Connect: Sandra, Noeleen, Martina, Angela, Patricia, Maura, Maura, Janet, Geraldine, Bernie, Kitty, Elizabeth, Sheila, Mary, Mandy, Chantal, Catherine, Marie, Bente, Catherine, Maeve, Jean, Jennifer, Susan, Roma, Debbie, Geraldine, Linda, Joan, Rosie, Niamh, Carmel, Cliona, Jean, Ann, Mary.
Beautiful names, carefully chosen by excited parents for their lovely new daughters. Daughters they held close as they indulged in hopes and dreams. Hopes of happiness, dreams of health and wealth. Love, new, unbridled love.
They all grew up. Blossomed from girls into women. Laughed, cried, passed exams, got jobs. Real women with real lives. Real lives cut short by murder.
Of the 110 Irish women violently murdered since the end of 1995, 73 were killed in their own homes. In all cases where there has been a conviction for the crime, the murder has been committed by a man. Of those 73 cases, 36 women - you now know their names - were murdered by a partner or ex-partner.
Writing in this newspaper last Monday, John Waters returned again to the subject of domestic violence - and I think we can all agree that the murder of a woman by her current or ex-partner in her own home is the final, terrible outcome of domestic violence. In his to-fro debate with Sean Love, the executive director of Amnesty International (Ireland), he accused the respected global human rights organisation of "chiming in with a chorus of malevolent vested interests demanding draconian treatment of men in the domestic arena and opposing every attempt to have domestic violence approached in an even-handed and truthful manner".
"Malevolent vested interests"? Step forward the Garda Síochána . . . you health service workers . . . civil servants . . . politicians . . . academics . . . teachers . . . volunteers . . . lawyers . . .
"Even-handed and truthful"? Look at the facts. The unarguable, indisputable, quantifiable ones. You've just read them.
It's an interesting and privileged position to be in, writing a column in a national daily newspaper, whether you get to do it for two weeks like me, or years like John Waters.
It's also a strange job where the reaction you provoke is out of kilter with the value of your own contribution on any given matter. That notwithstanding, a column gives you a loud voice, a very loud voice with which to influence public opinion.
Big responsibility.
The premise of Waters's most recent column - ie that this month's report by the National Crime Council which found that 213,000 women and 80,000 men have been severely abused by their partners, provides the ammunition with which to shoot down current thinking on domestic violence in this State - comes as no surprise. John Waters is no stranger to the debate. His basic assertion seems to be that feminism is responsible for suppressing a response to violence against men. This just isn't the case.
I'm no feminist . . . Only joking, I am. There, the cards are on the table. What still needs to be said, though - as some people have clearly forgotten - is that when, in the early 1970s, women's groups set out to get the State to recognise that domestic violence actually existed, it took all of their energies.
There was no agenda to suppress or deny men's issues, nor to create a myth that men are not, themselves, victims of violence. It is a pity, then, that the deficit of services for male victims of domestic violence is being used to attack feminism. The reality is that there are no services for men because men have not set them up. It was not the State that set up services for women who have suffered violence.
The ground-breaking work done by organisations such as Women's Aid to get violence against women recognised can only help men to have their abuse accepted too. By lifting the taboo of violence in the home these courageous women opened a door and let in a chink of light that allowed many others to speak out about their own suffering.
Finally, society started to mature. In the same way, we started to listen to the horrific testimonies of children who had been sexually abused. We faced the shameful truth of clerical sexual abuse. We became aware that older people can and are being abused by those who are supposed to be caring for them.
A debt of gratitude then, a vote of thanks even, to those women who booked babysitters and headed out on cold, January evenings to campaign for help and recognition for their own experiences, their mothers', their sisters', their cousins' . . . Tireless work that has ultimately got us to a position where, as John Waters says himself, violence suffered by men in the home is "worth talking about". Another taboo shattered. We should be thanking the women who found the courage to speak out, who had the commitment to do something.
Domestic violence - murder, torture, rape, abuse, bullying in your own home - is not an issue over which to aspire to gender equality. Women remain the most severe victims, and men the most serious perpetrators of domestic violence.
Those are the facts. If they had been allowed their hopes and dreams you could have asked Sandra, Noeleen, Martina, Angela, Patricia, Maura . . .
Eddie Holt is on holiday
