To be sick of the sympathy being directed at women who commit the most despicable acts imagineable?

[wannaBe]

So the Philpotts will be sentenced today for killing their six children.

Both convicted of the same crime, no mitigating factors involved. both led a pretty depraved lifestyle. Both beyond contempt as far as I'm concerned.

Yet read mn and various other sources and while the man is rightly being slated as being the scum of the earth there is actual sympathy being directed towards the woman. Oh she was abused, oh she was a victim, oh poor woman under his control yada yada yada.

She is a murderer as is he. She knowingly went along with setting their house on fire with her six children in it and did nothing. She did not sit with her dying child. She played the victim at the press conference.

She had choices and she made them. She chose to start a fire which killed her children and she chose to do nothing about it.

Do any of these sympathisers ever consider that one of the reason why people are so hard on women who commit these horrific crimes is because people like you are ready to stand by and excuse them on the basis abuse must have been involved.

There are real victims of abuse out there and they don't go round killing their children.

Someone being a woman or being a victim of previous abuse (assuming she was, she lied about so many other things it's IMO unlikely) does not excuse or justify the choices they make which end up hurting others.

People need to stop justifying behaviors purely because someone is a woman. She is a murderer. no amount of previous abuse justifies or excuses that.

[ENormaSnob]

Totally agree.

[EasilyBored]

It's not because she is a woman, it's because she is the vulnerable one in terms of the power balance between those two. I'm not excusing her behaviour, I can only imagine that she just did not stop to think it would end like that, or had convinced herself it would be OK. Either way, she is guilty and deserves to be punished accordingly.

Neither of them are murderers though. They were convicted on manslaughter. It might seem like semantics to some, but it is not murder.

[auforfoulkesake]

I imagine he and his friend persuaded her that they would save the children, that was the plan.
what kind of woman shares her husband and home with another woman. every other night in the caravan with him ?

[HollyBerryBush]

Another Philpott thread?

FWIW morality and decency should be at the forefront of any human being, but I've read enough on these boards to know life is rarely what it seems. I have little sympathy for the womans actins, I do have a lot of sympathy for her being in an abusive relationship.

Many women can't/are unable to make the break from an abusive man, especially one as calculating as Philpott.

I'm not God, so I'll let him reserve judgement.

[FreudiansSlipper]

ffs have you not read what he did to an ex girlfriend, their set up, her life, that she was shared with his friend, her self harming

The fire was not started to kill the children tragically it did and she will have to live with that and a prison sentence which yes she should get

[HeySoulSister]

I was in an abusive relationship too

So bad judge ordered zero contact...

I still thought for myself! As did the woman in this. Power balance does not affect rational thought!

[auforfoulkesake]

she had tried to commit suicide a few weeks previous to the death of her children.

[KobayashiMaru]

What difference does it make to you whether other people have sympathy or not? Why do you need your opinions to be validated?

[EasilyBored]

Yes, they killed their children. But legally they did not murder them. There was not enough proof that they intended to kill them. What they did was astonishingly stupid and reckless, but it seems as if they thought they could just save the children; clearly they didn't think it through very well. I have no sympathy for them, they caused the deaths of their own children, but it still isn't murder.

I second the point about he did to his ex girlfriend. I imagine up and leaving isn't as easy as it sounds when your partner has a history of trying to stab to death women who leave him, not to mention wanting to frame an ex for arson. He is a vile, hideous man. I don't really know what to make of her, she was complicit in the arson that killed her own children. Was she abused and vulnerable? Probably. Does that make this OK? No, not really. She will have her own demons to deal with I imagine.

[Finola1step]

As I have written on other threads, there is one fact that was disclosed on Panorama last night that says all that needs to be said, on my mind. All three if them had petrol on their clothes. The petrol on their clothes has been linked forensically to the petrol which started the fire, the petrol on all of their clothes. All 3 were there when the petrol was poured. She was there. She could have stopped it. She didn't. She was present when petrol was poured in the doorway of her own home and set alight in the full knowledge that the six children she had carried and given birth to were asleep upstairs.

He may be the ring leader but she knew what was going to happen and chose that despicable man over her children. That choice led to the deaths of her children. She deserves life.

I hope she recieves the help she needs because by the time she leaves prison, she will probably be still young enough to have more children. May the children she killed rest in peace.

[wannaBe]

I care because it is a blatant double standard where men are held to account for their actions but women's are justified on the basis men were involved. We know what kind of man he was but we don't actually know whether she was abused we just assume it.

You cannot talk about bravery in the fact of such a horrific crime because there is none. She chose to be a part of a setup which led to the deaths of her six children. During the press conference and the time her child was dying she showed no feeling - she wasn't even with her dying child.

Even victims of abuse can be despicable individuals, and the abuse she may or may not have suffered at his hands does not negate what she did to her children.

[manticlimactic]

I didn't see her shed one tear at the press conference. Did he tell her not to cry?

[auforfoulkesake]

ten years they lived like that. she was not in a normal relationship.

[MorrisZapp]

I feel sympathy for her. I think she deserves whatever sentence is coming her way, but I'm human and I can see how her history has led her to collude with a violent abuser.

On the night before the murder, she performed a 'sex act' on the other guy, with her husband watching. Afterwards husband said 'I'm proud of you, because you didn't want to do it'. She was coerced.

I think you have to ask, would she have made those appalling choices ie set fire to her home, had she been a single mother or a happy, loved wife? Surely she wouldn't. She was heavily influenced by that vile man.

[McNewPants2013]

It is easy to sit behing a computer screen and think what would you do it that situation.

If this man has abused her so much, has a history of 'punishing' his ex then it must of been very hard to get out of that situation.

[OhLori]

I have zero sympathy for her either. She wasn't just abused. She abused and neglected her own children, apart from killing them of course. She should be held responsible.

[MummytoKatie]

I agree with Morris. She did a terrible thing and deserves to be punished for it but she was also very abused and ground down by him.

A similar thing that I struggle to get my head around is the fact that children who have been sexually abused are more likely to grow up and become sex abuses.

Whose 'fault" is that? The child (now adult) who was abused and is now the abuser. The original abuser? Society as a whole for not helping the child more when they were a child?

[Fudgemallowdelight]

I will give the same reply i gave on the other thread as you have started a new thread about it. "I wasn't at the trial so I don't know the full extent of his control over her, but people are allowed to wonder about the extent of it on a thread about the subject and no i don't feel ashamed of myself for daring to wonder about it. It's hardly the same as campaigning for her to get let off."

[CaramelLatte]

Totally agree with you OP.

Also had their plan worked but they had still been found out, how would the children have felt about their own parents putting their lives in such dreadful danger. There are six innocent children lying dead in their graves..their mother could have prevented that.at least they are in a better place.

[McBalls]

I don't doubt her life experiences, perhaps not limited to those with Philpott, made her the person who was capable of causing the death of her children.

But I see the imbalance others do, surely he must have gone through some horrific stuff to end up the way he has?

Personally, I really don't give a shit but if you are minded to look at what led to those actions for her then why not for him?

[wannaBe]

mtk the theory that children who are sexually abused are more likely to abuse is a myth.

Yes, I agree that he can't have had a normal life/upbringing either, so where is the sympathy for him?

[FreudiansSlipper]

I agree he did have a terrible upbringing happy secure children do not turn out this way

But as an adult he made choices to be abusive to others one was his wife and other women in his life and his children

If his childhood was different his whole life would have been and the same for her it's tragic and very sad

[HungryClocksGoBackFourSeconds]

It's not as black and white as that OP, you can have empathy for someone and understand how their past and current circumstances have contributed to their actions without condoning them.

It's ok to feel sorry for her AND be horrified by what she did.