The shocking murder at a camping site in Limavady on Monday brings to ten the number of women murdered in Northern Ireland in the last 16 months.
The 37-year-old, who was stabbed to death, is the second woman to have been murdered in Limavady within the last four months.
Ludmila Poletelova (61) was found dead at her home in Limavady in April. A 45-year-old woman has been charged with murder.
A 53-year-old man has been arrested by detectives investigating the latest murder. While the circumstances of this case are not known, it does add to the grim toll of women to die violently here since March last year.
In all but one of those 10 cases, the main suspect has been a man known to the victim.
The shocking rise in the murder of women in Northern Ireland during the Covid crisis reflects data that showed a rise in calls to police relating to domestic abuse over the same period.
Ludmila Poletelova (61) was found dead at her home in Limavady
Figures show that in the 12 months leading up to March this year, the number of domestic abuse crimes rose to 19,036, the highest figure recorded since 2004/05.
A pandemic of a different kind, the impact on the children of abusive relationships forms part of a new raft of legal measures aimed at tackling the scourge. The new laws will have enhanced sentencing where a child sees, hears or is present during an incident of abuse or where a child is used to abuse a victim.
But for the women murdered since the pandemic hit last year, the change to the law has came too late.
The local community in Newtownabbey were left shocked in March of this year when Karen McClean (50) and Stacey Knell (30) were stabbed to death in the Rathcoole estate.
Ms McClean’s son, Ken Flannigan, murdered the two women before taking his own life. He had been red flagged to social services by Miss Knell’s ex partner and the father of her child just hours before murdering the two women.
Known to police, he had been subject to preventative orders in the past over concerns that he may be a threat to close female relatives.
Police are continuing to investigate the murder of Natasha Melendez (32). The mother-of-two died in hospital just over a week after being violently assaulted in her home in the Pond Park area of Lisburn last March.
Grandmother Elizabeth Dobbin (82) was found dead at her home in Larne, Co Antrim on March 30, 2020.
Her grandson, Alan Gingles (32), who shared the home with her, has been charged with her murder.
Emma Jane McParland was stabbed to death following an attack at her flat in the Haywood Avenue area of south Belfast on April 22 last year.
Ms McParland's 22-year-old son, Jordan Kennedy, faces a single count of murdering his 39-year-old mother.
The body of Patrycja Wyrebek was found in the bath of her house in Drumalane Park in Newry on August 2. While her family were from Poland, she had spent most of her life in Northern Ireland, and was a pupil of Holy Cross Girls School and Mercy College in north Belfast.
Her partner, Dawid Lukasz Mietus (23), who is originally from Poland, has been charged with her murder. He is claiming a "rough sex" defence, alleging she died during a consensual sex act.
The murder of 21-year-old Katie Simpson was originally treated as a suspected suicide after the emergency services were called to her home on August 3 last year. Ms Simpson, from Middletown, Co Armagh, passed away in Altnagelvin hospital on August 9, 2020. However, Jonathan Creswell (33), who was in a relationship with the victim's older sister, was arrested and charged in connection with Ms Simpson's death.
Susan Baird (60) died in what police described as a "vicious attack" on August 16 last year.
The 60-year-old mother-of-four, who was an office administrator for Orangefield Presbyterian Church on Castlereagh Road, was killed at her marital home at Windermere Road in the Four Winds area.
Her husband, Gary Alexander Baird (61), was originally detained under a Mental Health Order. In January, he was charged with murder and granted bail but ordered to reside at the secure mental health unit.
The list of women murdered in violent circumstances continues to grow but the much-needed protections for those in violent and abusive relationships are simply not there.
Women’s Aid have campaigned for an urgent gender-based Stormont strategy to deal with the increase in violence against women and girls.
Northern Ireland is currently the only jurisdiction within the UK which does not have a strategy specifically dedicated to addressing gender-based violence.
In April 2019, the Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland (CJINI) carried out a review of the handling of domestic abuse cases by the criminal justice system.
Although seven recommendations had been made in the 2019 report, a follow-up review in April of this year found that only one of these had been implemented, with four having been partially achieved .
New legislation contained in the Domestic Abuse bill is welcomed, but laws without training, implementation and education are simply meaningless words and the cost of that absence of strategy is often women trapped in abusive relationships.
