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Septuagenarian launches her first book at Parliament House

April 05, 2005

0305 Marion Hoskin 002.jpgMurders, rapes and kidnappings feature in a frank book written by a graduate of the University of New England to be launched this evening at State Parliament.

The author, Marion Hosking, who graduated from UNE at the age of 74 with a BA degree (as pictured here), has received critical acclaim for her book “Why Doesn’t She Leave?” about the history of Taree Women’s Refuge, known as “Lyn’s Place”.

The Hon. Reba Meagher, NSW Minister for Community Services, attended the launch of Ms Hosking’s book, which has a foreword by the author and journalist Dr Anne Summers AO. Dr Summers, who also launched the book, said today: “This is a very important book that spells out, in quite horrific detail, the scale of violence against women in Australian society. What is particularly important and new about this book is that [Ms Hosking] focuses on women in rural areas. The isolation of so many women exacerbates the situation of domestic violence.”

Ms Hosking told how she wrote the book after working at Taree Women’s Refuge for more than 20 years, an experience that exposed her to the “overwhelming problem of domestic violence”. “In my time spent working at the refuge I have been in contact with the victims of at least three murders, a kidnapping and rape, and a kidnapping and murder,” she said. “I wrote about these tragedies in the book as a way of exploring the evil of domestic violence.”

Ms Hosking started writing the book after completing her BA at UNE in 2002. She acknowledged the spur to write the book she had received from Ms Norma Townsend, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Classics, History and Religion at UNE. Indeed, she was in an ideal position to write about the refuge, having served on the board of the refuge in an array of positions since 1984. “The refuge held a lot of archives, but there was no history, and so I set about amending that,” she said.

Her book begins with the murder of a 22-year-old victim of domestic violence who was stabbed to death in a car park in 2000. (Although the ultimate form of violence, murder is not an uncommon ending to some of the women who were counselled and received shelter at Lyn’s Place.) The book also gives a deeper understanding of domestic violence and outlines effective strategies in dealing with the problem. Ms Hosking said she was concerned that no new women’s refuge had been built in NSW in the past 10 years.

Raised in the Sydney suburb of Burwood, Ms Hosking left school at 13 and settled in the Taree district with her husband John in 1980. She said her husband had greatly encouraged her in her studies and the writing of her book. Her niece, Ms Robin Hammond, is studying for her Master’s degree at UNE, writing a thesis on her uncle, Clarence Thomas, an amateur poet and stand-over man who was shot dead in Sydney in 1937.


Media contact: Lydia Roberts, Public Relations Manager, UNE (02) 6773 2779.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at April 5, 2005 03:34 PM