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.

I have no sympathy for either of them. None at all. I hope they throw the key away. RIP six murdered children.

But do you feel empathy for him too, hungry?

I agree with you OP. She is an adult who made her choices, same as he is.

The law on domestic abuse has been changed to recognise the severity of coercive abuse. The reason why you can't judge an abuser who commits a crime the same as his victim who is coerced into commiting it alongside him should be perfectly obvious.

Abuse victims suffer an intense form of Stockholm Syndrome. For the sake of self-preservation, victims take on what they are told about themselves and what they are instructed to do as normal, right, etc. Their own needs, wants, ideas, feelings and even morals are totally suppressed and hidden, as the mind goes into survival mode. It's exactly like how a small child with an abusive parent will believe whatever the parent says and obey it, even if it hurts them. That person is their whole world and they cannot see or imagine outside it. Extreme blankness is typical in abuse victims: that she did not cry at the press conference has no bearing on her real feelings.

If you look at some of the most prolific female murderers, there is ALWAYS terrible abuse in their background that caused them to be so manipulated: Rose West - abused from early childhood by her father, mentally subnormal, sexually abused and pimped out by her husband, still forced to sleep with her father as an adult, etc., etc. Myra Hindley - horrible childhood, domestic abuse at the hands of Ian Brady, and he used specific and continued techniques of brainwashing on her also.

Does that stop me thinking their crimes were heinous? Good god, no, what they did was appalling and sickening. Do I feel sympathy for the women who were so destroyed and twisted by abuse? Hell, yes.

Is abuse an excuse for these crimes? No. Is it a reason? Yes. Instead of vilifying abused women over their abusive male counterparts, we need to look at the misogyny still so inherent in our society that not only is abuse so prevalent, but that we woefully and even wilfully dismiss it and refuse to properly address, prevent and punish it.

It's the knee-jerk man=bad,manipuative and woman must be coerced,servile
These constraining stereotypes need challenged,as they're unhelpful nd peddle gender myths
Criminality,and responsibility isn't as easy defined as man compel woman to act

I think there are times when it is possible to feel empathy for someone who commits a horrendous crime. e.g. I have empathy with the two boys who murdered James Bulger because, as ten year old children there was clearly something desperately, desperately wrong in their lives that led them to commit such a horrible crime. But they were children. Children still at a stage in their lives where they were being shaped as individuals.

But she was an adult responsible for her own decisions and thoughts and actions. Yes, leaving an abusive relationship is not always straightforward and it takes courage to do so. However, it's interesting that women who post on here about being in abusive relationships are met with precious little sympathy when they then fail to leave the men they are told to leave by posters on here.

McBalls I don't actually know a lot about the case I didn't watch that program last night because I thought It'd upset me.

I do think that happy, healthy people don't abuse others and they certainly wouldn't burn their house down with their children inside to get back at an ex. There must be reasons why his moral compass is so off.

Nobody is truly evil, we are all products of our society, everything and everybody that you interact with impacts your life and you as a person in some way.

But I think oxford has put it really well, there are reasons for their actions, but those reasons are not excuses.

I think oxford is right too, it isn't an excuse it's a reason and there is a difference.

I am just completely gobsmacked that families like this, if they are not an isolated case, are allowed to operate the way they do without any intervention from social services or the like. It's not as if their predicament wasn't well known. I had no idea he had stabbed his ex girlfriend 13 times, surely that is a frenzied and sustained attack? how on earth was he responsible enough on that alone to have so many children in his care?

oxford plenty of men suffer abuse as children too. I think it is very disturbing actually that people seem to think that male criminals equals evil, bad, despicable (which they are, let's not deny that), and female criminals equals abused as children, subjected to unquestionable things, deserving of some sympathy. as sm says it's a stereotype that needs challenging. misogyny has nothing to do with it.

I don't feel sympathy for either of them.

Certainly a liberal society looks for explanation to explore deviancy,criminality to aid understanding
This informs good practice in criminal justice,psychiatry,statutory services
However I caution not to fall into Victorian stereotypes of men bad,women weak and cowed

I feel empathy for her.

i don't feel it with him, reading this it hard to see why he didn't change especially after a 7 year prision sentance for

www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/02/mick-philpott-violent-control-freak

Judge Mr Justice Pain, who jailed him for seven years, said Philpott was "a dangerous young man". Once out of prison, he again proved the judge right, using his reputation to further control and subdue the women he met.

I agree with you, watching the documentry last night and hearing her discussing with him how she cried the right amount to make her story convincing, and that she didn't even go and sit with her dying son, then her lies about being abused by a dad who is still standing by her, and her sisters giving her every opportunity to get away with the kids and her refusing just confirmed my lack of sympathy for her, she also seems like a manipulative liar.

Think some women find it intolerable another women can act in this manner
It becomes more palatable to attribiute blame to male,look at female as helplessly compelled
I dont think is always as clear cut as man bad,woman weak and coerced

There is nothing wrong with people empathising or with people trying to understand behaviour outside of the ordinary. Not excuse or justify, understand. And while we live in a society which prides itself on rehabilitation and restorative justice, it's quite important to try and understand how certain things happen. Otherwise we're just blindly hating and punishing without changing anything. The argument about how well our system manages the rehabilitation and change is a different one but the principle is there.

Different human beings will assess the case in different ways because that's the way of the world. I don't tell anybody else how to perceive information or react/respond and don't expect people to tell me that I'm only allowed to react with hatred and utter condemnation.

it's the automatic assumption,woman coerced and man malevolent in control
Look into Mick history I'll bet neglect,abuse,poor attachment,instability
Except these factors seem to be predominant in explaining mairead only

The point is, that whilst they both commited the crime, the reasons why each particpated are very different. In this case, he WAS the aggressor, she WAS the victim. It was his abuse that created the opportunity for this terrible crime and his abuse that pushed it into reality. Going along with something when you feel you have no other choice is very different from deciding it's going to happen and pushing it through because it pleases and serves you to do so. That's why I have no sympathy for him, but some for her.

Actually, if he was abused as a child, I have sympathy for him.

SM, I do not believe that crimes like these automatically equal male bad, woman servile. However, I cannot think of a single instance of couple crime where the woman has not been abused by the male. It is not some gender binary creating this model, it is abuse. The abuse happens to have been done by men to women in these cases. It is a sexist society that allows abuse to normalised and blamed on the victims that ultimately creates these pairings.

Was Myra Hindley abused? (genuine question I don't know)

If Mairead had went along with it and acted with even the tinyest bit of guilt afterwards then I may have had some sympathy, maybe, but all she was bothered about was keeping herself and that man out of trouble.

Myra Hindley was an evil bitch who refused to tell LeslieAnne Downie's mother where she was buried. From what I read she was very much the agressor. Rose west enjoyed the power play and was happy for her own daughter to be abused. Another evil bitch.

Philpott did not claim marital coersion as part of her defense. She was given an opportunity to leave and refused. She lied about being abused as a child. She was certainly no innocent victim.

What chilled me was listening to the recording following the threesome of mick saying he was proud of mairead for lying to him, as she had said she wanted to but he knew she'd lied to him. Really scary man. I was scared of my ex husband, and it took a while to escape but I'm educated, middle class, have a supportive well off family - a lot of advantages she didn't have which made it easier for me to leave.

I totally agree with you, she s just as guilty

I have no sympathy for her

They had their chance and their life,sadly the same can't be said of their children.That's who we should be thinking of.

I seem to remember Myra Hindley was not abused as a child,in fact people have puzzled for years over why she became so evil.

Hyndley,apparently not abused and was proactive in approaching the children
Brady,mentally illl subsequently Boadmoor.hyndley not mentally ill,prison
It's not always as clear cut as men make women do vile acts.

as unpalatable as it is some people have capacity for very grave acts