From Mayang Prasetyo’s Facebook page
Yesterday, news broke that police in Brisbane were investigating the possible murder-suicide of an Indonesian woman and her Australian boyfriend. Most of the media coverage focused on the horrific but unconfirmed details of how the victim was killed and dismembered. We won’t focus on those details because you can read about them plenty of other places.
We also won’t focus on the lurid details various media outlets have dug up about unconfirmed murder vicim Maya Prasetyo, an Indonesian woman who, it turned out, was actually married to murder suspect Marcus Volke. Maya was apparently a transgendered sex worker and cabaret singer, all facts which are irrelevant to her brutal murder but which many media outlets are choosing to focus on almost exclusively in their coverage.
What we think is important for people to know is that Mayang Prasetyo was much more than her occupation or her gender identity.
She was a beloved child who supported her family. According to the Courier Mail, Mayang’s mother Nining Sukarni, who lives in Lampung, said “she was devastated at the loss of her eldest child” who was “the family’s breadwinner,” sending money home to Indonesia to support the family, including putting her two sisters through school.
From Mayang Prasetyo’s Facebook page
She was a cherished friend. As reported in the Brisbane Times, her friend Brett Sparks said Mayang was “always such a happy, cheerful person”.
On a post on a Facebook page devoted to her, Sparks wrote “RIP beautiful, the world will not be the same without you … I will miss you so much I couldn’t possibly express it in words. I still remember the day I met you and the impression you made on me. Nobody that met you could ever forget you. This really doesn’t seem real…”
Another friend, Brad Whitehouse, wrote the “world is less full of the spark with which you shared. Rest in Peace in the stars from where you came my dear friend. Most amazing soul I have ever met.”
Mayang was also a beautiful person whose death has saddened many here in Indonesia. Posts continue to pour into Mayang’s Facebook page expressing their condolences, the majority from Indonesians hoping that she find peace in the afterlife and that her family finds the strength to face this horrible tragedy.
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