The murders of Aboriginal women are too often ignored. Is now the moment for real change?

In what can feel like a never-ending loop, Australians are marching (again) for justice for women whose lives have been snatched away by violent men.

But, for decades, Australia has covered its ears to the screams and cries of Indigenous women who have been let down by politicians, police and protest movements.

The unimaginable terror that too many First Nations women have been subjected to must be at the heart of our national response to domestic violence if anything is going to change.

Under-funded shelters and crisis support programs run by Aboriginal women have been described as “homicide prevention,” and they’re often left shattered when the young mothers they care for end up murdered.

The rage, despair and grief that Australian women are feeling now will be measured by the seriousness with which ministers and premiers respond.

It’s true that violence against women is a complex problem. Yet Indigenous women know that politicians hold the keys to billion-dollar budgets, emergency responses, legislative reform and the power to drive a new narrative.

Imagine if that power was channeled to put the concerns of First Nations women’s needs at the center of every emergency cabinet meeting.

What if we used this moment to listen to some of the truly shocking and sickening stories of women who desperately tried to get help before they were killed?

Aboriginal women reached out for help before their violent murders

For years, as Indigenous affairs reporters, we’ve investigated prolific murders of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.

During an in-depth investigation for Four Corners in 2022, we found that at least 315 Indigenous women had been murdered or killed in suspicious circumstances between 2000 and 2022. Some of these women’s bodies have never been found.

Their stories leapt off from the page. Young women — mothers and daughters — each with their own hopes and dreams for their lives to come.

Roberta, who wanted to be a model. Serina, who her family describes as outgoing and friendly. Ms Haywood, a loving young mother.

But as we read on, hundreds of pages of coronial files began to reveal the horrific ways these women’s lives were taken — all they had tried to get help before being brutally murdered by men they knew.

Roberta was told by police to “stop calling” in the days before she was beaten to death by a former partner.

Ms Hayward was trying to hide from her serially violent former partner in a bathroom when he poured petrol outside the door and set the house on fire. She later died of her injuries in hospital.

Then there’s Serina, who was found with 56 injuries on her body, inflicted by her former partner in remote South Australia, while he was supposed to be on trial for sexual assault in Alice Springs.

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Since our investigation, tragically, more Indigenous women have been killed by current and former partners. This week, we learned that as the rate of intimate partner homicides has increased, about 20 per cent of victims are Indigenous people.

The Aboriginal-controlled organization Djirra says that at least seven of the 64 women killed in 2023 were First Nations women.

First Nations women ‘fear the system as much as their abuser’

When it comes to reaching out to police or other services for help, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women face unique barriers.

When we looked into the murders of Indigenous women, we found multiple cases where women were subjected to what researchers call the “under-policing” of victims and survivors of family violence.

In the case of Ms Haywood, the NT Coroner has heard that she made several pleas for help in the days leading up to her death, including calling her local police station to tell officers her former partner was threatening her.

Queensland’s Indigenous Family Violence Legal Service recently told a Senate inquiry into missing and murdered women that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are frightened by police and are often met with systemic racism and “an aggressive and heavy-handed response”.

Antoinette Braybrook, a long-term advocate for Aboriginal women’s safety and the chief executive of Djirra, has said Indigenous women tell legal services they often “fear the system as much as their abuser.”

This is why so many experts on violence against Aboriginal women are cautious about rushing through law reform as a “knee-jerk” response to community anger over the spate of homicides so far this year.

Professor Kyllie Cripps, a Palawa woman and director of Indigenous studies at Monash University, says governments should be careful about going ahead with judicial changes — because often the concerns of Aboriginal people go unheard when there is law reform.

“If we storm ahead with law reforms, there will be unintended consequences, and typically those unintended consequences hurt our most vulnerable citizens,” she says.

During a landmark coronial inquest into the murders of two Aboriginal women, the former NT Coroner Greg Cavanagh found that sending men in and out of prison was failing to rehabilitate violent offenders.

For too long, Aboriginal women have been saying that it should not be up to them alone to solve this emergency — more than 90 per cent of perpetrators in family and domestic violence cases are men.

It should not be a woman’s responsibility to ensure her children are safe from violence, or that she can go to work and not be stalked or harassed, or that she is safe when coming home.

That’s why many Indigenous communities are urging more focus on what can be done to shift the attitudes and behavior of men who use violence.

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‘I was a violent man… I thought it was normal’

The ABC’s Indigenous Affairs Team was granted exclusive access to a men’s behavioral change program run by Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs.

There, we were able to experience the raw and unfiltered conversations between men who are convicted perpetrators of domestic and family violence.

They speak about their patterns of violence, what might trigger a violent episode, and how they’ve stalked, harassed, and financially abused their partners.

“You don’t really think about it when you use violence, but you think about it later when you get locked up, and then it all comes back to you,” said Nigel, one of the group’s participants.

The Northern Territory has the highest rates of domestic and family violence in the country.

There, you are seven times more likely to be killed by your partner than anywhere else in the country. First Nations women are 10 times more likely to be killed by a partner than non-Indigenous women.

Six out of 10 men behind bars in the NT are there on charges relating to DV. Despite these high rates, there are only two men’s behavior change programs in the Territory.

The majority of the men who go through Tangentyere’s program are mandated by courts to be there.

Very few go voluntarily. Nigel is one. Previously he was mandated to attend.

Nigel has been a serious repeat offender. He’s been in and out of prison since the age of 17 mostly on charges relating to domestic violence.

He’s now 51, and has been out of prison for 14 months now. It’s his longest stint on the outside since he was a teenager.

Nigel says the program is helping him come to the realization of what drove his violent past and take responsibility.

“Every time when I was drinking and using that violence and blaming, like, ‘You made me do this. That’s why I punched you’ – all that stuff. It was just blaming, blaming her for all the wrongs that I’ve done , to make me feel better,” he says.

“All them years in jail and I didn’t know I had a problem. I was a violent man. I didn’t know, I thought it was just normal.

“I’d just always say, ‘She put me in jail again. She put me in jail,'” Nigel says. “I did not point her finger back at myself. But now, ‘I put myself in jail, because I used violence against her’. And I know I was in the wrong all that time.”

But still a serious lack of services, for men and women, plagues the country. There is an urgent need in regional and remote Aboriginal communities especially.

Evidence presented at the national inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women revealed that out of 49 communities in the NT, only 19 had safe houses, two had men’s behavior change programs and none had family dispute resolution services.

Understandably, there is much more attention on and investment in supporting women and children fleeing violent relationships.

But why hasn’t there been more investment in educating and helping the men who use that violence before we reach breaking point?