God please don't think I'm making any excuse for her, her, Natasha's behaviour has been horrific. I'd read she had a job and assumed that that's what she was living on.
My thoughts were more on the line of its proof that the reasons why women stay in abusive relationships are more complex than just money. It's often trotted out, asa form of victim blaming, why didn't she leave. . . She should have walked away etc. . . .
here there is a woman who has a job, no children, no ties, being (in her eyes) betrayed in a humiliating and very public manner and still stays.
I thought that the fact her father put Ched the rapists over the fact that he in their eyes 'only' cheated on his daughter, put her physical health at risk, publicly humiliated her, was intellectually interesting, as well as being very very sad.
I agree with Purple and Alice, all our sympathy and support has to be for the poor woman who has had her whole life turned upside down and still has to live in fear.
I don't mean to sound cold but if you look at the big picture here it shows a society that places a mans right to kick a ball around over the rights of a women to (a) get justice (b) live openly with out fear (c) for other women to publicly support her without fear.
Yes I know it's not all men, yes I know there are plenty of men are as disgusted as we are, but until they all start standing up and saying this is wrong the idiots and abusers will continue to assume that all men feel the same/ do the same as them.
We all like to think that our friends & family share our values it can be a real shock when we realise they don't. Most people I know can't get their head around the fact that Clay McDonald didn't get convicted as well. That there are still people out there that think going to a room with a man means consent to sex.
That blows their minds.
Sadly I also have family who think if you weren't a virgin on the way home from helping puppies and kittens in full daylight, and weren't beaten within an inch of your life while been raped by a stranger in an alleyway it wasn't really rape rape and even then would question why you walked by 'that' alleyway, you should have known that 'that' alleyway was dodgy.
We all wander around in our own little bubble, you see it on here so often. The ongoing wheelchair vs buggy on a bus threads show that, so many posters that can only see their POV that can't project and empathise that yes managing a buggy and a LO can be a pain but in the grand scheme it's meh, a temporary irratation. For a wheelchair user it a constant lifelong battle. I am not equating being a woman with having a disability, I'm just just using it to illustrate my point of people's inability to empathise.
Maybe this case will be the tipping point? Maybe the publicity of it all will shake some people out of their bubble and make them realise that we still live in a rape culture?
It's just sad and shameful that all this debate and publicity has come at the cost of a woman's right to get justice and live without fear.