This is a crisis hidden in plain sight: the killings and disappearances of Indigenous women across Australia.
First Nations women are being murdered at up to 12 times the national average. In some regions, their deaths make up some of the highest homicide rates in the world.
We are about to show you a snapshot of what this tragedy looks like. A warning to First Nations readers: there will be names and faces shown of women who have died.
Four Corners can reveal at least 315 First Nations women have either gone missing or been murdered or killed in suspicious circumstances since 2000.
But this is an incomplete picture. We will likely never know the true scale of how many First Nations women have been lost over the decades.
This is because there is no agency in Australia keeping count, and there is no standard way of collecting this important data in each state and territory.
Canada calls it a genocide. The United States considers it an epidemic. But here in Australia, we're only just waking up to the scale of the crisis.
She fought to keep others safe
You may not know her name, but you should.
Ms R Rubuntja, a funny and fiery mum and grandmother, had begun using her own story of survival to raise the alarm in her hometown of Alice Springs.
She was speaking out about the severe levels of violence in Central Australia, where close to 70 Aboriginal women have been killed in the past two decades.
"It's gotta stop, it's not only for me, it's for everyone, stop the violence," Ms Rubuntja told a documentary filmmaker in 2017.
Her home was a safe space for women who had been assaulted.
In 2018, she went all the way to Canberra with a small collective of grandmothers known as the Tangentyere Women's Family Safety Group.
They staged an emotional sit-down inside Parliament House, trying to get federal politicians to do something.
"She was so excited and she came [back] and said, 'Oh I went to Canberra. I walked around Parliament House'. She was trying her best to change things," her daughter Sarah Rubuntja says.
Ms Rubuntja's friend, Chay Brown, says it showed her strength of character.
"She was standing up strong against family violence … often at great personal cost, because she'd lived through and survived domestic and family violence before. But she did it anyway," Dr Brown says.
But while Ms Rubuntja was working tirelessly to keep other women safe, few people close to her knew that her new partner, a man named Malcolm Abbott, had begun abusing her.
On a hot afternoon in January 2021, Ms Rubuntja and Abbott went out to meet relatives at a club.
Over several hours, he terrorised and shouted at her, demanding she hand over money she'd won at the pokies.
When she told a security guard she felt frightened, Abbott was kicked out. But not long after, the club also ordered her to leave.
Her abusive partner was waiting outside and the pair drove around town. Ms Rubuntja told her daughter over the phone that Abbott was "half killing her".
The following contains confronting descriptions of violence.
Just before 9pm, when Abbott pulled into a service station, Ms Rubuntja managed to get away and walk across the street towards the Alice Springs Hospital.
"I believe she went to the hospital because she believed it would be safe," Dr Brown says.
Ms Rubuntja sat down on the footpath as Abbott began to circle the car park, calling out to her. He then deliberately lined her up and drove directly into her, accelerating and reversing over her multiple times, dragging her around the car park.
Ms Rubuntja died of catastrophic injuries.
Four Corners can reveal that although Northern Territory Police had been called 18 times over the course of their two-year relationship, Abbott had never been charged with offences related to her allegations that he had been abusive.
In April, he was sentenced to 25 years for the murder of Ms Rubuntja.
In court that day, her family learned Abbott had previously killed another woman.
In 1996, during a violent stabbing spree, Abbott killed a woman and injured two others, including his then-partner.
He had spent half his adult life in prison for violent crimes.
"Looking at the history, which we only knew afterwards, we all could have seen this coming. It was the slowest-moving catastrophe ever. There were so many opportunities to intervene early," Dr Brown says.
She is adamant her beloved friend's death should have been a wake-up call for Australia.
"There are other advocates in our nation that we can all think of and that we admire and we respect … had that happened to one of them, would the nation have responded with silence?"
"The rest of the nation just goes on as though nothing has happened. There are no responses. There's no speeches in parliament … there are no social media campaigns. There's just silence."
She pleaded for help
There is an alarming pattern of what's known as "under-policing" of Indigenous women who end up dead, says Noongar academic Hannah McGlade, a member of the United Nations permanent forum on Indigenous issues.
Research published by the British Journal of Criminology this month shows that almost 75 per cent of First Nations women who were killed "experienced police reluctance and inaction following domestic violence".
Roberta Curry, a 28-year-old mother of three, grew up in remote communities in the Northern Territory but dreamed of travelling the world as a model.
"Every time she walked through the door, she would just put that smile on her face," her sister Julieanne Raymond says.
Ms Curry thought she was finally free of her violent ex-partner, Lorenzo Deegan.
He'd just spent two years behind bars for bashing her neighbour during a jealous rage which left the man with a traumatic brain injury.
Early in their relationship, Deegan had been fined and convicted for beating Ms Curry until she lay unconscious.
Just 12 days after getting out of jail in March 2019, Deegan started hunting her down while he was supposed to be completing rehab and domestic violence education.
"Roberta if you don't come Katherine, I'm coming up there and I'm gona smash the f*** outta you, you motherf***er, keep hanging around Darwin you dog, you wait Roberta I'll be there," he texted her.
A non-contact order was imposed to keep Ms Curry's neighbour safe, but there was nothing for her.
"Who was helping Roberta, who was at such high risk? Nobody. It was very clear that she needed a safety plan put into place for her," Dr McGlade says.
In June 2019, Deegan lied to his parole officer and travelled to Darwin under the pretence of seeing his children. He was really there to kidnap Ms Curry.
Deegan forced her to go to Katherine with him but she managed to briefly escape, telling her sister Ms Raymond: "I want to leave this man. I don't want to be with him, he's a violent man".
While Ms Curry persistently tried to get away from Deegan in Katherine, he tracked her down.
On one occasion, he screamed at her and then beat her savagely in broad daylight outside a Centrelink office. It wasn't reported to police.
Another time, he found Ms Curry staying at a friend's house and threatened her while he was drinking — in clear breach of his parole conditions.
She called police for help.
We have obtained recordings of what happened next from the Northern Territory Coroner's Court.
Ms Curry told officers Deegan had injured her.
An internal police report later tendered to an inquest found neither officer followed protocols, including looking up his record on their database.
Constables Maverick Carver and Andrew Schwede wrote in their formal responses that they believed Ms Curry could be "unreliable in her account of the version of events" and "had made false allegations" previously.
On the night, they searched for Deegan for 10 minutes before being called to another job.
Ms Curry made a second triple-0 call, but police didn't turn up, concluding "no new incident had occurred".
On an urgent third call to triple-0, she told the operator:
"He keeps coming around and threatening … he's intoxicated and he's threatening us … Lorenzo Deegan and they're all fighting out there … seriously! Come on!"
Police returned to the house but Deegan wasn't there. Constable Carver shouted at a man who answered the door, that Ms Curry should "stop calling".
"If you're getting angry at us coming, stop calling. Easy as that.
"I'm gonna go now, OK. Stop calling. You obviously don't want us here."
Ms Curry never called police for help again.
"She was warned off. The police made it clear to her she wasn't important, and she needed to just go away," Dr McGlade says.
Five days later, Deegan found Ms Curry again and took her back to his home, where he punched her in the chest, breaking one of her ribs.
With a lacerated spleen, she died of internal bleeding, lying in agonising pain on the floor.
"We do need to look closely at her death and the deaths of each and every Aboriginal woman through a proper review process and start to reveal the true circumstances of their deaths and their killings," Dr McGlade says.
Ms Raymond can never erase the memory of the moment she found out her sister was dead.
"I just felt like I couldn't even breathe. I felt like my heart [was] going to stop," she says.
Deegan will be eligible for parole in under three years' time — his initial murder charge was downgraded to manslaughter when he agreed to plead guilty.
Four Corners has obtained an internal Northern Territory Police report submitted to the NT Coroner which reviews the officers' conduct on the night Ms Curry called triple-0. Its conclusions are scathing.
The report says both officers were informed their conduct towards her was "negligent, inefficient and careless" and "subsequent police actions may have led to sufficient evidence to prosecute Mr Deegan and may have prevented Ms Curry's death from occurring".
In their responses, Constable Schwede and Constable Carver admitted failings and regret.
Both officers said they were facing stressors in their lives at the time and were formally cautioned in writing. They are still serving officers in the Northern Territory Police Force.
Every day, Ms Raymond reflects on what might have been done differently for her sister.
"I'm still grieving right now … she should be here with us."
Northern Territory Police did not answer detailed questions from Four Corners on the cases of Ms Curry and Ms Rubuntja.
Disappearance and deaths 'not taken seriously'
For generations, scores of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families have been mourning missing mothers, sisters and daughters.
The absences of these First Nations women "are still felt all across this country … never forgotten", says Darumbal and South Sea Islander writer and academic Amy McQuire.
"You talk to a lot of mob all around the country, they will have anecdotal accounts of cases where Aboriginal women have been killed or have been deemed missing, and there's been no justice."
Tarita Fisher's sister-in-law, Constance Watcho, went missing in 2017.
Ms Fisher says when an Aboriginal woman disappears, there is a deep sense of hopelessness.
"It's hard to put it in words, but you have this emptiness. It's not a story that any child should experience."
Ms Watcho's body was found almost 10 months later.
Her dismembered remains were discarded in a sports bag which lay undiscovered metres from a popular riverside park in the heart of Brisbane.
No one has been charged over the death. A coronial inquest is currently underway.
Ms Watcho's family were shocked to learn police had classified her disappearance as "medium risk", despite nobody having seen her in months.
"Did they come and ask us about what kind of risk that she's in? No. And we would've told them it's serious business," Ms Fisher says.
Ms Watcho's body was discovered just 200 metres from where she was last seen alive.
Ms Fisher says the family believes the Queensland Police investigation into Ms Watcho's death was inadequate.
"You have trust in someone doing their job. But I don't know, you lose faith and you lose hope, you lose trust."
Ms Watcho's daughter, Rose, says her family needs justice.
"I do see a lot of things on the news, white women going missing, getting found, proper investigation into what happened and it's not like that with my mother. I think that is a big factor into this."
Queensland Police told the inquest that it had invested significant resources towards the case, when she was reported missing and during the subsequent suspicious death investigation.
In Queensland, this year alone, the state's coroner has investigated the cases of three Aboriginal women who were reported missing by their families — Monique Clubb, Ms Bernard and Ms Watcho.
In each of those women's cases, their relatives have said they feel police investigations had let them down.
"There are many cases similar to these sister girls," Ms Fisher says.
Four Corners has established 49 cases of Indigenous women who have been reported missing since 1941. In 30 of those cases, a coronial inquest has determined that the women are now dead.
But this is likely to be another vast underestimation because Australia has no reliable count of how many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have disappeared over the decades.
"The state has a duty to prevent violence to women. Now, actually knowing the extent [and] recording it is a part of that duty," Dr McGlade says.
Tasmania Police have acknowledged to Four Corners that their figures are unlikely to be an accurate reflection because they may not have determined the Aboriginality of the long-term unsolved missing persons cases.
Prior to January 2022, it was not mandatory for New South Wales police officers to ask for the Indigenous status of victims.
In Victoria, the state knows of 454 listed missing persons who have no recorded cultural identity — it's unclear how many of those are Aboriginal women.
South Australia is the only state to categorise someone as "missing but likely murdered".
Ms McQuire says Indigenous families have to go to greater lengths to be believed when a woman is reported missing.
"There are all of these colonial logics at play that 'she might have just gone walkabout, she might have run off with another man, she might have overdosed'," she says.
"All of these things that deny the existence of a potential perpetrator."
Dr McGlade says the growing number of murdered and missing black women has been "suppressed".
"The sooner that we realise the critical place that Aboriginal women hold in Australia, I think we will be able to come to a better place in our country. This is causing so much pain."
Credits
- Story by: By Bridget Brennan, Suzanne Dredge, Brooke Fryer and Stephanie Zillman
- Digital production: Laura Gartry and Nick Wiggins
- Designer: Georgina Piper
- Developer: Simon Elvery and Colin Gourlay
- Photography: David Maguire, supplied by families
