Epsom College Murder Suicide

[PleaseStopSayingHuBbY]

I'm shocked but not surprised. This world is depressing and scary for women.

Can we not get a protracted national TV campaign called Red Flags (or something better) which would starkly demonstrate and unequivocally call out these controlling behaviours - so that no one could be in any doubt, any longer, as to what constitutes domestic abuse?

It was done with Covid, it could be done again with DV.

( But yes - sadly I know at least one person with such entrenched levels of denial that he would likely still refuse to recognise himself).

Emma and Lettie surely deserve a memorial that leads to actual permanent change in our society and to the behaviour of abusive and controlling men.

It is very difficult because I think domestic violence and abuse is huge and connected strongly with the nuclear family. It can occur in other domestic contexts but it is connected with ideas of dominance, who is the leader, who is in charge.

An abuser will shape that domestic environment for them. Many of them will appear to very family orientated.

There are some clues for young women. One is to look very very carefully at the parents of the man. If there is tension, if the father is a bully, if the mother is beaten into a domestic role, and you have any ambition for yourself, think again.

This is the template your partner has. Do not feel sorry for this guy. You can have compassion but think for yourself. When we are under pressure, all of us revert to our family set up.

If you don't like that set up, or the jolly pig dad who always gets his way, then don't pursue a relationship.

Family set ups are strongly indicative of your future role. Ignore all the "I'm progressive, I support women". Look at the family background. It will tell you so much.

Absolutely awful. I can't understand why those vile men don't just shoot themselves!

I previously worked in forensics and we had pictures brought in of a crime scene after one of these scenarios. Those photos are burned onto my brain and I can still see them after more than 20 years.

The poor woman and her daughter. RIP.

I mentioned her earlier in the thread so am bringing her up again now, but Laura Richards is a campaigner worth following. She is an expert in her field and has devoted her career to campaigning on DV, stalking, coercive control, etc.

I've asked @MNHQ to invite her on to give a web chat before, whether they have contacted her or not I don't know.

This is her website: www.thelaurarichards.com/resources

This is her Twitter account: twitter.com/laurarichards99

She also has a petition on Change - I know MN sometimes delete links to petitions so I will put it in a separate post. This is the summary:

Stalking and coercive control are crimes that are insidious and terrifying and yet many still do not understand them. They are patterned crimes and the abuser goes from victim to victim.

Often the perpetrators are male and the victims are female. Sadly, there are many cases where the entitled male abuser escalates to murder and, despite clear warning signs, their violent history was not joined up by police, prisons and probation services. We have to change this.

Kirsty Treloar and Jane Clough were abused and brutally murdered by serial perpetrators.

Kirsty was just 20 years old when she was stalked and stabbed to death. She had given birth to a beautiful baby girl three weeks before she was killed by Myles Williams, a man who she said she never wanted to see again. He was coercively controlling and violent to Kirsty and he had abused other women. Sentencing Williams, Judge Nicholas Cooke said: 'Beyond a shadow of a doubt, you represent an exceptional danger to any future female partners’.

Jane met Jonathan Vass at work. She was an A&E nurse and he was an ambulance technician. Jane was just 26 years-old when she died. Nine months earlier she had a baby girl and the abuse escalated whilst she was pregnant. When he raped her in front of the baby, she knew she had to leave him. She ended the relationship and told police that he had raped and beaten her, but he was granted bail while facing nine counts of rape and four of assaults. He waited three months to access Jane. She had stopped going out as she was scared he was going to find her and kill her. As she became more isolated she used Facebook to talk to people and he stalked her by monitoring her account. When she eventually returned to work, he lay in wait in the hospital car park and stabbed her 71 times.

Jane and Kirsty could have been saved if their serial abusers were on a register and being managed and monitored. Currently the histories of violent and abusive men are not being joined up. The focus tends to be on the victim and people ask 'why do you stay' rather than 'how do we stop him'.

People with a history of domestic abuse and stalking are dangerous just like sex offenders and terrorists.

We must make violent men visible and accountable and you can help. This is everybody's business.

We need to act now to save lives by protecting women from serial stalkers and domestic violence perpetrators by extending the Multi-agency Public Protection Arrangements to ensure that police, prison and probation services pro-actively identify, track, monitor and manage serial perpetrators.

We need a cultural shift which will only be obtained through law change, one where we treat stalking and domestic abuse with the seriousness it deserves.

Please help us to make sure that we protect other women so other families do not go through what the Everards, Nessas, Van Hagens, Cloughs, Treloars, Ruggles, Gazzards, Kezas, Reeces, Mcdermotts, McLarens, Bests and many many more have.

What YOU can do to help:

Write to your MP and the Home Secretary Priti Patel and ask that they/she focus on male violence against women and the men who abuse, rape and kill women.

Follow us on social media and amplify our voices for change @laurarichards99 Twitter, IG @laurarichards999 and Laura Richards Facebook.

Share this petition and ask others to sign and share.

Together we can create real change to better protect women and girls.

Thank you.
Laura Richards, Founder Paladin National Stalking Advocacy Service

Here's a link to the petition: www.change.org/p/suella-braverman-focus-on-serial-perpetrators-and-stalkers-who-abuse-multiple-women

Thermopylae and others , commend and agree with your comments. Abusers are so so cunning at pre empting any complaints or blame. I once slapped my abusive partner ( never hit anyone else before or since) because I was so utterly adrenaline and anxiety fuelled/ furious when he said if I didn’t get to him quickly to collect my toddler ( it was supposed to be “ his day” but he got fed up) he would LEAVE HER in the supermarket. When I got in the car to pick her up and go home , a knock on the door from the police! He had reported me! I was absolutely terrified having never been “ in trouble” with police before, terrified I’d be judged a bad mother and that it would affect custody arrangements, terrified I’d get a record which would affect my profession. Thankfully the police were very on the ball and sympathetic , immediately asked : “ so when you jumped in the car why did you lock the doors” ( such an obvious q to me I couldn’t even answer - they had to ask “ are you scared of him”) and “ so he just visits his child whenever it suits” etc. Thankfully they took it no further and were v kind and reassuring- but if my partner had also been professional/ better dressed/ more influential/ not drunk I suspect outcome might have been different. He was extremely victorious even so and continually warned me “ any grief / opposition and you’ll never be able to work again”

As I suspected the link to the petition has been hidden! If you go to the Change website and search for "Laura Richards" her petition is the first result.

Yes to this

So many Red Flags even before you start a serious relationship.

Culture
Family set up
Leaned behaviour

We know that behaviours are passed down through generations and yet there are very few voices reminding us to look at where and what, our partner has come from.

In my case, I should have known that a domineering, Mediterranean, old-school thinker - than was allowed to rule the roost, have affairs, come and go as he pleased, drink to oblivion and repeatedly let down his DC, belittle his wife, and expect dinner at 6 was never going to teach his son how to be a decent man.

They are ok best behaviour in the beginning, but if you want a glimpse of the future, look to their roots.

Such an important point to make @LexMitior.

There SHOULD be a government film about Red Flags. We need to normalise disgust and intolerance of DV even when it's in its infancy.

I would love to see Laura Richards and her work more widely known. I've listened to the podcasts she is on and they are mostly excellent. She is an amazing woman.

@knittingaddict
Unfortunately she has been caught up in the trans debate and cancelled. A podcast that I listen to was forced to basically denounce her because of activists. As far as I can make out, her main evil has been that she is pro-woman and anti-men in women's prisons, but I admit that I haven't done a full research project on the whole thing.

I am very concerned that the police involvement in 2016 is being talked about in the news with no explanation about why that could happen in a one sided abuse situation

I agree. It's clear that almost everyone on this thread understands that the 2016 call to the police is a flag in itself, so clearly corroborated by the events of last Sunday and all the circumstances of the case, but the issue is that those who don't will see it as something very different. A discussion in the BBC and elsewhere about what we clearly all get would be helpful. The message the media report is sending to the wider public is the opposite of what the truth seems to be. Perhaps they're waiting for post mortems etc to be completed but I won't be holding my breath. The Guardian is better at this stuff.

Absolutely, her podcasts are fantastic to listen to and she is great at highlighting other women who are campaigning in this area like Jess Hill (Australian journalist), Rachel Williams (who survived being shot by her estranged partner and then suffered the loss of her 16yo son to suicide just weeks later) and Georgia Gabriel-Hooper who witnessed her mother (Cheryl Hooper) murdered by her step-father when she was 14.

Laura's main podcast: www.crime-analyst.com/

Laura also co-presents Real Crime Profile: www.realcrimeprofile.com/

Useful Twitter links to follow:

twitter.com/jessradio

twitter.com/Rachel_SUTDA

twitter.com/GeorgiaDA2018

Agree with @LexMitior and @SlightlyJaded , there are often clues in the family background of abusive and controlling men, but it isn't always the father who is the issue. In my case, it was my H's mother who was a narcissistic, manipulative emotional vampire (though perhaps that may explain why his abuse was always emotional/verbal and almost never physical).

However, you have to understand/recognise what you're seeing in order to take heed of the red flags. We tend to assume that other people have similar ways of behaving and motivations for their actions as our own. Abusers tend to think other people are out to harm/control them because that's what they do themselves. Decent people tend to assume that other people are fundamentally pretty decent underneath. If you've never encountered an abusive person it can be literally beyond comprehension that someone would behave like that. It is only once you have some experience that the patterns become obvious.

It's depressing just how many posters find the patterns obvious.

Very well said Thermopylae, exactly right.

The question must be asked:

What would Emma want to happen now?

Nooo. Seriously? I'm so shocked and upset about that. She was a force to be reckoned with and some people just don't like that I suppose. How sad.

So which podcast has been cancelled?

I don't think any of her podcasts have been cancelled, more that activists are trying to get "her" cancelled - ie trying to get people to stop employing her. She's certainly still doing her own podcast, Crime Analyst, and was on the most recent episode of RCP dropped this week.

However, you have to understand/recognise what you're seeing in order to take heed of the red flags. We tend to assume that other people have similar ways of behaving and motivations for their actions as our own.

I think this is so true. I often think back to when SIL and BIL got together. The red flags were all there, but none of us recognised them at the time. We justified them based on our own experiences and responses - he'd insert himself inappropriately into family situations and we'd think, "oh, bless, he's never had a functional family and he's just so happy to have this opportunity" or he'd be nervous and insecure, in a self deprecating way, when she went out and we all thought, "oh dear, he's still struggling after his ex cheated on him but once he realises how reliable SIL he'll calm down." And of course, we were totally wrong becuase we were applying the standards we meet and expect to him.

Also, depending on the type of abuse, the victim often isn't believed becuase the things being done are just so ridiculous and unreasonable that other people just think the victim is misunderstanding or something.

It's hard to articulate the deep sadness and distress I feel over Emma and Lottie's deaths.

I can't claim to have experienced exactly what Emma experienced - I have never felt in serious physical danger from my H, the abuse has only ("only") been psychological/emotional/verbal.

But I remember all too well the racing heartbeat, the shaking hands, the feeling of being unable to breathe, the knot in the stomach, the gaslighting and twisting of my words until my thoughts felt too scrambled to think or answer clearly, the feeling that I would go mad or my head would explode if he didn't stop going on and on at me, the struggle for self-control when he was pushing buttons again and again.

I think I do know a little of what she must have gone through, and I just wish there had been someone who recognised the signs and reached out and told her that she wasn't responsible for his behaviour and she was an incredibly strong woman for trying to hold everything together. I find it almost unbearable to think that she may have died thinking any of it was her fault.

Project men are problem men. Just don't go there. When you r daughter has a partner, check him out. Mystery men with sad stories of a cruel family or poor background are a hard pass

So agree with this, but do daughters listen? One of mine had a bf/partner whose mother had been married seven times. He was an only child, his father was husband no.2 or 3. He came from a chaotic family background, and I knew straightaway it was going to end in disaster but I had to tread very carefully. No DV thank god, but lots of mental cruelty I found out about after, he cheated on her more than once. It broke her heart. To see the back of him was the best thing ever. However, she didn't date again for years.

However, you have to understand/recognise what you're seeing in order to take heed of the red flags. We tend to assume that other people have similar ways of behaving and motivations for their actions as our own. Abusers tend to think other people are out to harm/control them because that's what they do themselves. Decent people tend to assume that other people are fundamentally pretty decent underneath. If you've never encountered an abusive person it can be literally beyond comprehension that someone would behave like that. It is only once you have some experience that the patterns become obvious.

This is spot on Thermopylae.

Fuck me, this is moving on to a different variety of victim blaming.

Those with less than perfect childhoods/families of origin are all abusive, are they? My god.

This is just another way of "it couldn't happen to me"- "it couldn't happen to me because I don't pick that sort of man." This is just more stigma.

Listen to yourselves.

Men who come from secure, middle class backgrounds can be abusive arseholes, too.