Author(s): Megan Norris

True Crime

One Australian woman is hospitalised every three hours and two more lose their lives each week as a result of family violence. But for some women, there is a punishment far more enduring than injury or their own death.  Look What You Made Me Do, is a timely exploration of the evil inflicted by vengeful fathers who have killed their own flesh and blood simply to punish partners for ending unrewarding - often abusive - relationships. Focussing on nine different, but equally harrowing cases of ‘spousal revenge’ spanning more than two decades, award winning author Megan Norris, draws upon her own experience as a former court and crime reporter, to examine the cold-blooded murders of eighteen innocent children who became collateral damage in callous crimes committed by angry dads whose real targets were the children’s mothers. From the 1993 kidnap and murder of three-year-old Kelly East in WA, to the shocking death of little Darcey Freeman whose dad hurled her over Melbourne’s West Gate Bridge in 2009, each story highlights the chilling connection between intimate partner abuse and retaliatory homicide. Now widely recognised as the ultimate act of domestic violence a man can inflict upon his partner, these disturbing cases illustrate that it’s not only mothers who are in danger when domestic violence turns deadly.