I can’t help but think of Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting of Judith Slaying Holofernes every time I hear about a new case of abuse.

With many art historians suggesting that Gentileschi incorporated her self-portrait as Judith and her mentor, and convicted rapist, Agostino Tassi’s features Holofernes’, the painting’s main strength arguably lies in the women dominating it.

If you stare at it long enough, you can almost taste the suppressed rage. There is no hesitation in their stance: only the sort of grim determination borne of years of silent fury. They know they have been wronged and now the world will know it too.

I recalled this image twice this week, once when a Maltese man got three years of probation and 40 hours of community work for sexually abusing his wife and another time when a judge cleared a former police officer of raping a colleague at a police station.

In the latter case, the judge ruled that the sex was consensual because the alleged victim hadn’t taken steps to avoid her alleged aggressor and noted that there were no eyewitnesses to corroborate the alleged victim’s claim.

This after the alleged aggressor had already confessed to doing the act before his confession was annulled over a technicality. It’s enough to make your stomach turn. How can you be a woman in this country and not spend every day of your life enraged?

It beggars belief that this is the system we must contend with in 2023. Every week, we hear stories about people being violated, tormented, traumatised, gaslit and murdered and this is the best protection our state can offer us – a slap on the perpetrator’s wrist or a slap in the victim’s face.

Is it any wonder that a recent survey found that 94 per cent of Maltese rape victims did not report their rapists out of fear of not being believed?

It’s a wonder that more people haven’t taken the law into their own hands- Anna Marie Galea

When you’ve already been through so much, would anyone reading our news headlines even feel a passing wish to expose themselves to even more possible humiliation and trauma?

There’s nothing worse than being a victim and constantly having to work against a system and a culture that is already rigged against you.

It’s a wonder that more people haven’t taken the law into their own hands but, then again, we are well-trained from a young age to be submissive and docile.

We need to start sending a message to rapists and would-be abusers that their behaviour is not only not tolerated but heavily punishable and that begins with us throwing our victim-blaming culture into the dustbin where it belongs.

The days of grinning and bearing it while our bodies are used as nothing more than mere objects are over and it’s time that our courts and laws started acting like it.

How can it not matter to anyone that every single woman you know has been harassed by someone at one point or another when half the world is female?

It is also our job as women to call out abuse when we see it rather than covering it up and shaming our sisters for something that has happened to them without their consent.

If you’re not as angry as Gentileschi and her friend, you’re clearly not listening.