In almost every town in Australia, no matter how small, there is a war memorial. Somehow, those chiselled names are poignant, no matter what your views on war. There are stories there, sadness, a reminder that war has a high cost.

There are no memorials for the women who die in the war against women. There are no ceremonies, no flag draped coffins, often no acknowledgement. What would it be like if, in every town, there was a memorial for the women killed by male violence?

The dilemma here, however, is what deaths would we include? How do we number our casualties in the unnamed war?

There are the deaths we see and can account for – the woman shot after she left her partner, the woman who dies of injuries inflicted in the last of many beatings, the children murdered in an act of revenge, the woman and her children burnt to death in a fire set by a her estranged partner, the woman whose abuser pursued her across three states and found her and killed her in front of her children. For a brief moment these stories are front page news, for a brief moment we stop and ask questions and are outraged. But there are no memorials, no concrete etched with these names, no ceremonies of remembrance.

What about the deaths that aren’t acknowledged?

The woman who, after years of abuse, kills herself when the pain becomes too much, the survivor of child sexual abuse who suicides after years of trying to fight her demons, the woman who drinks herself to death or overdoses on drugs because she needs something to numb the pain and the memories, the woman killed in a car accident caused by her partner screaming at her as she tries to drive, the countless women who take their own life in the aftermath of trauma, bashings, rape, childhood abuse.
Can we count the girl who sells herself because she has been taught that that is her only value and dies at the hands of a man who buys her?
Can we count the boy who learns violence in his home and dies by violence in the streets?

And what of those who don’t die?

I validate and support the resilience of woman. I do not believe that abuse, violence, rape irreparably damages women and children.Women can and do reclaim their lives. I know we can survive, I know we can rebuild, but the costs are high and the losses can be devastating.
And there are no medals, no parades for those who do survive and thrive and build meaningful lives among the ruins.

The collateral damage in the war against women is unseen, unaccounted, unacknowledged.

She is 25, beautiful, intelligent, and creative. .
She grew up in a hell of violence, abuse, neglect. She reclaimed her life with great courage.
Three years ago she was raped again. She has lost her job, her dream of going to university, most of her friends. She cannot bear to leave the house. For three years she has been trapped within her own four walls.

She is 65. She cares for her elderly father who in his aging does not recognise her. She feeds him, wipes his bum, changes his nappies and tries to never remember his hands on her body for most of her childhood. She cared for her mother until her death and endured each day the bitterness and anger of her mother’s rage at her own helplessness and loss of opportunity. She weeps every night, for her loneliness and the emptiness that surrounds her. She was a bright little girl, all her teachers said so, and she dreamed briefly of university, of teaching or nursing of being ‘someone’. But her role, as daughter, was to submit, to leave behind her dreams and hopes and take care of her parents. She lost any confidence she might have had under the whip of her father’s rages and the secrecy of his touching.

She is forty and the mother of two grown children. She has not seen her daughters for twenty years. They were placed in care as babies. Her face bears the lines and scars of a life lived mostly in thrall to alcohol. People mistake her for a much older woman. She is trying to dry out again, but the fear drives her back every time. She’s drunk since she was twelve, it helped her to endure the bashings, the beatings, the screaming, smashing rages of her father. Without the cushion of booze reality stalks her head, the nightmares return and she lives on the edge of crippling fear. She relives the nights crouching under the kitchen chairs, hiding in the bathroom, listening to her mother’s screams and she remembers the night he killed her. The booze silences her head, silences the screams. She knows it will kill her and she doesn’t really care.

She is 32, with three degrees and a flourishing career . She is always impeccably dressed and groomed. Men watch her with lust, women with envy. She has friends, a lover, a busy and active social life, money, a house in a good suburb. Her lover has never seen her naked. She wakes at night next to him and wonders if she will ever let him see her scars. She has been cutting since she was ten and she realised the awful release and relief in self harming. She once tried to tell her mother that her adult stepbrother came to her room each night and raped her but her mother refused to hear and punished her for being dirty. The blade, the knife, the carton cutter comfort her as her mother did not. She is never without some instrument that can inflict the blood red release. She sometimes wonders what her colleagues would think if they knew that beneath her always appropriate wardrobe she if often bleeding. She is not sure how she will explain the scars if her lover ever sees them. She wonders how long they can continue to make love in the dark.

She is fourteen and has already lost count of the men she has fucked. Her face and her body belong to a woman much older but her eyes are the eyes of a terrorised child. She will tell you to fuck off and worse if you annoy her. Her father sold her for drugs from the time she was six or seven ,she doesn’t quite remember, sometime after her mother overdosed she thinks…or maybe before. Now, she sells herself, and feels in charge and doesn’t do drugs, although she drinks sometimes. She lives with various friends, in squats or cars, or boarding house rooms smelling of mildew and sweat and the ghosts of a thousand takeaways. One day she will be old enough to get a proper job, and then maybe she will go back to school and learn to read properly, she liked school when she went, it was quiet there and clean and the no-one hurt her. She tried foster care once, when she was about twelve, but she couldn’t seem to figure out what the rules were. They didn’t cope when she woke screaming and offered the father a blow job if he let her lock her door at night.

She is 90 and in a nursing home. Her mind is no longer her own. When the nurses undress her, tend her, slow tears leak from her eyes. She pushes their hands away with what little remaining strength she has and mutters, “Don’t, don’t.” They wonder at the scars on her body.

He is seven and learning that violence is the way you get what you want – learning that power is in fists and raised voices and standing over someone and smashing and breaking and beating.

She is five and learning that love looks like black eyes and crying and blood and flowers the day after.

There are thousands of stories, thousands of uncounted losses.
How do you measure the bright, intelligent girl who leaves home and school at 14 to escape the violence?
How do you measure the creative, artistic child whose childhood hell results in years of mental health admissions and depression so deep that her creativity drowns in it?
How do you measure the student, raped on campus, who cannot bear to return to study?
How do you measure the woman who leaves an abusive relationship and faces homelessness and poverty?

How do you count the costs?

There are no memorials for our casualties, no lone bugles, no flags or salutes.

And the war continues.