Her name was Adina Raluca Constantin. She was 55 years old, originally from Romania, and had lived in Portlaoise for fifteen years. She worked at a dental repair practice on Church Street, in the same building where she lived. People on that street knew her — a quiet woman, they said, who always said hello. On Sunday, July 5th, she was fatally assaulted at her home. A man in his 70s, her husband, has since been charged with her murder. Another woman is dead, in her own home, in a place that should have been safe.
Her name joins a list that is getting longer every year.
The list keeps growing
According to Women’s Aid’s Femicide Watch, Adina is the eighth woman to die violently in the Republic of Ireland so far this year — and it’s only July. That already overtakes the total for the whole of 2025, when seven women died violently. Since the Femicide Watch began recording in 1996, 286 women have died violently in Ireland.
There’s a number that should stop us in our tracks: since Ashling Murphy was murdered in 2022 – the death that made a nation say “never again” – 40 women have died violently in Ireland. Forty women with names, families, jobs, plans for the following week. Women’s Aid CEO Sarah Benson put it plainly, Ireland has not lived up to the promise it made after Ashling’s death.
The figures behind the figures are just as stark. Women’s Aid’s Femicide Watch analysis shows that in the cases where the outcome is known, 87% of women were killed by a man they knew – not a stranger in a dark alley, but a partner, an ex-partner, a family member.
One in three women in Ireland has experienced domestic abuse of some kind in her lifetime. An Garda Síochána responded to more than 65,000 domestic abuse incidents in 2024 alone – an average of 1,250 a week. And in 2025, Women’s Aid recorded 62,275 individual disclosures of abuse against women and children, a 33% increase on the year before. That’s not necessarily more violence happening in a single year so much as more women finding the words, and the safety, to describe what’s already been done to them.
It isn’t just Ireland
Cross the water, and the pattern repeats with grim consistency. The UK’s Femicide Census has tracked the killing of women by men since 2009, and the number has never meaningfully dropped – it hovers between 124 and 168 women killed by men every year, with around 62% of those women killed by a current or former partner. Officially, ONS data puts the average at 1.53 women a week in England and Wales alone killed by a partner or ex-partner. Over the ten years to 2018, that’s 1,425 women – one killed by a man, on average, every three days.
One of the Femicide Census’s more chilling findings, at least 40% of women killed by a current or former partner had already left him, or were in the process of leaving. Separation doesn’t end the danger. For many women, it triggers it.
Say her name
Adina Raluca Constantin was young in spirit, a familiar face on Church Street, a woman who always said hello. She should still be here. So should the other seven women who’ve died in Ireland this year, and the hundreds across the UK, and the 85,000 women worldwide who didn’t survive last year. Naming them isn’t just an act of grief – it’s a refusal to let them become a statistic instead of a person.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse:
- Ireland — Women’s Aid 24-Hour National Freephone Helpline: 1800 341 900, or womensaid.ie
- UK — National Domestic Abuse Helpline: 0808 2000 247
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