus explains that the violent and patriarchal culture in Mexico is “linked to the official version of Mexico’s history in which male historical figures and facts are elevated…due to the broad influence of the armed forces in different aspects of public life”.  The anti-GBV movement in Mexico is changing its violent culture against women by tearing down the patriarchal ideology preserved in statues, monuments, portraits and public spaces, and we should be doing the same.

Image above: Anti-gender-based violence protesters gather on International Women’s Day 2020 in Mexico City. Credit: Santiago Arau

Author’s Bio:

Sarah Easy is a human rights lawyer based in Mexico City and research assistant for the Australian Human Rights Institute. She has previously worked in the Human Rights Specialist Law Service and the Mental Health Advocacy Service at Legal Aid NSW. She has also worked in several NGOs across Mexico, Spain and Australia. She undertook her practical legal training at the Refugee Advice & Casework Service (RACS). Her work focuses on women’s rights and refugee and asylum seekers’ rights. 

DAY EIGHT: Death in Geraldton: how Joyce Clarke became another Indigenous statistic

Aboriginal women continue to voiceconcern about state indifference and violence that contributes directly and indirectly to the violence against women and children.

Hannah McGlade

Featured image: Death by police in the NT: murder trial is only the second in 41 years. Source: https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/07/21/death-by-police-in-nt-second-cops-murder-trial-after-41-years/

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following article contains reference to community members who have died.

On 7 September 2019, Joyce Clarke was shot by police as she walked down a suburban street in Geraldton, Western Australia (WA). She was carrying a large bread knife in one hand and small pink scissors in the other. Hours earlier, she told her family she was going to die.

At 6.30pm that night, her prediction came true. It took the police officer charged with her murder 16 seconds to arrive at the scene and fire the shot that ended her 29-year life. Last Friday, the officer was found not guilty of murder.

Aboriginal women in Australia have been described as “the most incarcerated group of people in the world“.

Over 475 Aboriginal people have died in custody since the end of the 1991 royal commission. In New South Wales, the number of Aboriginal people charged by police increased by 67% between 2010 and 2020. Western Australia has the highest rates of incarceration and deaths in custody of Aboriginal people in the country.

Clarke’s trial was shrouded in secrecy. A suppression order was placed on the officer’s name due to safety concerns for his family. The media was allowed in, but the public was refused entry to the court.

This isn’t the first time the WA Supreme Court has suppressed information over those charged with murdering Aboriginal people. In 2016, the same court issued a suppression order over the name of the Kalgoorlie man who killed Elijah Doughty, a 14-year-old Indigenous boy. The man was eventually given a road traffic conviction.

There were no Aboriginal people on that jury and there were none in the murder trial for Clarke.

Clarke’s family, including her sister Bernie Clarke, maintained their steady presence through the trial, although it was hard for them to hear the final details of her life.

During a demonstration of how a taser works, defence barrister Linda Black began laughing loudly. She later told the jury that Clarke was a “walking time bomb” and a person who “needed to be taken down”. In her opening address, Black said the case had “nothing to do with race”.

Seven days before her death, Clarke had called 000 because she wanted to end her life. This was known by Senior Constable Barker on the day she died. He had approached her with his hand out, wanting to “communicate”, when the constable responsible for her death appeared and shot her.

Barker, who was only a few metres away from Clarke, was clear in his evidence that Clarke had not moved in a threatening way. Other officers gave similar evidence that she had not moved when shot — evidence that contrasted with that of a civilian witness who, at some distance, claimed Clarke, arms in the air, had lunged at the officers before being shot.

There’s no doubt Clarke was in a bad way. She had recently been released from the overcrowded Bandyup prison for stealing a mobile phone she believed was possessed by spirits. The prison is known for its appalling conditions, with reports of abuse of Aboriginal women.

Just two weeks after her release from Bandyup, Clarke was admitted to Geraldton hospital following a suicide attempt. She was discharged, and less than a week later was admitted to St John of God Hospital in Perth for mental health issues. Anne Jones, whom Clarke called mum, asked a nurse not to release her due to concerns she wasn’t well enough to leave. Clarke was discharged because there was no evidence she was still experiencing psychosis.

She left the hospital on Friday, September 13, taking a bus back to Geraldton to stay with relatives. The next Tuesday, in a state of distress, she went to the Wajarri Aboriginal community organisation. She called a relative, warning she was going to die.

A relative called the police to try to get her taken back into the hospital. That was when police arrived — a total of three police cars and eight officers.

The jury took just a few hours to hand down the not guilty verdict, accepting the defence argument that the officer had acted in self-defence. Aboriginal women have long been seen as angry, violent and unworthy of legal protection.

Clarke’s family were distraught. Aboriginal elders began crying outside the court in disbelief that so little had changed. Although police told the defence not to exit the court’s front door, defence lawyer Linda Black did so, telling the family — surrounded by a police barricade — that her client was “sorry” but did what had to be done.

In their case study on Indigenous femicide, that is, the systemic ways in which Indigenous women are subject to conditions that render them unsafe and exposed to violent deaths in settler states of Australia, Canada and the US, the authors write:

‘Indigenous women are targeted and criminalised from birth. In many cases, women who should have been afforded protection by authorities have instead been treated with extreme violence by them’.

We must learn from Joyce Clarke’s life and death. Aboriginal women have consistently voiced concern about state indifference and violence that contributes directly and indirectly to the violence that is blighting the lives of too many women and children. We have argued for a stand-alone National Action Plan to combat the systemic and structural discrimination that contributes to and underlines violence. And we demand recognition of our fundamental right to self-determination as critical to all dialogue and responses on addressing violence to Aboriginal women.

Further reading:

https://www.deathscapes.org/case-studies/indigenous-femicide-and-the-killing-state-in-progress/
An open letter in response to the lack of public concern or response to the killings of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women

Author’s Bio:

Dr Hannah McGlade is a Noongar woman from Western Australia and her career has focused on justice for Aboriginal people, race discrimination law and practice, Aboriginal women and children, family violence and sexual assault.

Currently Dr McGlade is a Senior Indigenous Research Fellow at Curtin University and an Advisor to the Noongar Council for Family Safety and Wellbeing. Dr McGlade is also a member of the UN Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues, Western Australia Mental Health Tribunal and the Medical Board of Australia.