You’re reading an article from This Week Online, VICE Australia’s runsheet of shit you might’ve missed, or should have seen, this week. Subscribe here to get it straight in your inbox, every week.Last week, the death of 21-year-old Lilie James shocked Australia. Her body was found in the bathroom of an elite Sydney school, and the body of a man, Paul Thijssen, wanted by police in relation to the murder, was found off the cliffs at Vaucluse. Both sports assistants at the school, the pair were allegedly in a relationship for just five weeks.
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James is the 43rd Australian woman to be allegedly killed by a man known to her this year. Within five days, that number had grown to 45, with the discovery of a Perth woman’s body, and that of another unnamed woman in the ACT. With eight weeks of the year remaining, Australia is disturbingly close to surpassing its deplorable national average: one woman violently killed by a man known to her, every week.An AI-generated poll asking readers to speculate on how the woman died appeared next to an article about James’ death on Guardian Australia. The news publisher has accused Microsoft, who published the Guardian’s news article alongside the poll on its news aggregating site, of damaging its journalistic reputation, after readers furiously reacted to it.And the headlines on Lilie’s death are symptoms of the ugly undercurrent of misogyny present in Australian society.“Killer’s actions ‘incongruent with who we knew’” from the The Australian, “Lilie James: The difficult decision faced by Paul Thijssen's globetrotting parents after he plunged to his death”, only the Daily Mail UK would wonder “but what of the high-flying globe-trotting parents of this boy?“. And the most despicable: “Manhunt for ex: water polo coach dead after five-week romance ends”.
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What the headlines fail to communicate is the reality that Lilie isn’t dead because she was working late at school, she isn’t dead because the relationship ended. She isn’t dead for any reason other than because a man she knew decided to kill her.This Week Online is a weekly newsletter, delivering you all the news you need to know this week. Subscribe here to get it straight in your inbox, every week.Follow Arielle on Instagram and Twitter.Read more from VICE Australia….