On Tuesday, the European Parliament and officials announced that the bloc had reached an agreement on the law that aims to protect women in the 27-nation European Union from gender-based violence. 

The legislation will also criminalise cyberstalking, cyberharassment and cyber incitement to hatred or violence across the European Union.

The agreement comes almost two years after The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, first proposed the law to mark International Women’s Day 2022. 

EU lawmaker Frances Fitzgerald told reporters in Strasbourg after the announcement that the agreement sends “a clear message across the union that we take violence against women seriously.”

Posting images from her meetings in the northeastern city of France, the former Irish senator wrote on Instagram: “It takes a great team, hours of hard work and determination to get any deal over the line.”

“Thank you to all those who played their part in securing agreement on a new landmark Directive to combat Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence. This is a good day for the women and men of Europe.”

Swedish socialist MEP and fellow EU lawmaker, Evin Incir said the agreement is “a directive that the women and girls all across the European Union have asked for for over 30 years.”

Fitzgerald and Incir have been the key players in leading the process to introduce EU-wide laws to tackle violence against women. Last October, Fitzgerald expressed her dismay at the lack of urgency from governments to tackle gendered violence across Europe.

“The seriousness of the crime is still internationally not being matched by the intensity of the approaches needed, and this is a symptom of that,” she said at the time. 

“A city the size of Marseilles, Amsterdam or Zagreb disappears every 10 years as 858,000 women are murdered globally. So I can’t help but think it is part of misogyny, and it’s part of a patriarchal society that we live in, that we’ve had such a job getting (crimes against women) to the top of the agenda.”

Earlier this morning, the Vice-President for Values and Transparency at the European Commission, Vera Jourova, wrote on X, “For the first time ever, we criminalise widespread forms of cyberviolence, such as non-consensual sharing of intimate images.” 

“Way too many #women still suffer domestic violence or violence online in the EU.” 

She also posted a video, saying “Today is a very important day because just a few minutes ago we finalised the trilogue on the violence against women directive.”

“Why we needed a legally binding rules against violence against women. Because simply, as I sometimes say, Europe is a good address for women, but not for all.”

“Many women are suffering from violence and we need to stop this horrible practise and the perpetrators have to be punished and the society also have to take a stronger stance against the violence.”

“So that’s why this directive, which is historically the first one which covers and which seeks to combat violence against women, should cause the big difference we have for the first time addressing addressed cyber violence, we have addressed also the non consensual distribution of in images, all these horrible things which see lately, together with the technological development. So now we have the directive, we will have to finalise the process and after some time when the directive will be implemented into the national laws, we will, I hope, see the difference.”

“The European women and girls need and deserve much stronger and better protection.”

Under the agreement made this week, the commission will report every five years on any potential changes to the rule that need to be made. 

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A post shared by Frances Fitzgerald MEP (@frances_fitzgerald_mep)

Defining ‘rape’ disagreement 

EU member states and lawmakers have not included a common definition of rape in the law, as countries remain divided on how to define the crime. 

In a statement, the parliament said member states will seek to improve awareness that non-consensual sex is considered a criminal offence. 

Countries including Belgium, Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden sought to include a definition of rape in the law, but faced knock back from countries including France, Germany and Hungary — who argued that the EU was not equip to do so and that rape lacks the cross-border dimension for it to be assessed as a crime with common penalties in the bloc.

This argument was strongly refuted by the parliament and the commission who challenged that rape could fall within the definition of “sexual exploitation of women” for which a joint set of penalties already exists. 

“We could not get consent-based definition of rape into this directive. So that is a very big disappointment,” Fitzgerald said on Tuesday.

Last month, various international rights organisations criticised the countries who refused to define rape in the law. 

“It is utterly unacceptable that some member states are stubbornly unresponsive to the need to combat rape across the EU,” an open letter from eleven organisations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Center for Reproductive Rights expressed. 

“Consent-based definitions have proven to guarantee greater protection and access to justice for women and other victims of rape, including increased reporting and prosecution rates.” 

“We urge governments to act in accordance with their international and regional human rights obligations, particularly under the Istanbul Convention, and agree on the most robust Directive possible to prevent, prosecute and redress violence against women.”

Last October, Fitzgerald said the hesitation towards introducing an EU-wide consent-based definition of rape was “not acceptable”.

“There isn’t enough political motivation at the moment from some member states to include rape,” Fitzgerald said at the time. 

“You can get somebody moved from Ireland to Germany for murder, but when it comes to rape, they’re saying ‘No, let the member states deal with that’. They don’t say ‘it’s because we don’t like the definition’.”

“They don’t say ‘it’s because what are you talking about with consent?’ which is the belief of certain member states, they really find it hard to get their heads around the idea of consent.”

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Today, we highlight the women who contributed to Folbigg’s release. It is thanks to their tireless advocacy, resilience, and unwavering determination to see an innocent woman freed, that eventually resulted in Monday morning’s announcement.

Folbigg’s supporters work across different sectors of society — including immunology, law, advocacy and media. 

Professor Carola Vinuesa, lead scientist 

In August 2018, while she was studying Lupus and other auto-immune diseases at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra, Professor Carola Vinuesa received a call from a former student, telling her about the Kathleen Folbigg case.

Prof Vinuesa had won two top awards from the National Health and Medical Research Council the previous year, and was intrigued about Folbigg’s case. 

When she started to investigate, she teamed up with then-fellow ANU immunologist Todor Arsov to chart Folbigg’s DNA in the hopes of identifying any mutated genes that might explain a genetic susceptibility for sudden infant deaths.

Over the next several years, Prof. Vinuesa led a large team of genetic scientists from across the world. Eventually, they found that Folbigg carried a mutant gene — known as CALM2-G114R, which is what likely caused the deaths of two of her daughters — Sarah Folbigg and Laura Folbigg.

Since September 2021, Prof. Vinuesa has been the principal group leader at London’s Francis Crick Institute, though she maintains a fractional appointment at ANU. 

Speaking to ABC Breakfast this morning, she described Folbigg’s release as “very special”.

“As a scientist, you don’t always get to do things that really make a difference in someone’s life,” Prof. Vinuesa said.

“And it wasn’t just for Kathleen’s life, it was really, you know, a celebration of science.”

Tracy Chapman, high school friend

Tracy Chapman met Kathleen Folbigg in the 1980s, when they were both students at Kotara High, a public high school in the suburbs of Newcastle.

The friends lost touch throughout the years. Chapman reached out to Folbigg after hearing she had been arrested for the murder of her four children in the early 2000s. 

Since 2003, Chapman has been fighting to free her friend from prison. Without legal knowledge or qualifications, she began approaching lawyers to ask questions. She needed to know exactly how the justice system operated. 

“I remember annoying the hell out of the solicitors, asking them questions, I was trying to be helpful,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald. 

After years of advocacy and research, Chapman and her lawyers lodged a petition for a judicial review in May 2015, asking for the case to be reviewed.

Around the same time, Chapman established the Animal Assisted Growth & Learning Australia — an outdoors centre based near Coffs Harbour that offers therapeutic-focused, animal-assisted learning programs for trauma survivors, grief-healing, and people suffering from chronic pain.

Chapman had worked as an education and environmental manager since the early 1990’s, and was an active wildlife rescue volunteer with WIRES.

Nevertheless, she made time to speak with Folbigg over the phone — almost daily. 

She made it her full-time mission to fight for her friend’s release. “This has well and truly consumed me for over a decade,” she told the Herald. 

Now, as Folbigg learns to settle into her new life as an innocent and free citizen, Chapman will host her friend in a small flat near the Animal Assisted Growth & Learning Australia farm, supporting her in administrative tasks, such as opening a bank account, and re-obtaining a driver’s licence. 

“At the moment, we’re just focusing on keeping her healthy, happy and mentally well,” she told reporters this morning. 

Chapman has been anticipating Folbigg’s release from Grafton’s Clarence Correctional Facility for weeks. 

Last month, she spoke to the media about creating a unit on her property for Folbigg when she is finally released from prison.

“What we’ve done for her is give her a sanctuary that she’s always wanted,” Chapman said. “Peaceful, quiet, she’s surrounded by animals. She’s got colour in her life because she’s had anything but colour.”

“[The] place is a little bit quirky, a little bit fun, a little bit bright. She’s got a very comfortable bed because she’s got a very bad back and she’s been sleeping on a foam vinyl mattress for 20-odd years.”

Megan Donegan

Fellow Kotara High alumnus Megan Donegan has also been a vocal advocate for the release of her friend, Kathleen Folbigg for decades. 

Donegan was present at the funeral of Folbigg’s fourth child, Laura, in 1999. 

Since the conviction in 2003, Donegan has managed online campaigns to free Folbigg, as well as support fundraising efforts. 

During Folbigg’s imprisonment at the Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre, Donegan visited her friend a few times a year. In 2018, she told news.com that she’d phone Folbigg every week too, describing her as a “well-respected” prisoner who “still laughs and finds amusement in the mundane”.

“We spent so much time together she became like an extra person in my family,” Donegan said, reiterating that she’d never once doubted her friend’s innocence. 

“She came to my nieces’ and nephews’ christenings. And we’d go for a drive on Sundays and have a picnic. She was always with us. Even now, she is the godmother of my eldest child.”

Dr Emma Cunliffe, author of Murder, Medicine and Motherhood

In 2011, Australian law academic Emma Cunliffe published a ground-breaking book that explored the intricacies of Folbigg’s conviction from a legal standpoint. 

Murder, Medicine and Motherhood analysed medical and social understandings around sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and its shifting conceptualisation in the legal context.

It also considered a range of filicide literature while interrogating exisiting assumptions in criminal law and medicine alongside gendered presumptions of parenthood ideals.

Dr Cunliffe’s book significantly bolstered the confidence of many of Folbigg’s champions, including Tracy Chapman, who said the book encouraged her to continue to fight for her friend’s release. 

Speaking to 2BG’s Luke Grant yesterday, Dr Cunliffe addressed the errors of Folbigg’s trial, which lead to her conviction in 2003. 

“If being a criminal law professor teaches me anything, it’s that, people do the darnedest things…but what the legal system promises us is that if you’re charged, or accused of a crime, that the process will be fair and will look carefully to make sure that the allegations are truthful and there’s no reasonable doubt,” she said.

“The medical expert evidence that was led by the prosecution in Kathleen’s trial was incorrect in 2003 and it was unreliable in the terms of the best evidence available at that time.”

“In other words, medical researchers showed that the belief that multiple unexplained infant deaths in a single family were necessarily suspicious, had no good basis in the research — and that the likelihood of natural explanations for a series of unexplained infant deaths was higher than the likelihood on the side.”

Dr Cunliffe now supervises graduate students at the University of British Columbia in the fields of evidence and the criminalisation of women.

The post The women behind Kathleen Folbigg’s pardon appeared first on Women's Agenda.

Premier Dominic Perrottet announced the new legislation will be introduced into parliament this week, ensuring that the State Parole Authority cannot grant parole to a convicted killer unless they find the offender has assisted satisfactorily in identifying the victim’s location.

These latest changes to the legislation will match those of laws in Queensland, WA, SA, Victoria and the Northern Territory, where offenders can be denied parole if they refuse to disclose the location of their victims’ remains.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Perrottet said the new laws will “make it impossible for offenders who wilfully and deliberately refuse to disclose information about their victims’ remains to be granted parole.” 

“Being unable to locate a loved one’s body is extremely distressing and traumatic for the families and friends of victims and it denies a victim the dignity of being laid to rest appropriately,” he said. 

“These laws are to stop inmates convicted of murder or homicide offences from getting parole unless they co-operate with police to end the torment of families and return to them the remains of their loved ones.”

The State Parole Authority will assess a range of relevant information alongside written advice from the Commissioner of NSW Police Force to establish whether the offender has assisted the police satisfactorily to identify a victim’s whereabouts. 

According to NSW Corrections Minister, Geoff Lee, the new laws were based on legislation from other statutes and is applicable to both current and future inmates yet to be considered for parole. 

“Any offender in prison coming up for parole should really think hard about maintaining their refusal to co-operate with police if they want to retain their prospects of getting parole,” Lee said.

Dubbed “Lyn’s law”, the legislation has gained traction after former Sydney teacher Chris Dawson was convicted last month of murdering his wife Lynette, who disappeared from their northern beaches home in January 1982 and whose body has never been found. 

Beverley McNally began a petition last month, lobbying for the reform — which has gained more than 30,000 signatures. 

McNally was a student at Chris Dawson’s school, and was hired as the babysitter to the couple’s two children before his affair with 16-year-old Joanne Curtis started. 

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