In this video essay, Zoe Booth reads The Murder of Iryna Zarutska by Jukka Savolainen—former Director of the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data and now a professor of sociology and criminology at Wayne State University. Published in Quillette, the piece probes the unsettling quiet that followed the brutal killing of a Ukrainian refugee in Ireland, and what that silence suggests about shifting media priorities, ideological commitments, and emerging cultural taboos.

Why did this case receive so little attention? Did it fall outside the prevailing narrative frameworks that shape contemporary reporting? And what does the muted reaction reveal about the way institutions—and audiences—process certain kinds of injustice?