This article references domestic abuse-related deaths.
If you see a blue plaque attached to a building, it's usually there to celebrate the life and achievements of someone who previously lived there. But, as part of a new campaign, seven black and blue plaques have been temporarily affixed to houses in the UK to commemorate the lives of women who were murdered inside them.
Their names are:
Megan Newborough
Poppy Devey Waterhouse
Julie Butcher
Elinor O’Brien
Jan Mustafa
Claire Tavener (née Willmott)
Ellie Gould
As well as each woman's name, the plaques include their lifespan, the words “killed here”, the sentence handed down to the man who murdered them, and the words: “Murder is murder, change the law”.
Each placard also includes the words, “The same murder outside the home would get a decade more.”
This is part of a campaign by Killed Women to highlight the shocking sentencing disparities in the UK's domestic homicide sentencing laws. For example, the minimum jail sentence handed down to men who kill women in the street is 25 years, whereas for men who kill in the home, the minimum sentence is 15 years – that's ten years fewer.
Killed Women said: “One woman is killed every three days by a man in the UK – most of [whom] are murdered by people they know, and the murders are generally horrific in nature and involve overkill. However, the final blow for families is often in the sentencing, when the criminal justice system deems their loved ones’ lives are worth ten years less.”
The mothers of three young women who were murdered in their homes are urgently calling for change.
Killed Women is a campaign network for bereaved families whose daughters, mothers, sisters or other relatives have been killed by men, which Julie Devey and Carole Gould founded after their daughters – Poppy Devey Waterhouse (24) and Ellie Gould (17) – were murdered in their homes by their ex-boyfriends.
Poppy was killed in her home, which she shared with 25-year-old Joe Atkinson, in 2018. Atkinson stabbed her repeatedly and initially claimed he killed her in self-defence before eventually pleading guilty to her murder. He received a life sentence with a minimum of 15 years and 310 days.
Her mother, Julie, said: “Sentencing for women murdered in the home by a domestic weapon is unfair. Currently, murderers receive around 10 years less in prison for killing in the home than they do if they kill on the street, which is insulting to the victims and their families.”
She described the sentencing disparity as “the final indignity” to victims and their families. “This must stop. The minimum term must represent the crime and shouldn’t be determined by the location,” she said.
“We want the symbolism of these plaques to raise this issue in the House of Commons. While this won’t bring our loved ones home, at the very least, families of future victims will be consoled by the knowledge that justice has been served.”
We're living through a femicide – and no one wants to talk about it.
Megan Newborough was strangled by her partner, Ross McCullam, 30, in 2021 after he invited her over to his house. He left her body in a country lane in Leicestershire. McCullam received a life sentence with a minimum of 23 years.
Her mother, Elaine, told ITV News, “If Megan had been killed in the garden of his house or out on the drive or out in the street, the starting point would have begun at 25 years for what could have been a matter of a step from inside the house to outside, how is that fair, how is that reasonable?”
Last year, the government commissioned a review of domestic homicide by leading barrister Clare Wade KC, which did not recommend raising the minimum tariff for murders in the home to 25 years. After a backlash from campaigners, the Conservative government accepted that the tariff needed to be raised.
Killed Women are calling on Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood to honour the previous government's pledge: “All the groundwork has been done. Results analysed. A tougher approach to sentencing has been successful in acting as a deterrent to recent rioters," they said.
“We demand the same logic is applied to these domestic terrorists sending out a strong societal message that Violence Against Women and Girls is abhorrent and the punishment will fit the crime.”
For more information about emotional abuse and domestic abuse, you can call The Freephone National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge on 0808 2000 247.
For more from Glamour UK's Lucy Morgan, follow her on Instagram @lucyalexxandra.
Gender-based violence is not inevitable.
