To think that the jo yeats jury should have been told about his strangling during sex fetish?

[pippala]

pleased for Joanna's family that he has been found quilty, their ordeal is hardly over though.
Min 20 years, so he will be 53 when he comes out, with still half his life left.
Now it appears he watch porn that involved strangulation, had sex with prostitutes and like choking them!
I have heard about better orgasms when you can't breath, Isn't that how Mike Hutchence died?
I can not understand why this was withheld from the jury.
I was on jury service and put away a pedo for 33years. at sentancing we were told he had done it before to 3 other girls! I can understand that we were not to know as we were hearing only that case but in Tabaks case he hadn't killed before,as far as we know but his personality was not the one portrayed by the defence.

If he'd been reading medical material or court reports of women being strangled, it's much more likely that it would have been admitted into evidence. When it's porn though all the misogyny and harm to women is erased (hence the judge claiming women being strangled in porn don't get hurt).

thunder
i quite agree

Yes, how on earth can a person / judge think that strangulation porn is just acting? Also, the judge is probably confusing crappy ideas about porn actresses being there (in strangulation porn) of their own volition, completely exercising freewill hence it is neither dangerous to them or others watching.

The father of landscape architect Jo Yeates says the decision not to tell the jury about her murderer's use of violent pornography was correct.

The mother of Jane Longhurst says otherwise

and I agree with her

When will people wake up about the violence of pornography. I cant say all men are affected but even if it is a small percentage we as women are paying the price. I feel not many people agree because they do not want to accept that it could happen to them so they ignore it.

The fact that only a minority of people feel the need to attempt to change the way women are viewed in society is VERY DEPRESSING to say the least.

If you disagree please go on the OBJECT website, it makes for some very unsavoury reading but may be a wake up call for some.

Edith
the thing is, in this case, the parents / preosecution got the result they wanted. The right result, IMO, guilty.

So now Jo's father can say, yes, yes, it was right to disallow the porn facts. And I use the word fact deliberately.

Because the father knows that an appeal on a technicality surrounding the porn is not possible.

But had it gone the other way, and the jury without the full facts had found not guilty of murder, would he be saying the same? I doubt it.

And let's remember, two jurors believed Tabak's bizarre version of events. So it was not a completely clear cut verdict.

"And let's remember, two jurors believed Tabak's bizarre version of events. So it was not a completely clear cut verdict."

We don't know that they believed his version of events at all. Just that they did not feel able to be 100% certain that the evidence proved murder rather than manslaughter. And knowing about his internet viewing wouldn't prove that either.

There is a big difference, for a jury member, in believing a version of events and being sure that the evidence supports irrefutably another version.

We don't know that they believed his version of events at all. Just that they did not feel able to be 100% certain that the evidence proved murder rather than manslaughter. And knowing about his internet viewing wouldn't prove that either

Exactly.

And now the child porn photos found on his pc:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2056041/Vincent-Tabak-child-porn-Police-30-sick-images-murderers-laptop.html

This case must have been excruciating for Jane Longhurst's mother.

Her questions get right to the heart of it:

"?Everyone says the internet is notoriously difficult to police ? yet if you have a website devoted to bomb-making it can be closed down in minutes. I do not understand why the same cannot happen with this dreadfully violent pornographic material. Instead, its existence means that people still think it is ?normal?. The fact that the judge in this case didn?t even think it worth being used as evidence is simply inexplicable to me. Was he saying it wasn?t ?bad? enough? I am at a loss."

Basically they don't think that images of women being tortured and hurt matter. For some men they are sexual excitement and on that basis other men feel they should be freely available.

"don't matter"

This has been haunting me.
Thank you everyone for your posts on this thread, especially Thunderbolts; it is so awful and hard to make sense of.

I can't get over the fact that there seems to be this absolute determination to deny that watching violent porn could possibly have any connection with committing violent acts. I can see the argument that it is hard to prove without doubt that there is a connection, but equally, there is no evidence that there is not a connection and the idea that porn use exists in a vacuum and has no effect on anyone is just so utterly counter-intuitive; surely it is the producers and users of violent porn who should have the onus on them to prove it is safe, not the other way round .

I am so angry at the way men who use this stuff think they have a sort of human right to never have to be judged on it. Deriving sexual pleasure from watching people be tortured is morally wrong; why is that not obvious? How dare anyone do that and then think he has a right to be regarded as a normal upstanding person?

I would like to believe that the judge was just trying to ensure that the verdict was appeal-proof, and it is good that that has been achieved, but his words suggest he has some very dodgy views - the thing about how it is ok because it is not an actual snuff movie I can't get over that. Child porn would not be considered fine if it turned out to have used CGI and not harmed any children in the making, and yet watching real women be actually tortured is apparently fine as long as it stops just short of killing them.

What will it take before something is done about violent porn?

I think its useful here to differentiate between what evidence was used in this court case (I agree that the judge did the right thing to reduce risk of a future challenfge) vs trying to get violent porn banned (I agree with that, too).

As to what it will take, a petition on that government website might be a good start.

I think it's a shame this tread has been derailed from being about Jo Yeates to the extent most folk seem to be giving it a bodyswerve. The whole porn debate should have been started on a different thread.

I don't agree. It is absolutely impossible to discuss the legal decision meaningfully without considering the broader issues. Even if you want to explain the precise legal reasons why the judge made that decision, there are wider beliefs underlying it. If this could have been a grounds for an appeal there are reasons why that is so, and those reasons are related to wider attitudes to porn use.

I have a question for anyone on this thread with legal expertise. Is the judge's decision to exclude this evidence likely to create a precedent for similar material to be excluded in future cases?

And another question (sorry!) - the judge made that comment about how it would have been different if it was snuff porn. Does that mean if it had been snuff porn it would not have risked becoming grounds for an appeal so it would have been safe to include it? Because that is a logical difference I don't get.

The case is shocking. As it turned out, thank god, Tabak was convicted - presumably the 43 injuries to poor Joanna Yeats helped convince the majority of the jury that he hadn't "accidentally" strangled her.

I am with you, ElderberrySyrup, and others in feeling really deeply that the grotesque, violent pornography Tabak had been consuming was intimately connected to his crime. How could it not be?

Don't wish to go off at a tangent, but have been surprised at the lack of serious media attention focusing on this (eg: broadsheets, Radio 4) - ie: let's have another serious discussion about the fact that violent pornography is actually connected to real women being harmed, even killed. I've seen superficial/titillating stuff, but not much deep discussion/analysis.

Seems nothing, not even murder, must be allowed to get in the way of poor darling men getting their w*king fodder, which is what pornography actually is. Vile.

IKWYM re media, TheOtherElizabethTaylor.

The Daily Mail is on the case - here for example but not the broadsheets AFAIK.

I suppose it's because censorship is regarded as terribly middle-brow and Middle England

Seems nothing, not even murder, must be allowed to get in the way of poor darling men getting their w*king fodder, which is what pornography actually is. Vile.

Or, sensible people know that banning stuff that is popular is pointless. Try reading up about America's Prohibition era for example.

Also the Mail on Sunday - a bit - Suzanne Moore did a bit in her column (sorry, haven't got link) ... but why not the Guardian, Independent? In fact, I saw some guy from the Independent on Sky, and it seemed his most emphatic conclusion from the whole case was that porn wasn't to blame, and we musn't conclude everyone who uses porn is going to end up killing, etc. Please!

Agree cosmopolitan/intellectual types anti-"censorship" ... but can't help thinking if there'd been some case in which some poor random Muslim or Jew had been killed by a lunatic far-righter, and it then turned out that the murderer had been accessing images of specifically Jews or Muslims being tortured on the internet, that Today (Radio 4) et al would have been all over it, outraged by this vile racism. But if it's only women being tortured, then it's OK. GRRRR!

Sorry, don't mean to de-rail discussion from OP!

Banning violent porn is nothing like banning alcohol, in an entirely different era. How do you feel about the fact that men watching other men's violence towards women is 'popular' as you put it, Whatmeworry? Why doesn't that disturb you? Why would you not want that violence to stop?

Banning violent porn is nothing like banning alcohol, in an entirely different era

The person I was replying to said Porn, not violent porn.

I am totally for banning violent porn, though I think the lower limit would need to exclude anything people voluntarily do in their own bedrooms to be credible.

I also disagree that the Prohibition lessons are not true today. look at drugs. Absolutely predictable.

I'm not necessrily saying there should be a blanket ban on sexually explicit images. I'm suggesting that images that represent the torture and degradation of women can and do produce real, tangible harm - as evidenced in the Joanna Yeats case.

I don't know what the answer is. Ideally we would have self-censorship - ie: if I, as a grown-up man who knows the difference between right and wrong, feel a little bit aroused by the thought of watching someone being tortured, perhaps I need help - I should see a doctor or a therapist or even a priest, and try to heal myself ... rather than trawling the internet, as Tabak apparently did, for pornograophy that fuels that feeling.

And it is a crime to incite racial hatred, for example: so how come it isn't a crie to incite woman-hatred?

Sorry, meant a crime!