Bride and seek: How did this headline get printed? - Women's Agenda

Bride and seek: How did this headline get printed?

Yesterday morning, news broke that a young man had been arrested and charged for the murder of 26 year old high schoolteacher Stephanie Scott.

The popular English and Drama teacher was reported missing on Easter Sunday, after she failed to return home from a visit to her workplace to hand over lesson plans to the teacher who would replace her during her honeymoon. She was due to be married this Saturday.

After days of searching for the young woman to no avail, police released information that they had arrested and charged a suspect for her murder. They will allege a cleaner at Scott’s school confronted and killed her between 11am and 7pm on Sunday, April 5.

During the days since Scott was declared missing, multiple media reports have emerged surrounding possible explanations for her disappearance. The face of the young, happy woman was splashed across newspapers across the country, the public collectively captured by the mystery of what could have gone wrong.

The majority of the media reports focused on her status as a bride-to-be, a week away from marrying the love of her life and honeymooning in Tahiti. Her glowing face and ‘bride to be’ sash seemed to compound the mystery of where she could be and what could explain her disappearance.

One headline among many jumped out. Yesterday’s daily edition of Brisbane’s News Corp-owned newspaper the Courier Mail dedicated its front cover the Scott’s story. It featured the image of her that every Australian has now seen – at her hens party, wearing a veil and sash. Plastered across the image were the words ‘Bride and seek’.

The theft of an innocent young life reduced to a crude play on words. A joke.

At best, it implies that its acceptable to make a joke out of a tragedy. At worst, it implies there is some likeness between a woman’s violent murder and a playful childhood game.

There is nothing light-hearted about this story. There is nothing funny about murdering a woman.

Broadly this headline feeds into an arguably complacent culture surrounding violence against women. Drawing parallels between a violent epidemic and a playful game encourages the notion that violence against women is neither particularly serious nor particularly pressing.

In reality, it is both. And it is costing Australians dearly.

Since January 1, this epidemic has taken 30 lives. An attempt to downplay and make light of that is abhorrent.

Today, Scott’s loved ones, her family and friends should have been preparing to watch her get married. Instead they preparing to mourn her loss and say goodbye. Every single person who is experiencing the gravity of this loss and that grief deserves more than a careless pun on a newspaper. Victims of violence deserve to be treated with compassion, respect, sensitivity and humanity. This headline fails on all counts.

Research used in this article comes from Destroy the Joint’s Counting Dead Women project.

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