Since 2009, one woman has been killed every three days in Britain. And a recent report by the Femicide Census has now found that one in ten of all those killed by men in that period were mothers killed by their sons.
It is already well known that in 90 percent of cases the killer is known to the victim, and that in 61 percent of cases where a man murders a woman they are a current or former partner.
As I am writing this, the trial of Kyle Clifford is taking place. Last year, he raped and killed his ex-girlfriend, Lucy Hunt, in her home after she broke up with him. He also killed her mother and sister in the same attack.
Anyone who keeps up with the news will know that appalling acts of violence against women like Clifford’s are far from isolated cases.
But until now, the rates of matricide within these deaths has gone unrecognised.
The report found that in up to 70 percent of these cases, mental illness was a factor in the murder, alongside substance abuse. The women killed were most often older, very isolated, and acting as carers for their sons and grandsons.
In one case, despite medical notes specifying one man should not be left alone with female staff, there was no alarm raised about him living alone with his mother.
Professor Amanda Holt, the chair of criminology at the University of Roehampton, said of the findings: “I think a lot of services are just thinking, thank God there’s someone for this person.”
A lot of media coverage of this report has focused on the sexist values many of these sons must have held – and certainly many of them must have. But these women were left vulnerable to these because they were filling in for the gaps left behind by crumbling services.
With the NHS cuts he has lined up, how is Starmer’s government going to square that with their promise to halve violence against women in the next decade?
