Shannon Mathews

However, it does fit into your selective and personal viewpoint

Like your spirited and embarrassing defence of Hindley ? Your suggestion that if Brady were gay then his male partner would not have been demonised as much as Hindley is laughable.



Elendon What are you querying- resident parents have a legal responsibility to not harm their children. That legal responsibility does not necessarily apply to other family members but obviously other family members if committing or abetting crimes are culpable.

Excuses for what? This enrages me about FWR, because certain posters have certain agendas and never will they be swayed by discussion or debate

Yes; very true - like the Connelly ,Matthews and Hindley apologists on here.

Hindley didn't 'turn a blind eye', she was the only way they accessed victims and disposed of their bodies. Brady couldn't drive, it was her that drove the children to their death. With the first victim Pauline Reade, she drove around with Brady looking for a victim and she advised him to pick an older girl (16) as it would cause less of a fuss than a younger children going missing. Hindley picked out Pauline as knew her and knew she'd trust Myra. She then drove her up to the Moors knowing Brady was following on his motorbike and Pauline was going to die. At any point she could have turned around and stopped it. She didn't.

She wasn't turning a blind eye when she was threatening to hit 10 year old Lesley Ann Downey who was crying for her Mam and begging Myra not to take her clothes off. Brady says it was her that killed Lesley Ann by the way but we'll never know. We do know what they both recorded that Boxing day though. And the sexual photographs they took of that little girl bound and gagged before she was murdered.

If Brady was gay then his male partner would not have been demonised as much as Hindley.

Rubbish. What exactly was unfair about her "demonisation"?

If Brady was gay then his male partner would not have been demonised as much as Hindley.

Brat Yes, what she did was appalling, she deserved to be imprisoned, but it didn't make her equal to him as the vicious and despicable murderer. He was the monster, not her.

What about grandparents, aunts and uncles? Surely they know and yet turned a blind eye.

Excuses for what? This enrages me about FWR, because certain posters have certain agendas and never will they be swayed by discussion or debate.

Feel the same about the media treatment of Heather Mills/Amanda Knox or any other woman who reuses to be a female martyr in the face of criticism.

" He was the one who viciously murdered and she was the one who turned a blind eye."

she 'procured' them by asking them for their help or offering them a lift home.
she also participated in torture and murder with at least one victim (the one that they taped).

Lass your response is most disappointing. Could do better I think. However, it does fit into your selective and personal viewpoint. Which is interesting, given your legal background.

In the case of resident parents , yes, morally and legally complicit.

Any more excuses?

Hindley and Brady were not jointly complicit. He was the one who viciously murdered and she was the one who turned a blind eye. Murdering someone is entirely different to turning a blind eye.

Abusing someone is entirely different to turning a blind eye. If someone is abusing someone else and the family turn a blind eye to it, are the family equally complicit as the abuser?

Shagging Connelly.. my point being calling short term sexual partners "step parents" is wrong.

Was he branded the worst stepfather in Britain?

I think it would be more pertinent to consider the pernicious way the waste of space who was snagging Connelly at the time is even described as a "step father"

So far as your other point Elendon 2 wrongs don't make a right (although I don't consider press and public reaction to Connelly is wong) Isn't your point about bit "what aboutery"? Usually unacceptable on FWR.

There was a red top article pointing out that, bizarrely, Matthews, Connelly and Maxine Carr were all living in the same town. The strapline was the "3 most evil women / most hated women in UK".

Had the OP chosen to focus on the inexcusable linking of Maxine Carr to those 2 I doubt anyone would have disagreed.

The tabloids always seemed to have a particular fascination with Hindley, and her name was the one always brought up in relation to other child murders or stories about female criminals. A lot of it had to do with the notorious picture of her, but I do think it was because there was a particular fascination and horror around the fact that she was a woman who had participated in such awful crimes, where that wouldn't necessarily have been the case had Brady had a male accomplice.

I just did some reading of this. While police had dealt with male and female killers before, this was the first time a couple had been jointly complicit. To the extent that when Brady was arrested, Hindley was ignored. They just didn't consider she could be involved. Some of the fascination and horror must have been due to the couple aspect too - like Bonny and Clyde.
I agree there is often more fascination and horror regarding female killers, but not sure it's true in this case.

Lass And that would include the particularly infantilisating view that no matter how badly a woman behaves we must (a) find some excuse for her and (b) reporting or commenting on it is anti-woman ?

And yet there are loads of excuses for men who chop and shoot and knife their partners and children to death. Some are even buried along side them.

Clodagh Hawes for example

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/craicnet/2793892-Clodagh-Hawes-family-speakout

Women who do crimes with men are always treated worse, but men who do crimes with women are somehow the victim in all of this.

Which men get the victim treatment?

Elendon eh? Who said it did?

the instinct to protect your children from harm is an absolutely basic human one

So why does this statement just apply to women? Men are human too.

But I was and am interested in the way women are treated when they commit crimes. I just wanted a debate really. And possibly to learn something.

I think this is a valid point for discussion. Women are treated more harshly for crimes committed. Take for example, family annihilators, which are nearly always men. The usual msm response is to see the family as his possession, they are always talked about as wife and children. He has some mental health disorder. Shock that such a lovely neighbour, friend, family member could possibly do such a thing.

Yet, Karen Matthews is now labelled the worst mother in Britain. There is no perspective. What she did was wrong and despicable, but she was helped by her male partner. Did he get the same treatment? Was he branded the worst stepfather in Britain?

Women who do crimes with men are always treated worse, but men who do crimes with women are somehow the victim in all of this.

The reason Hindley and Brady is so prominent and notorious is because they refused to say where the children were they also kept themselves notorious

I don't think that's so. I'm ancient enough to remember the original trial and, trust me, the reports were uniquely horrifying. I don't remember other trials around that time to anything like the same extent, even people like the Krays and the Great Train Robbers. Brady and Hindley remained prominent and notorious even before the issue of further murders came up, and before Hindley started campaigning for release. The tabloids always seemed to have a particular fascination with Hindley, and her name was the one always brought up in relation to other child murders or stories about female criminals. A lot of it had to do with the notorious picture of her, but I do think it was because there was a particular fascination and horror around the fact that she was a woman who had participated in such awful crimes, where that wouldn't necessarily have been the case had Brady had a male accomplice.

I do think it's an interesting subject user but I'm not sure KM is the right cypher for the discussion, since both her crime and her attitude towards it are so singular.

I also don't think it's fruitful to start down the path of citing learning disabilities as mitigating factors in this kind of crime. I agree that she doesn't seem to have understood the reality of the situation, but to me (and I'd venture to most people) that points to a chilling and mercenary lack of empathy rather than a sympathetic victim. It makes it worse, not better that she did these things so casually: the instinct to protect your children from harm is an absolutely basic human one, which learning disabilities don't diminish.

So she watched a Tv programme and because of her reported learning difficulties this makes her vulnerable ?