This post deals with domestic violence and might be triggering for some readers.
On Monday, two Australian women were killed after being attacked inside their homes in separate incidents of alleged family and domestic violence. Both women allegedly died at the hands of men they knew.
Just after midday on November 30, emergency services arrived at a unit in Fairfield, Sydney. A neighbour had called triple-0 with a concern for welfare report.
When police and paramedics entered the home on Nelson Street, they found a 42-year-old woman with stab wounds on the kitchen floor. She died at the scene. Her name was Samr Dawoodi. She was a Syrian refugee. She was the mother of three kids.
Her husband, 60-year-old Salam Dawoodi, was arrested at the scene. Police have called it an alleged incident of domestic violence.
Within hours, Salam Dawoodi was charged with the murder of his wife. NSW Police refused him bail, and he will today appear in Fairfield Local Court.
Samr Dawoodi was the 47th woman to be killed by violence in Australia in 2020.
Watch: The hidden numbers of women and violence. Post continues below video.
At 1pm on Monday, across the border in Victoria, emergency services were called to a home in Melbourne's south-east.
Upon arriving to the family home on the quiet suburban street at Narre Warren South, they found four injured people. A crime scene was established.
A 70-year-old woman and a three-year-old girl were transported to hospital with serious injuries.
A 42-year-old woman was airlifted to hospital with critical injuries to her upper body. It's understood she had been stabbed. She could not be saved. She died from her injuries.
A 15-year-old male was arrested at the scene. He was treated in hospital under police guard, also with serious injuries.
All parties were known to each other, police say.
The name of the 42-year-old woman is not yet known, but she is the 48th woman to die from violence in Australia in 2020.
At 11am on Tuesday morning, a woman in her 30s was found stabbed to death in the middle of a suburban road, near a children's playground, in Darwin.
An hour later, police arrested a 34-year-old man at a nearby bus stop. He was placed in a white forensic suit and driven away in a police vehicle.
He is yet to be charged, but the death is being described by detectives as a "serious tragedy".
The unnamed woman is the 49th woman to die by violence in Australia in 2020.
Their deaths come during a particularly complex time. Hayley Foster, the chief executive of Women’s Safety NSW, tells Mamamia the surge in family and domestic violence cases this year has been "frightening".
"This is the worst year we have seen for women and children experiencing domestic abuse in living memory," Foster says. "In our most recent statewide survey of frontline domestic violence workers, 80 per cent said they had noticed an increase in the percentage of higher risk cases since the lifting of COVID restrictions.
"It's really quite frightening the number of cases coming through where perpetrators are resorting to more and more violent means to exert and maintain control over their partners and children. Anecdotally, we're seeing more strangulation, more use of weapons, more sexual assaults and more threats on women, children and even animal's lives."
Foster explains that the issue is exacerbated by a lack of funding, with more than half of the services they surveyed in NSW saying they needed more resources to ensure victims of family and domestic violence can access critical support.
"The COVID pandemic, and the shadow pandemic of violence against women has really exposed the existing gaps in the service system and unfortunately all COVID relief funds are only being directed towards existing services and not addressing these critical gaps."
Those gaps, evidently, have deadly consequences.
Three women. Two days. Killed because of violence against women.
If this post brings up any issues for you, or if you just feel like you need to speak to someone, please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service. It doesn’t matter where you live, they will take your call and, if need be, refer you to a service closer to home.
Feature image: Facebook.
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