Mangion Walker’s death is another symptom of a deep-rooted social malaise

The Men Against Violence coalition has condemned the brutal killing of Eleanor Mangion Walker, the 33-year-old mother from Swieqi, who is believed to have been murdered by her estranged husband, Andrew Mangion.

A nationwide hunt was still underway for the 40-year-old man on Tuesday before Mangion turned himself in to the police.

The death of Eleanor, mother of a nine-year-old girl, has shocked many, not least the family and friends who knew both of them. 

“Let’s talk about men,” the Men Against Violence NGO said on Facebook. “Let us talk about what drives men to control, abuse, beat and kill the woman they profess to love. Let us talk about what makes men think that they own the woman, her mind, body and soul […]”

The NGO said that, as men, they did not want to let the situation remain unchanged: “Let us talk about what we can do, as men, so that the next generation of boys growing up in our society, will do better by women in their lives.”

Indeed, a look back at the history of murders in Malta involving women will find that many have been killed by their husbands, partners, an ex or a scorned lover. 

A woman, as the 1999 death of 76-year-old Maria Buhagiar had shown, can also be fatally shot by her brother over a burnt toast and an untended jersey.

Whatever the relation to the perpetrator, the absolute majority of femicides in Malta have seen women murdered by those they loved, or once loved. In his book ‘Femicide: The murder of women in Malta’, crime historian Edward Attard found that there were 131 cases of femicide between 1800 and the end of 2015. 

More recently, data published in parliament showed that 35 women have been murdered in Malta and Gozo between 1999 and 2015.

Similarly to Mangion Walker’s death, Hungarian mother-of-two Yvette Gajda was killed by her partner in 2012 in her apartment in St Paul’s Bay. Gajda had been stabbed more than 40 times with a pair of scissors. During the same year, a former police officer shot his estranged wife three times on the Saqajja steps. The woman, Maria Cutajar, had survived the attack.

During the same month, a Moroccan mother-of-two, 40, was found dead in a pool of blood in her bedroom and the police said there appeared to be no foul play.

In September 2012 as well, a 44-year-old MMDNA nurse, Jacqueline Depasquale, was stabbed 12 times by her aggressor but survived the attack. Noel Calleja would later threaten to jump off the roof from the Farsina Housing Estate in Qormi when he was finally traced by the police.

In 2011, 28-year-old Kalinina Boube¬kova, was found murdered in a Xemxija apartment. Her mother was the prime suspect.

A few months later, 38-year-old Irena Abadzhieva was found dead in her Qawra apartment and her mutilated body was in an advanced state of decomposition. Her killer is suspected to have fled the country.

In 2010, mother-of-one Christine Sammut was fatally shot by her former boyfriend, Kenneth Gafà. He was last year jailed to 35 years after admitting to the murder. Sammut had suffered extensive gunshot injuries to her neck, chest and hands after Gafà shot her twice at close range with a shotgun as she was sitting in her car outside a Zebbiegh bar, waiting to pick up a friend.

In 2009, 62-year-old Maria Theresa Vella was stabbed 10 times outside her residence in Cospicua by the former partner of her daughter. Clive Farrugia was jailed 40 years.

Roger Agius was jailed for 31 years in 2012 after admitting to murdering his estranged wife at a Tarxien bus stop in 2009 with a butcher’s knife. Catherine Agius, 40, had just stepped off a bus after work, and was heading for her mother’s home where she was living with the couple’s three children.

Ukrainian Sergii Nykytiuk was jailed for 25 years for the murder of his wife Liudmila on November 8, 2009. Jurors were told that death was a slow process for the 35-year-old woman whose body was found in an empty elevator shaft of an apartment in St Paul’s Bay.