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The diary of a beloved young woman exposes a terrifying truth about 550 lost lives
By Perry Duffin
Two-thirds of women killed by their male partners died while trying to escape ongoing abuse, the NSW coroner has revealed, in a stark report that echoes the journal entries of a beloved young woman lost to the scourge of domestic violence.
The research exposes uncomfortable facts about male abuse: one-third of all homicides are domestic violence, women from certain demographics are killed more than others, and when women kill, they almost always kill their abuser.
James Hachem abused Samah Baker throughout their relationship. It escalated to her murder in 2019 when she tried to leave.
On Thursday morning, the NSW coroner delivered the most detailed examination ever undertaken of two decades of homicides in the state to understand the prevalence of domestic violence deaths. The Domestic Violence Death Review Team report also examined the nature of the people and relationships behind the tragedies.
Researchers identified 550 homicides with a link to domestic violence between 2000 and 2022. The number represents almost one-third of all 1832 homicides recorded during those two decades.
The report found that 308 of those 550 were intimate partner homicides (56 per cent), the rest were parents killing children (17 per cent), people killing other relatives (17 per cent), or ex-partners killing new partners (10 per cent).
But the data is overwhelmingly gendered – husbands, boyfriends, and male exes were the killers in 80 per cent of cases.
What 550 lost lives say about domestic violence
Last year, a woman collecting cans off the Hume Highway near Goulburn stumbled across the remains of 30-year-old Parramatta woman Samah Baker.
Four years earlier, Baker’s on-and-off partner, James Hachem, had escalated his abuse into murder.
“It was really bad; he tried to kill me … he tried to choke me,” Baker said in a triple-zero call while the pair holidayed in Surfers Paradise in 2017.
“This is not the first time, but today was really bad … like it really escalated.”
Baker’s death was mourned by her loving family and friends – but the coronial research suggests it was typical of intimate partner homicides.
Hachem was, like 98.4 per cent of all men who killed their female partners, a chronic abuser. He was found guilty of Baker’s murder and sentenced to a minimum of 18 years in prison in May 2023.
The report found most male killers deployed at least three types of abuse against women: physical, social, economic, stalking and sexual violence were all detected.
When women kill
The “fatal end point” of relationships almost always comes after male abuse, researchers found, even in the uncommon cases in which women kill men.
The report identified 56 female killers of men, and 46 of those had ended the life of their abusers.
Only one woman in 22 years of data had been both the long-term abuser and, ultimately, the killer of a male partner.
Researchers could not conclude whether the man or woman was the abuser in the remaining nine cases of women killing men.
Declining DV deaths ‘stall’ amid high-profile cases
In the report, State Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan says a long-running decline in fatal domestic violence had “stalled” just as high-profile cases focused the nation’s attention on the issue.
“The sharp rise in the number of women killed across Australia has seen a groundswell of community-led advocacy demanding urgent action to prevent men’s violence against women,” O’Sullivan said.
The report found half of men convicted of killing women had not been reported to police beforehand.
Hachem was one of that cohort with a clean criminal record.
Separation ‘particularly dangerous for women’
“Leaving Sydney to escape that place and James,” Samah Baker had written in her journal in 2017.
“I’m so angry, so angry at him, I hate him and I hate myself even more for asking for his help.”
Baker, like many of the women in the research, had been stalked before her death.
Hachem arrived at Baker’s house two days before Christmas 2018, and when she did not pick up his calls, she was determined to separate.
The coronial researchers said the separation period was “particularly dangerous for women with abusive partners”.
“In almost two-thirds of the 244 (partner) homicides involving a man killing his female partner, the relationship had ended or was breaking down at the time of the homicide,” researchers said.
Male victims, by comparison, were mostly killed by their current female partners, and there were no plans to separate.
Society’s poorest over-represented
The report’s authors found that domestic violence occurs across all society, but people living in the most disadvantaged parts of NSW died more often in domestic violence.
More than 40 per cent of both men and women killed in domestic violence were from the bottom fifth of the socioeconomic ladder.
Baker was employed at Lidcombe TAFE at the time of her death, but Hachem had been unemployed for a year at the time he killed her.
The couple routinely bickered about small amounts of money for phone bills, and Baker often borrowed money from Hachem for rent and food.
Aboriginal Australians were also over-represented in the data, and children from poor families and adults with drug and alcohol problems, too, died more often.
Magistrate O’Sullivan said the report provided crucial insight into domestic violence but acknowledged the data could never convey the profound loss for the families behind the numbers.
“The courage, resilience and diversity of the individuals whose lives are considered cannot be reflected in numbers, nor can the grief and trauma for those that loved them,” she wrote.
“We can, and must, do better.”
With Nigel Gladstone.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) and the Kids Helpline (1800 55 1800) for people aged 5 to 25.
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