Victim-blaming

[lederhosen]

While waiting at the Blood Bank yesterday, I made the mistake of picking up the Herald-Sun (having already read the Age). And of course I was reminded of why, as crappy as the Age has become these days, the Horrid-Scum is still a worse option.



The Jill Meagher case has been huge all this week: she was at a pub in the wee hours of Saturday morning, left some time around 1:30-2am to walk home - less than 1km away - and hasn't been seen since. On Sunday her handbag showed up in an alleyway near her route home; while the Herald-Sun blamed police ineptness for not finding it earlier, it seems it may have been placed there AFTER they searched the alley. There are posters up everywhere, and it's especially distressing for friends who live in that area; everybody's looking over their backs.

The story that pushed my buttons is here, but I'll quote the relevant bits (out of order):

No matter how callous it seems, investigators have to "eliminate" the missing person's closest family and friends as suspects before widening the search. There is no easy way to do this except asking often grief-stricken loved ones the hardest questions anyone can face...

So when investigators politely asked Tom Meagher to accompany them for some routine questioning about 1pm yesterday, they were just doing their job. No one should read any more into it.

This is absolutely true, good advice, and about the only responsible bit of journalism in this article. Let's remember the moral there: we shouldn't speculate.

Police believe the stretch of Hope St from Sydney Rd west across the railway line is Jill's usual route home to their apartment. We all have our favourite routes, from habit rather than logic. But for a stranger looking around in daylight, there seems no obvious reason why a young woman would choose to walk this way home late at night.

"I don't know her and I have no information about why she might have picked that route, but given that she's a woman, I think we can discount the possibility that she had a logical reason for it."

Even less reason to cut down Ballarat St, then turn up a side street called Ovens St to reach Hope St, which is where police seemed to be concentrating their search yesterday after Ms Meagher's bag was found nearby.

"Her handbag was found there, so obviously her womanly meanderings must have taken there. The only other way it could have gotten there is if a man were to pick up a handbag and carry it somewhere, and I think we can discount THAT crazy theory!"

Not only is it further - by at least 150 metres - but it appears no better lit than the alternative, Victoria St, which runs parallel. Brunswick is a busy inner suburb bustling with young couples who fill local coffee shops and groovy bars. But this small patch is where crumbling industrial and commercial sites meet seedy dwellings.

There are better spots for a young woman to be walking alone after a night out drinking with workmates, ending in Sydney Rd after starting in the city.

"And does any young woman really NEED to go out drinking late at night? She might get hurt. Surely she'd be safer at home."

True, it's only about 700 metres from Bar Etiquette, where she had the last drink of the night with friends, to the Meaghers' new apartment building in Lux Way on the other side of the railway line. But if she'd walked down Victoria St instead, it would have been half a block less. Only a couple of minutes' difference, but a lot can happen in a minute, let alone two. The longer way home has nothing to recommend it - especially at night.

"This whole tragic business could have been averted if only, at some point in her 29 years, some helpful fellow had explained to Ms. Meagher that walking alone at night can be dangerous for women. While I don't actually know the area, I'm pretty sure that looking at a map and doing a quick tour gives me enough information to recommend a safer route."

A few shabby, unkept cottages are outnumbered and overshadowed by small factories, warehouses, car parks and rubbish-strewn vacant sites waiting on another building boom. Graffiti is everywhere, most of it more vandalism than street art. A pair of empty shops turn blank eyes on Hope St, their filthy windows blocked with faded blinds.

"I don't actually know whether this is a dangerous area, and asking Neighbourhood Watch or checking the crime stats would be hard work, so I'm going to make some assumptions on the strength of what I could see from my car. Also, journalism is just my day job, I always wanted to be a novelist."

On the door of one is a poster headed "Slaver" and another headed "World Painted Blood".

"Okay, I didn't actually get close enough to read the letters clearly, because I was worried devils might jump out of the picture and eat me. But hell, it's not like there is any way anybody will catch me out on that."

Below those is nightmarish artwork of a Satanic figure with a goat's head under the Latin inscription Sorte Diaboli.

"You know what the biggest threat to our society is? SATANIC HEAVY METAL." [This may be unfair to Mr. Rule; I don't think he's actually figured out that these posters are related to heavy metal, and I'm not going to be the one who tells him.]

It's not a reassuring sight. Neither is the weird graffiti on the neighbouring plate glass window in what appears to be strange coded words that have a whiff of the occult.

"I can SMELL DEMONS. Does anybody know somebody under the age of thirty who might be able to shed more light on this?"

Above the shops is what looks like bargain accommodation.

SINISTER CHORDS HERE

It's a fair bet detectives will be asking questions there and all along the street.

"Did you know that when a woman goes missing, police often go around asking questions about it? No? This is why you pay to read columns by experts like me!"

...yeah.

Comments

[chaos_crafter]

I found one more tiny positive in the article. They distinguished between tagging and artistic graffiti.

[lederhosen]

True, I'll give them that.