'She was a whole person': Michaela Dunn's murder and its impact on Sydney's sex workers

When news started to filter through on Tuesday that a sex worker had been murdered in a violent knife attack in a Sydney apartment, women in similar apartments all over the city stopped working.

“I was shattered, to be honest,” Rose Harper told Guardian Australia. “I was working in the CBD in pretty much the exact same way, doing the same thing, and I just wasn’t in the right headspace for it.”

Harper, like other sex workers Guardian Australia spoke to this week, immediately began texting friends. In the hours following Michaela Dunn’s death, her name had not been released and her age had been incorrectly reported as 21.

“I have a 21-year-old friend who took a while to respond and it was a nervy period,” she says.

Dunn, who is actually 24, had been working out of an apartment on Clarence Street in Sydney’s CBD. At about 1.30pm the man suspected of murdering her, 20-year-old Mert Ney, arrived at her building for what police commissioner Mick Fuller called “business purposes”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mert Ney is arrested on York Street by police after people on the street wrestled him to the ground. Photograph: Kartik Lad/Twitter

CCTV showed him leaving the apartment 20 minute later and taking a “selfie” on his phone before embarking on what Fuller described as six minutes of “terrifying carnage” during which he stabbed a 41-year-old woman in the back before being chased and subdued by bystanders.

Dunn’s body was discovered an hour later after neighbours heard screaming. In a statement released after her death, New South Wales police were typically dispassionate: “The 24-year-old woman had sustained a laceration to her neck and was pronounced deceased at the scene”.

Her death prompted an outpouring of grief within the sex work community. On the day after her death, other sex workers left flowers and a small teddy bear with a message “taken too soon” at the front of her apartment.

But there was also anger at what friends and colleagues felt was an undue focus on her profession. On social media a sex worker who told media that “violence and murder is part of our job” was heavily criticised.

Her job does not make her a lurid story. Joan Westernberg, friend of Michaela Dunn

“Her job does not make her a lurid story,” her friend Joan Westernberg wrote on Twitter. “She was a person and she is now gone.”

The chief executive of the Sex Worker Outreach Program, or Swop, Cameron Cox, told Guardian Australia: “A lot is being made out of the fact [she was] a sex worker but she was a whole person, she wasn’t just a sex worker.”

Gala Vanting, the president of the Scarlet Alliance, said there was “frustration” in the sex worker community at her depiction in the media. She contrasted Dunn’s death with other high-profile cases of violence against women in Australia.

“Something that’s notable for me is that it’s the sex work community who are leaving flowers on Michaela’s doorstop,” she said. “I’m reminded of Eurydice Dixon’s murder in Melbourne, and the fact that an entire city flocked to the site of her death to leave flowers and remember her. In terms of their demographic, these two women had quite a lot in common, and yet the way they are grieved and spoken about by the media, the government, community leaders, it’s very different.”

But there’s no doubt Dunn’s death has had a profound impact on other sex workers. Despite all sex workers employing their own safety measures, many who spoke to Guardian Australia this week said it had left them feeling vulnerable.

One woman wrote on social media after Dunn’s death: “I might as well be walking around with a target on my back”.

“I think we’re all feeling like our sense of safety has been shattered a bit,” Rose Harper said. “We all know there’s a certain level of risk but at the same time no one should expect to go to work and not come home.”

Vanting said part of the frustration came from an “inference” that Dunn’s death was the result of her work, rather than the actions of the person who killed her.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Michaela Dunn was a much-loved sister, daughter and friend. Photograph: NSW police

“My biggest take home from this is that misogynistic violence in Australia is still really out of control,” she said. “The sex worker community doesn’t need to change how they work or where they work, what needs to change is the structures they work within. The laws that restrict their safety, the governments who criminalise their labour and the media that stigmatises them.

“What it tells us is that sex workers have a right to feel safe at work. What it doesn’t tell us is that sex work is inherently more dangerous than other careers, or that Michaela was in anyway to blame.”

The image that eventually emerged of Dunn was of a much-loved sister, daughter and friend.

Tom Galea, the principal of Dunn’s former high school Rosebank College, remembered her as a “highly successful and much valued student” at the school.

“She was one of four social justice captains in her graduating year and an accomplished student with a passionate commitment to excellence who received academic merit awards in her studies,” he said. “She was seen as a mature, resilient young woman and a positive role model.”

On social media, a friend described her as: “The most beautiful person, inside and out.

“You would brighten up anywhere you went just by your presence; and now the world is truly a much darker place. I love you Mik’s, so much.”