Action urged as it’s revealed men who kill a partner likely to serve less time ‘Women should b e safe in their homes and their relationships’

MEN convicted of the manslaughter of a partner are likely to serve almost three years less in prison than if they had not been intimately involved with a female victim, research has found.

Advocacy group Women’s Aid has called for killing within an intimate relationship to be considered an aggravating factor, as it launched its Femicide Watch 2017 report.

It showed that on average, men who killed an intimate or former intimate female partner received a 7.8-year jail term, while the average for killing a woman where there was no romantic connection was 10.6 years.

The group has also called for the State to set up domestic homicide reviews (DHRs) into cases to learn from them in order to prevent them in the future.

Statistics published in the report showed 216 women had been killed since the Women’s Aid femicide project was established in 1996.

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The report also showed 88pc of women killed in Ireland were killed by a man known to them.

Margaret Martin, director of Women’s Aid, said it was time to act to protect women.

“Women should be safe in their homes and in their relationships. We must recognise the strong connection between the killing of women and domestic violence,” she said.

Speaking at the launch yesterday, Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty said she believed an intimate relationship should be an aggravating factor in crime against women.

“There are times when we see cases with sentences being handed down not least of which for violent crimes of murder against women... certainly leaves you with bewilderment,” she said.

“It shouldn’t be a mitigating factor that somebody lived in a loving environment, it should be an aggravating factor,” she said.

She also said the Government had agreed to complete a new report, to begin in January, on sexual abuse and violence in Ireland (Savi).

The last Savi report was published in 2002.

Among those to bravely speak out at the launch of the report was Maria Dempsey, whose daughter Alicia Brough (20) was murdered in Newcastle West, Co Limerick, in November 2010.

Ms Dempsey now works with the organisation Sentencing and Victim Equality (Save), which campaigns for minimum sentencing before parole for perpetrators and campaigns for counselling for the family of victims.

“I’m a great believer that homicide reviews are going to do a service to society as a whole,” she said.