The Vanishing Triangle

by Claire McGowan

I wanted to find out why men who hurt women are so often protected and shielded by institutions.

I’m always surprised that, when I talk about this project, people’s first question is, ‘Were they sex workers?’ (though usually they don’t use this term). Think about what it means, that question – that we expect a certain type of woman to go missing, to be murdered. Not women like us.

In some ways this must be the cruellest thing of all – the terrible persistence of hope.

Why shouldn’t women be allowed to walk anywhere, talk to anyone? Why should this mean they get murdered?

Indifference can be fatal. Until we treat every case, every unsolved murder and every suspicious disappearance as equally important, we can’t hope to build up a true picture of what killers are doing. That’s how they get away with it.

Why do we judge the women who end up dead as if it’s their own fault?

Maybe there will be progress next year. Always maybe.

The judge said he hoped the woman could just ‘put it behind her’.

Perhaps that’s why missing persons cases often capture the public imagination so much – there’s a dark sorcery to it, like the magician in a vanishing case, or sawing a woman in half. Where did they go? How can so many people just disappear, in a small country where everyone knows each other?

A missing persons case is so endlessly perplexing. Where did they go? If someone didn’t take them, was it an accident? Why is there no body if so? Or did they just up and decide to leave their lives, in some cases children, husbands, families? Why would someone do that?