Why is Northern Ireland so dangerous for women?  

Last week, Vanessa Whyte and her two teenage children were murdered in their own home in County Fermanagh. 

The only suspect, Ian Rutledge, passed away several days later in hospital and PSNI are treating the case as a murder-suicide. 

Last month, a pregnant mother of two, Sarah Montgomery, was killed in her home in the County Down town of Donaghadee. 

A 28 year old man has since been charged with her murder. 

No one could ever deny it - Northern Ireland is a dangerous place to be a woman. 

On Newstalk Daily, White Ribbon NI CEO Tahnee McCorry said tackling the issue is “so urgent” given there are lives at stake. 

“The number of women and girls in Northern Ireland from 2020, who were killed at the hands of men, amounts to 40% on the island of Ireland as a whole,” she explained.

“So, we know that there is a massive issue and something which has been allowed to continue for too long.

“It’s a massive number relative to the population of Northern Ireland.” 

Violence against women and girls in Northern Ireland is not just a statistic – it is a grim daily reality for many.

We heard from @WomensAidNI about the extent of the problem and the UK Government's role in tackling it. pic.twitter.com/9qGvkgU3L4

— Northern Ireland Affairs Committee (@CommonsNIAC) June 26, 2025

In fact, things are so bad for Northern Irish women that official statistics suggest the province is, apart from Romania, the most dangerous place in Europe to be a woman. 

It is, Ms McCorry believes, one of the many tragic legacies of the Troubles. 

“There’s a perfect storm of paramilitarism where when you look out into your community and you see control as the goal, then when you look inside your home, if you see a degree of control inside your home, it’s going to be normalised,” she said. 

“It’s not an excuse, it’s not a reason; we can see unrest, we can see really ingrained attitudes and beliefs around a woman’s place and a man’s place in society. 

“And they’re without challenge a lot of the time because young people are being really starved of the information they need around this. 

“That’s something we’re trying to combat.” 

A British armoured car moves through Strabane in April 1969. Picture by: PA/PA Archive/PA Images.

Ms McCorry continued that the intergenerational trauma from the Troubles among young men is “really evident”. 

“It’s the normalisation of violence in general and the trauma that they have experienced in general - usually from domestic abuse in their childhood - has just changed the whole trajectory of their lives,” she said. 

“I work especially with young men, maybe in their 20s, who are in prison and they will speak about domestic abuse in their childhood and you can see how their mother hasn’t been allowed to be the mother that she could have been. 

“Because she was constantly risk assessing her whole life and she wasn’t able to get the PE kits ready, she wasn’t able to do this because she was constantly trying to keep herself alive for herself and her children.” 

Last year, the Northern Ireland Executive launched a £3 million (€3.5 million) Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (EVAWG) strategy.

Main image: Sarah Montgomery. Picture by: PSNI.