I made a similar point earlier.
The radio waves, newspapers and social media in Ireland have been in absolute paroxsyms of self-abasement about male violence against women since this murder. But there wasn’t a peep out of any of them on that topic when two teenage thugs burst a young wan’s eyeball and broke most of the bones in her face during a sustained beating with hurls and knives, just a few weeks back. She was mixed race and from Ballyfermot. So not to worry, eh?
I don’t think that’s completely fair.
There are a couple of reasons, rightly or wrongly why this has brought such an outcry.
One is that she died. The attack on the girl in Ballyfermot was abhorrent and shouldn’t have happened. But as she’ll survive, it was never going to have the same reaction.
Secondly, where it happened. For middle Ireland, for want of a better phrase, crime is more accepted in bigger cities and Dublin in particular. For most of the country, if something happens in Dublin, we can feel some disconnect and say “that couldn’t happen near us”. When it happens in Offaly, everyone in the country thinks that it could happen near them. Again, I’m not saying it’s right, but in Offaly we’re still talking about a girl that went missing in 1996 and a priest that was murdered in 1985 and Malcolm McArthur. So a crime like this seems different from a crime in Dublin.
I agree that the media barely made any noise about the girl in Ballyfermot and that’s not right. It’s hard to imagine that race didn’t play a part in that. But there was quite a bit on social media. People were outraged and the €200 bail was something I saw complained about a lot.
I also think, to be fair to people, we all make connections. To say people think “not to worry eh” because it’s a mixed race girl from Ballyfermot is harsh. Ashling was a girl a huge amount of Irish people could connect with. She was a primary school teacher, a trad musician and a camogie player. We all know someone who that would remind us of.
I don’t know what the girl in Ballyfermot did for a living or I don’t know her hobbies and interests. But I don’t think that’s because she was mixed race, I think it’s because, luckily, she survived, so we were never going to learn as much about her.