Women's Lobby accuses police of closing eyes to behaviour that led to Paulina Dembska's murder

The Malta Women’s Lobby has expressed disappointment that the police and the wider society continue to deny that the rape and murder of Pauline Dembska were not linked to her gender.

“The fact that the accused attacked two men before he went on to allegedly kill and rape the victim orally, anally and vaginally, does not detract from the fact that he did so because she was a woman,” the lobby said on Monday.

The statement comes a day after The Sunday Times of Malta quoted unnamed sources saying that the man charged with Dembska's murder, Abner Aquilina, had attacked two men just before murdering her on 2 January.

In a crime conference just before Aquilina was charged in court last week, the police said Dembska's murder was not premeditated, was random and not linked to her gender despite the rape charge. No justification was given as to why the crime was not considered to be gender-related.

READ MORE: Outrage after police dismiss gender link to Paulina Dembska's murder despite brutal rape

The lobby said that femicide is often associated with intimate partner violence but it extends beyond the household.

“Femicide is about men’s power and control over women. It is but the final step in a continuum of violence against women and girls, in a context where this sort of violence has been normalised, and impunity too often prevails,” the group said.

The lobby said that by insisting that Dembska’s death was not a femicide case, the police are closing their eyes to the systemic gendered patterns that lead to femicide. The group added that it is men who “jeer and grope” women; it is men who generally kill women.

“It is not the other way round, and the numbers are clear, although we are not implying that all men do so,” the lobby said.

The group said that before a woman is killed, there is a high level of tolerance to all this behaviour and women are rarely acknowledged or taken seriously by the police and society at large. 

Therefore, claiming that in this case, two men were attacked before the victim was violently killed does not change the gendered context in which this killing materialised, the lobby said. “Trying to negate this in the case of Paulina Dembska is tantamount to annihilating women’s reality of their everyday experience.”

The lobby said it was time to change the Maltese Gender-Based Violence and Domestic Violence Act and bring the definition in line with the Istanbul Convention.

Furthermore, the group said the law should change to ensure that femicide is recognised as an aggravating factor to homicide. 

“Then there would be no reason on the part of the police to downplay this gendered crime,” the lobby said.

Dembska was murdered at around 5:15am on 2 January at the Independence Garden in Sliema. The accused pleaded not guilty and was remanded in custody. The court ordered the prison to assess whether it was best to keep Aquilina at the Corradino Correctional Facility or the Forensic Ward at Mount Carmel Hospital.

READ ALSO: Abner Aquilina charged with brutal rape and murder of Paulina Dembska