Let’s not divide victims into deserving and undeserving

THE national outpouring of grief for Sarah Everard is, of course, not just for her. It is grief for every woman who has been attacked, raped, hurt or killed.

Her face is a symbol of generations of painful memory, her murder stands for centuries of male violence.

But we are doing her memory a disservice by not talking about the others. Between New Year’s Day and March 3 when Sarah was killed, 27 other

ROS WYNNE-JONES

women were killed by men, or where a man is the principal suspect, according to the Counting Dead Women Project run by Karen Ingala Smith.

Eileen Dean, 93. Sue Addis, 69. Carol Hart, 77. Jacqueline Price, late 50s. Mary Wells, 21. Tiprat Argatu, 43. Christine Frewin, 25. Souad Bellaha, 62. Ann Turner, 82. N’taya Elliott-cleverley,

20. Rose Marie Tinton, 77. Ranjit Gil, 43. Helen Joy, 54. Emma Robertson, 39. Nicole Anderson, 24. Linda Maggs, 74. Carol Smith, 75. Sophie Moss, 33. Christina Rowe, 28. Susan Hannaby, 69. Michelle Lizanec, 44. Wieslawa Mierzejewska, 59. Bennylyn Burke, 25. Judith Rhead, 68. Anna Ovsyannikova,

48. Tine Eyre, 62. Samatha Heap, 45. Another three women, Geetika Goyal, 29, Imogen Bohajczuk, 29, and Wenjing

Xu, 16, died in the following three days. These families needed a Duchess to lay flowers, and a kind letter from the Royal Family. Maybe they didn’t fit what our culture tells us a victim should look like.

Maybe they were too old or too black. Maybe they were drunk or kept going back to a violent boyfriend. By saying these names with Sarah’s, we are saying all women matter. Read more about them at kareningalasmith.com