Kiss & Kill is the first podcast to take you inside some of Australia's most high-profile cases of intimate partner homicides and reveal dangerous patterns of behaviour we need to recognise before it's too late. The series, now available through 7News and other platforms, zeroes in on a cultural blind spot: the tendency to romanticise behaviours that, in the context of intimate violence, serve as stark warning signs of danger ahead.
One behaviour the podcast implicitly interrogates is jealousy. Western culture has long positioned jealousy as a mark of love; films and songs frame a partner's possessiveness as proof of passion. Yet the hidden red flags you need to know about amid an epidemic of violence against women often include jealousy and obsessive monitoring of partners. When someone insists on knowing where you are, demands access to your phone, or expresses anger at your friendships, these are not romantic gestures. They are early indicators of controlling behaviour that can escalate to physical harm.
In this 7News series, you'll hear interviews, expert analysis and reporting on the cases of Gerard Baden-Clay, Louis Mahony, Tyrone Thompson, Anthony Eriksen, Charles Evans and Borce Ristevski. These cases, which shocked Australian communities, share a pattern: warning signs were present, often dismissed or reinterpreted through the lens of romance.
The scale of harm on dating platforms
The urgency of the podcast's message becomes clearer when viewed against recent data. A study in 2022 found nearly three-quarters (72.3%) of Australians using dating apps had experienced online sexual harassment, aggression or violence by someone they had met through an online dating platform in the last five years. This included being continually contacted by someone after they told them they were not interested (47.3%), being sent an unwanted sexually explicit message (47.2%), being pressured to send sexual messages (38.4%) and send sexual images or videos of themselves (37.8%), and being pressured to meet someone in person when they did not want to (34.5%).
This harassment does not appear in isolation. Research from the Australian Institute of Criminology released in October 2022 found three in four people using dating apps or websites experienced some form of sexual violence facilitated by these platforms, in the five years to 2021. This violence included sexual harassment, abusive or threatening language, image-based sexual abuse and stalking.
The fact that such violence is endemic to Australia's dating landscape presents a policy challenge. Dating apps are now the most common way to meet a partner in Australia, yet the level of violence experienced by users of these platforms is deeply concerning. Online dating platforms must do their part to end violence against women.
Regulation and responsibility
Starting in April, Australia will enforce a new Online Safety Code designed to combat harm linked to dating apps. The code, which was initially put into action in October 2024, aims to address safety issues in online dating, requiring platforms to take significant steps to protect users. The primary focus is on detecting and addressing "online-enabled harm," defined as incidents of sexual misconduct or other severe harm stemming from interactions initiated on these platforms. Under the new rules, dating services must implement systems to identify harmful behaviour and take action, such as banning violators across all platforms operated by the company.
The code represents an attempt to shift responsibility from individual users to the platforms themselves. However, individual awareness remains critical. Knowing what to look for when someone's behaviour crosses the line from attentive to controlling, from protective to coercive, is as important now as ever.
The Kiss & Kill podcast serves a distinct purpose. It does not tell women to avoid dating or to live in fear; rather, it teaches recognition. It reveals what controlling and abusive partners looked like in their own words and actions, before the tragic outcomes. As the cases demonstrate, the difference between a safe relationship and a dangerous one can turn on small details of behaviour that our culture has, until now, often misinterpreted as romantic.