TRANSCRIPT 🔗
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Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mumma mea podcast.
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Speaker 2: Hey, I'm Taylor Strano. This is Mamma MIA's twice daily news podcast, The Quickie. Today would have been Eurydicy Dixon's thirtieth birthday, but her future was brutally ripped away at just twenty two years old. Eurydicy was stalked, raped and murdered in a Melbourne park seven years ago. Today we remember Eurydicy and hear from her family who carry her with them every day before we get there. Here's Clare Murphy with the latest from the Quicki news room for Monday, November ten.
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Speaker 1: Thanks Taylor. More women will get immediate pain relief while being fitted with contraceptive devices after a landmark inquiry revealed roughly half lived with pain every day. The Australian first Inquiry into Women's pain found medical gender bias and healthcare system barriers routinely lead to denial or dismissal of pain, misdiagnoses or delayed diagnosis. The inquiry, led by a Safer Care Victoria and a panel of experts, fielded almost thirteen thousand survey responses. Nine out of ten respondents reported experiencing pain lasting longer than a year, and fifty four percent described living with pain every day. Another fifty nine percent said pain affected their recreation hobbies, fifty two percent said their intimate relationships, and forty four percent their work, studies and volunteering. The report showed that regional and rural women, Aboriginal and Torrestrate Islander women, disabled women, and LGBTI communities were often traveling long distances or experiencing systemic discrimination. There were substantive reasons why some women and girls found it difficult to access care and support for pain. A health system built around Caucasian male biology, coupled with historically low investment in women's health research, has left many without effective pain relief or treatment. It read. As a result, women and girls spend years searching for diagnoses and support, all while symptoms worsen and funds are drained on therapies that may or may not work. Along with adopting the more than twenty recommendations from the report. In response, the Victorian government has announced a pilot of the Green Whistle in Hala for IUD insertions across twenty sexual and reproductive health hubs in the state. Other incoming measures include developing a women's pain standard and opening a specialist clinic for children and adolescents within Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital. In twenty twenty six, Israel has received the remains of a deceased hostage held in the Gaza Strip that Palestinian militant group Hamas says are of an Israeli soldier killed in the territory more than a decade ago. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Offers said in a statement the remains were handed over to Israeli forces in the Palestinian territory by the Red Cross, but that there has not yet been formal identification. Hamas's Armed Wings said it would hand over the body of Haidar Golden, a military officer killed in an ambush in the Gaza Strip during the twenty fourteen Israeli Hamas war. Hammas said found the body of Golden in a tunnel in the enclave's southernmost city of Rufa on Saturday. The one time biggest name in Australian talkback radio, John Laws, has died aged nineteen. A member of the Australian Media Hall of Fame, Laws attracted two million listeners to his morning radio program at the height of its popularity during a career spanning more than seven decades. Laws, who spent two weeks in hospital in October, died peacefully at his home in the inner Sydney suburb of Woollemloo, a year after he hung up his microphone. Weeks after thieves made off with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Crown jewels from the Louver Museum in Paris, Fedora man has finally been identified. On the day of the highest a single picture was snapped, which then went viral around the world of a young man dressed in a three piece suit and a Fedora hat placed on a jaunty angle on his head, walking past the closed entrance to the museum, where police stood discussing the incident. The Internet went into overdrive, convinced the young man, who looked as though he'd stepped straight from the pages of a nineteen forti's murder mystery, was part of the Louver plot. Was he a detective like we imagine they looked in books, or was he a sharply dressed thief. But for weeks the man's identity has remained just that a mystery. It's now been revealed that Fedor Man is actually fifteen year old French boy Pedro Elias Garzon Delvaux, who simply loves dressing chic and actually wears outfits like this all the time, including to school. Delvo says a friend messaged and asked if it was him in the photo on the day it went viral, but instead of revealing himself immediately, the fan of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, who lives thirty kilometers from Paris with his parents and grandfather, decided he wanted to remain mysterious. The real story is he'd wanted to visit the Louver with his family on the day of the Highest and had no idea what had happened when that photo was taken. He then got a call from his mum to say his photo had made the New York Times.
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Speaker 2: Thanks Claan. Next, remembering Euryticy Dixon, a quick heads up. This episode deals with sexual assault, rape and murder. Please take care while listening. It was Tuesday, June twelve, twenty eighteen, a cool early winter night in Melbourne, around nine degrees, the kind of crisp cold that bites people were spilling out of bars and small venues in the CBD, laughing into the chill, jackets pulled tight. At the Highlander Bar on highland A Lane, a small underground comedy night had just wrapped up. One of the performers that evening was twenty two year old Eurydice Dixon, a comedian, writer, daughter and friend. She performed her set, hugged her mates, said goodnight, leaving the venue just after ten thirty.
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Speaker 1: I'm trying to be more optimistic, lady.
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Speaker 3: Society
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that means no one has any rights, will finally have Jane your equality.
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Speaker 2: She began walking home through the city, heading north toward Carlton. It was a route she knew, through Melbourne's grid, pass Swanston Street through the familiar Parklands. On her way home, she texted her boyfriend, I'm nearly home, how about you, But she never made it. James Todd, a nineteen year old stranger, followed Euridicy for more than four kilometers for at least fifty four minutes through the bright streets of the CBD, across Victoria Park, through Royal Arcade and into the darkness of Prince's Park. There he raped and murdered her, leaving her body to be discovered on a nearby sports field in the early hours of the following morning. He was later sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of thirty five years. Look, I'm not going to waste precious breath on the man described as categorically evil for his crimes, but I will give you the facts. Euryticy Dixon's life was taken that night in a place where she should have been safe. Speaking outside the Supreme Court after sentencing in twenty nineteen, Euryticic's father, Jeremy Dixon, said he wanted, as his daughter would have wanted, for the man who killed her to get better, to heal. While the rest of us remembered his daughter for who she really was, Eurdicy herself should be remembered as her friends will remember her for her wit and her courage.
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Speaker 1: And for her kindness, not not for her death.
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Speaker 2: I didn't know Eurydaicy, we didn't even live in the same state, but I do know her story. I remember when it first broke, as shiver running down my spine and thinking that could have been me or one of my friends or loved ones. And that's because I was her. So many women I know were her walking home after a night of local art, a comedy gig, a friend's birthday, Carrying that quiet shared routine of safety checks, texting a mate, pretending to talk on the phone, gripping keys between fingers, choosing the route that's better lit, even if it's longer, calculating safety with every step. And we've seen this before Jill mar abducted and murdered in twenty twelve on her short walk home in Brunswick. Even more recently, Samantha Murphy, whose accused killer still awaits trial, or Audrey Griffin, the nineteen year old Central Coast woman whose body was found in a creek earlier this year, the man also not known to her, accused of killing her, dying while awaiting trial too. Different years, different names, different circumstances, but at the heart of each story is a woman who should have been safe in twenty twelve, in twenty eighteen, in twenty twenty five. So when did things go so wrong that women became scared to simply exist, to move through the world without fear of being taken from it? And even those of us who do feel safe enough, who go for that run, who walk home alone, sometimes they don't make it home either, were left with families, friends and colleagues trying to glue together what's left to find meaning, to find legacy in lives that should have just been lived. A few weeks ago, I found myself scrolling through Urriticy Dixon's Wikipedia page, a page documenting her murder more than her life, and there it was her date of birth, November tenth, nineteen ninety five. She would have turned thirty today. It made me stop because I turned thirty this year too, And while I've never been one to attach too much meaning to bir days, thirty does feel significant. It's a marker, a transition. Saying goodbye to twenties feels like breaking up with a long term friend, full of nostalgia, chaos and reckless joy, but it also brings a kind of clarity. You start to really know who you are, what matters, and what doesn't. You start to feel, maybe for the first time, at home, in yourself. It's the year I got engaged, friends started families. We rejoiced in financial independence. Some of us bought our first homes, traveled the globe, paid off hex debts, and indulged in long Sunday walks around the Bay followed by early dinners at the pub complaining about all the trivial things life throws at you. Those are all things you. Rticy never got the chance to experience. Her family, never got to celebrate with her, never got to see who she might have become, the jokes she would have written, the causes she would have championed, and the life she would have build. She never got to grow older, to make mistakes, to rebuild, to just be. So today, on what would have been her thirtieth birthday, I'm thinking about her and all the other women who've never made it home, and I'm thinking about how turning thirty, just being here is a quiet kind of privilege. Eurydice's family are thinking about her too, every day, of course, but especially today. I've been speaking to her dad, Jeremy Dixon. He's what he wanted to say to mark his beloved daughter's thirtieth birthday.
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Speaker 3: Eurydicy My daughter was not one for wallowing in grief. At the age of seven when her mother died, she was a rock of courage and humor. In the difficult years that followed. Her unsentimental but unflagging love and loyalty and care kept a small family unit afloat. Now the treasure of our family was in the process of becoming the world's treasure. What she could have done with her intelligence and righteousness and empathy we will not see, but we can imagine, and we can mirror and magnify those qualities as best we can. I'm not going to try to ventriloquize Eurydice's views, which were in any case in development. But she was a feminist. She was not satisfied with easy answers or humbug She was not a hater. The books she was recently reading include works by Althusa for Co and Hunter S. Thompson, as well as books on music, pop culture, and feminist histories of makeup and fashion. From a young age, Eurydice had a flare for clothing and self adornment, and this was also an intellectual interest. Her taste when she happened to die ran to an upbeat version of goth Her clothing was also a vehicle for humor and thought. She had a plain tattoo on her arm, saying this is a tattoo. I still don't know exactly why that is funny, but it is. I am grateful beyond words that really lived at all and will try not to cry too much about her early death.
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Speaker 2: So while Eurydicy won't get to make a birthday wish this year, let's make one on her behalf. We wish that her story is not just remembered, but rewritten in policy prevention protection. We've held enough vigils, late, enough flowers, walked enough marches. What we need now is a reckoning to stop asking women to be careful and start demanding men get help and be held to account. We wish for our systems to stop failing us, for laws to move faster than a glacial pace, and for leaders who we only seem to hear from at the next press conference to speak up now. This is our birthday wish for Youurridicy, that violence against women is not our inheritance. That no woman's life ends where the walk home begins. Happy birthday, Urytasy. The Quickie is produced by me Taylor Strano, Alario Brofy and Claire Murphy, with audio production by lou Hill.
00:14:20
Speaker 1: Momma. Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on