Comedian's frank account in her new memoirs

Katherine Ryan has told of the horrific murder which taught her to be frightened of men.

In her new memoirs, the comedian recalls the shock she felt as a 19-year-old on learning that a fellow waitress at the bar where she worked had been killed by an abusive partner, after recently dumping him.

Ryan had been friends with the woman, called Jessica, in her small Canadian hometown of Sarnia and says that ‘her life and brutal murder is something I still consider often, nearly 20 years later’.

Beyond the impact of Jessica’s death, the comedian says it was the reaction of others that taught her a lasting lesson.

In her book The Audacity, serialised in the i today, Ryan recalls that when she told her mother what had happened, ‘she was sick that someone had lost their daughter, and in such a violent attack, but she didn’t seem overly shocked. Instead, it reinforced what she already knew: men are dangerous.

‘Having not yet made this connection, I flew around the house in a furious rage, ranting about how the bar should have immediately closed for observance, about how international news cameras would soon be descending upon the town to cover the story and about how wild it was that a young woman we knew was killed by a man we were also familiar with.

‘He wasn’t a stranger or a demon or a masked intruder but a person Jessica had once trusted and loved.’

Ryan recalls that her mother said bleakly: ‘That’s how it happens.  If you leave them, they sometimes kill you. No reporters will come. This happens all the time.’

The comic adds: ‘I decided that night in our kitchen that I should be very frightened of men and that rejecting one would be more than just a painful hassle. It could cost me my life.

‘It was perhaps silly of me to think my ex-partners would kill me. But I had a solid framework telling me that it was a definite possibility.’

Ryan also describes how she has been ‘punished for my vulnerability’ by expressing such concerns in her comedy, prompting hundreds of men to send ‘often very aggressive’ messages.

‘I truly don’t understand how saying "I am afraid" provokes them,’ she adds. ‘But the reaction I get certainly doesn’t give me any comfort.’

Published: 2 Oct 2021