Diagonal truths: the representation of gender violence in true crime podcasts. The case of West Cork

Abstract

Domestic and intimate partner violence are among the most spread types of gender-based abuse suffered by women worldwide. In Ireland and other English-speaking countries, this form of violence is endemic and widespread. According to a survey carried out by Women’s Aid, 1 in 4 women living in contemporary Ireland have been abused by a current or former partner (Women’s Aid, 2021). Similar numbers have been registered In the United States (Smith et al., 2017: 117), in England and Wales (Office for National Statistics, 2019), in Australia (AIHW, 2019: vii). Femicide, which is to say, the lethal victimisation of a woman for misogynous reasons (Radford, 1992: 3), is often directly connected to the practice of domestic or intimate partner violence, as demonstrated by figures collected by the Irish Femicide Watch, according to which 1 in 2 women killed in the country is murdered by her current or ex-partner (Women’s Aid, 2019: 9). Notwithstanding the worrying pervasiveness of intimate partner violence, gender-related crimes are often undervalued or deprived of their gendered connotations by the media, by the police and in a judiciary context (Dunne, 2016; O’Halloran, 2015; Women’s Aid and Mazzone, 2019). This chapter discusses the podcast West Cork (Audible, 2018) and, by comparing it with its antecedent Serial (2014), it analyses its ability to expose the issue of gender violence in the Irish context, where it is set, and beyond.