The brother of a Co Fermanagh woman murdered five years ago by her ex-partner has said that people who claim not all men are capable of abuse are diluting a message about domestic violence that needs to be heard.
ergal Leonard, brother of 51-year-old businesswoman Concepta, who was murdered in her Maguiresbridge home in 2017, said more action was needed to tackle violence against women, and that men were key in promoting that message.
His sister’s murderer Peadar Phair went on to take his own life. Concepta’s son Conor, who has Down’s syndrome and was aged 30 at the time of the attack, was stabbed in the stomach while trying to protect his mother.
Speaking in the aftermath of the shocking murder of Ashling Murphy, Fergal said the time for talking was over.
“On the back of the whole public backlash right across the country, and indeed internationally, about Ashling Murphy, society needs to follow this up with examples of any time there’s been any violent incidents, no matter how small,” he added.
Connie was a talented musician who at one stage had been all-Ireland piano-key accordion champion.
Fergal described her as “usually a very happy person, centred on making a home”. “[She was] a good mother, a great sister and a loyal friend, there’s no doubt about it,” he added.
He hopes to change how violence against women is viewed and dealt with.
“My grief isn’t worse than anyone else’s. No matter how any family member is lost, it’s a loss,” Fergal said.
“It hasn’t got any easier. People say you have to live with the new norm — and you do have to get on with life — but it never leaves your head.”
The Fermanagh man noted that in social media discussions about violence against women, he had seen the words ‘it’s not all men’ crop up time and again — something he believes an attempt to “dilute” an important message.
He also mentioned this in relation to xenophobic comments directed towards Jozef Puska, the eastern European man charged with Ashling’s murder who last week appeared before a special sitting of the Republic’s Tullamore District Court.
“The person that killed my sister was a local,” Fergal said.
“Stop trying to deflect people from raising awareness around the issue of violence and coercive control.
“If they’re trying to do some good, don’t allow your personal anger to dilute what the topic is.
“I think they should be putting their energy into promoting the message, not trying to dilute it or divert it.
“Most times, the people that carry out violence are known to the poor girl that suffers it.
“Ashling’s was a stranger, but if we’re talking about domestic violence, it’s always somebody that’s known.”
Connie, as she was affectionately known, had been due in court the day after she was murdered to seek a new non-molestation order against her killer. A previous restraining order granted to her on March 21 was about to expire.
According to Department of Justice, such orders are intended to protect a person and their children from “being harassed, pestered, intimidated or from any threat of such behaviour”.
Fergal believes the document is “not worth the paper it’s written on” and that it’s more difficult to police rural areas.
“It [the order] just says to the person, ‘You’re not allowed such and such a place’. I think there needs to be stronger protection and more proactive policing of these non-molestation orders,” he said.
He is happy to see the introduction of domestic homicide reviews in Northern Ireland, as well as the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (DVDS), the equivalent of England’s ‘Clare’s law’, which allows people to find out if their partner has a history of domestic violence.
It means members of the public have a right to ask the PSNI to investigate if they are potentially at risk.
There are currently five ongoing homicide reviews in Northern Ireland. They were launched in November 2020 and are intended to seek out and share opportunities for learning from circumstances where an adult has been killed as a result of domestic violence.
But Fergal still believes sentencing and preventative measures for violent offences against women “need to be stronger”.
“I think women and men need to be better educated on what coercive control means,” he said.
“In its simplest form, it can mean [someone saying], ‘You’re not allowed to wear that short skirt’, or, ‘Don’t put on make-up and don’t talk to your family’.
“I know that coercive control can lead, and has led, to murder. Men need to know what they’re at is wrong, and it’s something girls should be learning at school from an early stage — to spot the early signs.
“It needs to be the same everywhere. We need to be looking out for what is recognised as good practice everywhere else in terms of tackling domestic violence.”
The Male Violence and Intimidation Against Women and Girls Strategy is expected to be launched early this year, and the PSNI is working with several partners, including Women’s Aid and Victim Support, to implement the plan.
New Stormont domestic abuse legislation will also make coercive control an offence for the first time. Such laws are already in place in Great Britain and the Republic.
Through these new actions, former fire service commander Fergal hopes societal attitudes will change. While he takes faith from the way Magdalene laundries and mother-an-baby homes are now viewed, he also recognises that for much of the early 20th century, they were seen as the norm.
He hopes that, one day, legislation tackling violence against women will have changed so much that historians will look back on how women are being treated now with the same contempt in which mother-and-baby homes are held today.
“We need to get to a stage — and we should have been here decades ago — where domestic violence is just so unacceptable,” he said.
“The adage that domestic violence thrives on silence is so true. If women were confident that they were able to speak freely about what was happening with them, it would be better.
“Women shouldn’t be embarrassed about suffering from coercive control or domestic violence. There should be no stigma attached. The woman or girl is not the bad person, it’s the perpetrator.”
Official figures reveal that in 2020/21, the PSNI responded to a domestic abuse incident every 17 minutes of every day, with the force recording more than 31,000 domestic abuse incidents and 19,036 domestic abuse crimes.
In the year Connie was killed, Northern Ireland had the joint highest rate of femicide in Europe proportional to the population.
Last year, statistics showed that more women were murdered in Northern Ireland as a result of domestic violence than in any other part of western Europe per head.
