WHY DO MEN kill their partners?
A new documentary Fir, Marú agus Grá explores this issue by taking a look at six cases of women who were killed by men that they knew.
The first episode of the crime documentary, which aired on Thursday night on TG4, looks at the trial of Laois man Robert Corbet for the killing of Aoife Phelan in 2012.
Thirteen days after she was first reported missing by her family, Aoife’s body was discovered in an oil barrel buried 10 feet underground on Corbet’s land.
“This case involved people who were young and from a rural area,” the series producer Medb Johnstone told TheJournal.ie. “It’s a case that’s still raw for a lot of people.”
Johnstone explains how the investigation used phone records and CCTV footage to make the connection between Corbet and Aoife: “She wasn’t in a relationship with him. She was seeing him.”
Throughout the series, key moments in the case are reenacted in order to retell the stories of the victims, who Johnstone says are left without a voice during trials that try to find those responsible for their deaths.
‘Impossible to imagine’
Johnstone says that the process for making Fir, Marú agus Grá - which is its second series – wasn’t an easy one, and involved sifting through court reports and news articles.
“It’s difficult for me – but it’s impossible to image what happened to the victim themselves, or what it’s like for their family.”
It’s obviously a long process, a court trial. One of the most difficult things is that the victim is not there to defend themselves.
They’re voiceless in the court, so it’s up to the prosecution to prove who’s responsible for death of the person – and whether it’s manslaughter or murder.
Sometimes they choose a case because it’s so sad: the women were trying to leave their partners, in the process of leaving, or had just left.
“A lot of these are very delicate, others are sensational stories, but we try not to put a sensational slant on it and tell it based on the evidence presented in court.”
She said that a lot of people don’t talk about domestic violence in Ireland, and that she hoped that the series might get people talking about the issue.
The stats
According to figures from Women’s Aid, of the 209 women who died violently in the Republic of Ireland since 1996, 87% were murdered by their partners, or men they knew (154 women).
A 2013 study showed that more than 38% of all murders of women across the world are committed by an intimate partner. In comparison, the same research estimates about 6% of all murders of men are committed by an intimate partner.
In 2015, there were 970 threats to kill women, children and family members disclosed to Women’s Aid. There were 579 additional disclosures of assaults with weapons, threats with weapons and being strangled and smothered.
” The statistics speak for themselves,” Johnstone says, saying that the research into the subject shows a worrying pattern.
Reaction to the series
“I think the series highlights the work that was done to bring people to justice, by the victims’ families and friends, by the gardaí, and forensic teams,” Johnstone says.
“We spoke to as many people as we could: gardaí who worked on the case, forensic experts, journalists and court reporters who covered the cases, usually for the entire length of the trial.
“We’d piece together the story from various articles, and from a point of view of the evidence presented in court.”
She said the reaction from the previous series was quite good.
Families of the victims did get in touch, and in the last series a victim’s family member took part in the documentary.
In a way, the voice of the family member is the last voice the victim has left.
The next episode of Fir, Marú agus Grá will air on TG4 next Thursday at 9.30. You can watch the first episode of the series on the TG4 player here.
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