11/06/2026
The Centre for Women’s Safety and Wellbeing has signed on to this open letter calling for a public coronial inquest into the death of Virginia Giuffre.
Virginia spent years fighting for accountability and the safety for others. We cannot allow the circumstances of her final months to be dismissed or minimised. As we note in the letter, emerging evidence suggests that deaths by su***de in the context of domestic and family violence may be three times greater than the number of women killed by an intimate partner , yet unlike homicide, these deaths rarely receive equivalent scrutiny.
A victim-survivors distress and suicidal thoughts and behaviours should not be treated as individual disorders. They must be understood as responses to ongoing violence, coercive control and entrapment and systemic failures. When the impacts of abuse are routinely misclassified as a mental health issue, the danger posed by violent partners or family members disappears from view.
In some cases, women’s defensive actions, such as fighting back, are misinterpreted as aggressive behaviour, leading to their identification as the predominant aggressor rather than the person most in need of protection. Furthermore, women who do not conform to the stereotypical image of a victim-survivor, for example, being agitated towards and uncooperative with police, can confuse the police, courts and other legal professionals. Addressing domestic violence as isolated incidents rather than patterns of coercive and controlling behaviour historically leads to the dangerous misidentification of victims as perpetrators.
A public inquest is necessary to examine systemic failures, recognise the role of coercive control, and prevent future deaths.
Read the open letter here:
CEVAW's Deputy Director is leading a group of experts who have signed an open letter calling for an inquest into the death of Virginia Giuffre.
