by Libby Pierzak-Pee
Each day brings an endless stream of news reports that yet another woman’s life has been brutally snatched away from her by another man.
On 9 July, three women, Carol Hunt, 61, Hannah Hunt, 28, and Louise Hunt, 25, were murdered in a targeted attack at their home in Bushey, Hertfordshire. Officers were called to the property, after neighbours heard screams. Sadly, all three women were pronounced dead at the scene.
A major manhunt was launched for suspect, Kyle Clifford, 26, who was discovered by armed police in a cemetery in Enfield, North London the following day. Clifford was arrested on 11 July on suspicion of three counts of murder.
The coverage of this devastating case has been nothing short of disgusting. Reporting has been laced with misogyny, victim-blaming and the classic white male “he was such a nice guy” treatment.
Countless news articles from the likes of Sky News, The Sun and The Daily Mail, failed to refer to Carol, Hannah and Louise by their first names, simply referring to them as BBC racing commentator John Hunt’s wife and daughters in many headlines. Only on ITV news was it mentioned at the end of their report that this was a violence against women and girls incident. No news outlet cared to mention that this is a national epidemic, and that one woman is killed every five days by her partner or ex-partner in England and Wales.
I lost count of the amount of articles that referred to Clifford as a “nice normal guy”. I lost count of the amount of articles that continued to place emphasis on the fact that Clifford was the ex-partner of Louise Hunt. I lost count of the amount of people who referred to this case as “an unfortunate crossbow accident”. I lost count of the amount of people whose first thought was to urgently review crossbow laws.
Why are we still using these rhetorics in 2024?
They highlight why violence against women and girls has become so normalised in society, and why it continues to be considered such a low priority by both the police and the government.
How we report on men who murder and are violent towards women is part of the problem. Our media affords dignity and humanity towards men accused of murdering women, and yet in the same breath choose to vilify, blame, and shame victims at every opportunity.
Many journalists took it upon themselves to interview people who know Kyle Clifford, writing about how nice and normal he seemed. The next set of headlines revolved around a “messy break-up” and how he was a “jilted boyfriend”. In printing photos of him and getting comments from family, friends and neighbours, the reader or viewer is encouraged to feel sorry for him. Acts of male violence are therefore always excused, allowing society to normalise and enable this pattern to continue.
“But he was such a nice guy though”. Violent men ARE “nice guys”. They are the everyday men that you know. Your fathers, brothers, uncles, grandads, best friends, boyfriends, husbands, work colleagues. Statistics tell us that it is regular, “nice”, men who perpetuate this kind of violence. The 2021 Femicide Census found that over 50% of women who were killed in 2021 were killed by a current or former intimate partner.
We need to dispense of the tedious commentary of “But he always said hello to me, he always took the bins out, he washed my nan’s car twice”. We don’t need to hear about what a “nice guy” someone accused of triple murder is. This feeds into the narrative that men “just snap”, that “something must have pushed him over the edge”, that abusers are simply “misunderstood” and that there are “two sides to every story”. Anyone can act nice. Just because he was nice to you, doesn’t mean he’s not capable of acting violently behind closed doors.
Pretending like it’s only monsters and psychopaths who commit these horrific acts of violence ignores how common and deep rooted male violence against women is in society. Far too many women have their experiences and abusive relationships minimised and end up trapped in violent situations they can’t get out of because they are not taken seriously when they decide to speak out. The implication that these three women must have done something to elicit this type of violent behaviour is truly sickening.
Following the incident, Home secretary Yvette Cooper vowed to urgently review crossbow laws. According to the Home Office, between 2011-2021 crossbows were used to kill fewer than 10 people. Meanwhile, over that same period of time, men killed over 1500 women in England and Wales alone. The epidemic of male violence against women should be given the same amount of political urgency that we are placing on examining weapons and their laws.
Whenever acts of violence such as this occur, attention is always focused on the weapon chosen, not the women who have been murdered as a result of their use.
To focus on banning weapons and restricting access to weapons shifts attention away from the real problem, making out that it is the convenience of easily accessing a weapon that is the problem, not the hating and wanting to kill women.
Banning weapons, restricting weapons or tightening laws around weapons, won’t stop the issue of misogynistic male violence and femicide. If someone doesn’t have access to a particular weapon, they will just use something else. The presence of a weapon will not change the fact that women will still continue to be murdered regardless.
Male violence against women is a national epidemic and needs to be treated as such. For all of the stories of male violence against women that reach the front page, there are thousands more that don’t.
Women and girls shouldn’t have to grow up learning that being murdered is something that is likely to happen to us. That deliberate acts of violence against us are simply inevitable. That we cannot stop them from happening. We shouldn’t have to live with the constant fear that, “it may not have been me today, but it might be tomorrow”.
It seems that we will blame anything, literally anything,except the actual men who carry out these deliberate acts of violence against women and girls. It feels safer for society to blame women, girls, and weapons because then we can keep pretending there isn’t a problem. Men are not violent they protest! We can continue to think of women being murdered by men as isolated incidents, one-offs, tragic “accidents” committed by evil, dangerous, psychopaths in ignorant bliss.
Until we begin to recognise male violence as a national epidemic and treat it with the severity it deserves, sadly nothing will change.