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Isla Bell met the world with an open heart. And the world responded by beating and mistreating her, until her body was found in a refrigerator at a Dandenong tip, discarded with the rubbish.
On Tuesday, a manslaughter charge against Bell’s alleged killer was dropped.
“I promise bub, I fought hard. I fought with every breath,” her mother Justine Spokes said on Saturday, at a vigil for her daughter. “My mind was prepared for that outcome. Because my expectations were low. They weren’t low enough. I couldn’t prepare my heart for that.”
Spokes recalled seeing her daughter often come home beaten and injured after encounters with men.
“She may have come home with black eyes and bruises round her neck. I used to call her Beluga whale, she’d come home that swollen. These men, these perpetrators, they are so sick. They are hurting so much.
“I cannot fathom how my girl just kept sharing her exquisitely beautiful soul wherever she went. She’d find that life-force energy again.”
Justine spoke to a sea of orange – the golden-orange of Isla’s hair – that covered the front court of the State Library. The groundswell of rage Isla’s death has provoked may yet wash even further, all the way to the door of the attorney-general.
“We are calling on the Attorney-General, Sonya Kilkenny, to intervene and lead change in the system,” Bell’s grandfather, David Spokes, said on Saturday. “The ball is in her court. It is time for the pendulum to swing back to support victims of violence.
“We are seeking change. We are seeking justice. Let the jury decide.”
Bell, 19, disappeared in October 2024. Her face was soon covering telephone poles across Melbourne as friends and family desperately searched for her.
Her body was found six weeks after her disappearance. Prosecutors initially alleged Marat Ganiev, 55, murdered Bell at a St Kilda East apartment. He was later charged with her manslaughter, before prosecutors downgraded that charge on Tuesday to perverting the course of justice.
Eyal Yaffe was initially charged with perverting the course of justice for allegedly helping Ganiev dispose of Bell’s body. All charges were dropped against him on Tuesday.
A spokeswoman for the Office of Public Prosecutions said the charges were withdrawn due to insufficient evidence.
“How do I feel today? Betrayed. Let down. Abandoned. Angry too,” said David Spokes. “The system is failing badly, and it needs reform. It seems as though the pendulum has moved too far in favour of the accused and against the victims. Victims and families are not getting justice in this state.”
Kilkenny was in the crowd but left before the event ended.
“I attended the vigil to listen and pay my respects to Isla and the people who love her dearly,” the attorney-general later said via a spokeswoman. “The ongoing harm to women at the hands of men is an epidemic – one that can only be changed if we all do the hard work to change attitudes and behaviour.
“I will continue the work to make sure our legal system puts the voices of victims and what they have gone through at its heart.”
Bell’s mother also called on the government to implement recommendations from South Australia’s 2025 royal commission to create legally enforceable standards for responsible media reporting on domestic, family and sexual violence. “It would certainly stop the victim-blaming narrative,” she said.
People held signs in memory of Bell and other murdered women – including Jill Meagher, killed 14 years ago – handed out sprigs of rosemary, and wept openly, as her mother recounted watching systems meant to protect women from violence fail her and her daughter.
“I’ve experienced every system this state has to offer to protect vulnerable girls and women. As a parent, we’re just throwing them under the bus. I was deemed a protected parent – and no one was protecting me.”
The systems “failed Isla, and they failed all our babies. It’s just terrifying.”
Caitlin Gough carried two signs demanding justice for Bell, one simply saying: “She mattered”.
She encouraged parents to speak to “the boys you are raising”.
“The pulling of the hair in primary school, that’s where it starts, that’s where it stems from. We’ve got to teach our sons the right way to respect women. That comes from parenting,” she said.
“And stand together when it comes to our justice system – because there’s no justice at the moment.”
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Liam Mannix is an investigative journalist at The Age. Before that, he was national science reporter for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.
Contact him via email or Signal (encrypted) liammannix.18
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