Mayang Prasetyo Ms Prasetyo was killed by her partner during what police believe was a domestic incident that ended in tragedy. It is unknown if Ms Prasetyo, a 27-year-old Indonesian woman who was born a boy and started her gender transition in 2009, ever sought help to leave the relationship with the man who killed her. The pair married in Denmark in August 2013 and seemingly had a heated relationship. But had she wanted to, Ms Papazian said, she might have found it difficult. "Overwhelmingly, I have found there really is an issue seeking help because many services are gendered," she said.

"There is just the simple need to treat people as people. A lot of the time people will focus on their transgender identity, rather than the violence. "One of my participants went to her church - a transgender woman experiencing violence in her relationship - and was told by the church she needed to be cured of her transgenderism." Ms Prasetyo was killed by her partner in their apartment with a knife during what police believe was a domestic incident that ended in tragedy. Volke attempted to dispose of his partner's body by chopping it into pieces and cooking it in parts on their stove. He fled the apartment when police arrived to investigate suspicious activity and a putrid smell, then hid in a nearby wheelie bin and killed himself with the murder weapon.

Ms Papazian said Ms Prasetyo's recent arrival in Brisbane might have heightened her vulnerability to her husband. "Being from overseas, she may not have been familiar with the area and the resources available, so she was essentially very vulnerable in that relationship," she said. However, she said there remained a public misconception that because transgender women were born male, they weren't as vulnerable to abusive partners as women in hetero-normative relationships. The same perception applies to men in abusive same-sex relationships. "I think maybe because Mayang was socialised as a male - she was assigned a male gender at birth - people may assume she was not vulnerable and she may have been able to protect herself," Ms Papazian said.

"I think people don't understand they are living their lives as their chosen gender, they are living as their genuine self and that is a real big misconception. "One of the big problems is it really fuels the fires of ignorance." QUT criminologist Sharon Hayes, who specialises in domestic violence, agreed many transgender women in abusive relationships "fall through the cracks". "Feminists denigrate them because they say they are making a mockery of being female, a lot of services won't take them and women's refuges won't take them quite often," she said. "I wrote a paper from an online discussion forum where one transgender woman said no-one believed her. The police didn't believe her, the local women's refuge crisis centre wouldn't take her and she found she couldn't get any help."

Ms Prasetyo's mother, who lives in southern Sumatra, and some of Mayang's friends hinted the relationship between the couple was a mutually abusive one. That, however, does not in any way justify Volke's actions, Associate Professor Hayes said. "It could be retaliation or it could be mutual abuse," she said. "Even so, it shouldn't take away from the fact abusing someone doesn't entitle you to be killed for it. "Men who abuse will often diminish their behaviour and complain their partners are abusing them. It's a kind of transference to try and excuse their behaviour."

Friends of Mr Volke have reported he suffered from an undiagnosed mental health condition, which Australian Institute of Criminology researcher Alexandra Gannoni said was a common factor in many intimate partner homicides, both in same sex and hetero-normative relationships. Drug and alcohol misuse were also regularly occurring factors, she said. "While there are so many similarities, the wider literature does suggest the main difference between those sort of issues are sexual stigma and discrimination may be associated with an increased risk of issues such as drug use and mental disorders among the same sex attracted," she said. Ms Gannoni said the Australian Institute of Criminology study did not take into account the nuances of same-sex relationships, such as transgenderism, a field which required more research. Support and help is available through Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800 737 732.