How much do we deserve to know about the final moments of a woman’s life?

Do we, as Senator Derryn Hinch has argued this week, need to be armed with every dark detail so that we know “just what people are capable of”?

Or do we owe the dead privacy around the horrors that befell them? Offer them dignity to shroud the last things they felt. What they heard. What they saw. The last things.

Another young woman is dead and we all want to talk about it. It’s a service to our fury at the senseless waste, and a part of healing.

LISTEN: How much do we deserve to know about the final moments of a woman’s life? The Mamamia Out Loud team discuss….



So when Senator Hinch tweeted out details of Aya Maasarwe’s murder last week – details until then only known to police – he said he was only doing so as a public service to the women of Melbourne. A monster walked among them, and they needed to know what strain of monster this was.

It was not enough, obviously, that Aya’s sister had already told us that someone attacked Aya as she was talking and FaceTiming, one of the most common ‘tricks’ women employ – along with concealed keys – in a bid to keep us safe. It wasn’t enough that the police, in public statements, had said that Aya’s murderer would have been “covered in blood”.

Women can read those words and we know what we're dealing with. An attacker so brazen - so deranged - he's unperturbed by a witness on his victim's phone. A frenzied, vicious assault. It's the stuff of our nightmares.