Guest post: “There have been 60 other UK women killed in violence claimed to be consensual”

[BojanaMumsnet]

I am so so glad that Mumsnet users gave their support to this campaign – Mumsnet is such a powerful campaigning force, and this campaign began right here. MNers can take action today to give us the best chance to change this.

I set up We Can’t Consent To This at the end of 2018, in response to the astonishingly short sentence given to the partner of Natalie Connolly. He was allowed by prosecutors to plead guilty to manslaughter, and given a three year eight month sentence by the judge, after Natalie died with terrible injuries at their home. Natalie’s partner claimed her brutal beating and appalling internal injuries were due to “rough sex” that she’d consented to; and this “consent” was accepted by the court. Natalie’s dad Alan since said, “Natalie is no longer here to tell us what he did to her or why he left her where he did. But there is absolutely no way she would have consented to what she was put through. One thing is for certain - Natalie didn't fantasise about being killed or leaving her daughter without a mum that night. Like so many other women, she didn’t consent to being brutally injured in the name of sex.”

And Natalie isn’t alone – we’ve found that there are 60 other UK women who’ve been killed in violence claimed to be consensual: this is the “rough sex defence”. You can see their stories on our website. And there are many more women injured in non-fatal assaults. Every woman who has been able to say so, says she did not consent to the violence. Only men have used a rough sex defence, often in appallingly serious violence. What’s more, its use is increasing. 13 women have been killed since Natalie Connolly, where a “rough sex” claim was used by the defendant.

Using a rough sex claim in defence works too often: in 45% of homicides, the men get a lesser charge, a lighter sentence, or no charges at all. Often the woman’s sexual history is presented in court, to show she ‘consented’ to violence.

All this is at a time of a shocking violent assault of women in sex: research reported that 38% of UK women under 40 experienced unwanted slapping, choking, gagging, or spitting during consensual sex. This could mean 3.6 million UK women have been violently assaulted. Hundreds have written to us sharing their experiences, relatively few of those women have contacted police, but the criminal justice system must be ready to support them if they do.

Now, there is already a lawalready law that says you can’t consent to serious violence. But our research shows that this case law is not up to the task. It’s routinely disregarded. And as reported last week, the CPS confirmed they won’t prosecute violence where the defendant might say it was consensual: that they won’t try to prosecute using this existing law.

So, Parliament must step in. MPs across parties are gathering behind this: Harriet Harman has worked with Mark Garnier - the MP for Natalie Connolly’s family - and MP Laura Farris, to propose a set of amendments to the Domestic Abuse bill, which would go some way to end the success of these claims.

Only the government can - and must – bring these claims to a real end. We need change at every stage of the criminal justice system, for women in relationships with perpetrators, and for those who had only just met. After our campaign, the government promised their own review of rough sex defences, to prevent perpetrators evading justice – and we do know they take this issue seriously. You might have seen Boris Johnson say the defence is “inexcusable” when Laura Farris asked him about this at PMQs last week. But we don’t know if his government is bold enough to come back with full proposals of their own. Real change is far from certain.

For now, we have firm proposals from Harriet, Mark and Laura: to make the law clear - that you cannot consent to serious injury or death, to stop women’s sexual histories being used against them in homicide trials and to introduce a specific serious offence of non-fatal strangulation. We want as many individual MPs to sign up to these as possible – so the government knows how wide the support is for far reaching change that only they can make.

And for MNers in Scotland or Northern Ireland, we will campaign for similar change for you. We’ve already spoken with Holyrood MSPs to kick this off in Scotland. For now though, all UK MNers can help us with change to the Domestic Abuse bill.

These “rough sex” claims have been working for fifty years, we need law change and more to fix this. Our chance to change the law can begin today, when MPs will discuss the “rough sex” amendments in parliament.

So this week we want all UK Mumnsetters: to sign and share our petition, and email your MP. We know from MPs that constituent emails make a huge difference and I know how formidable a force MNers can be.

Fantastic project, Fiona, something you, the FWR board and Mumsnet (as a company and as a phenomenon should be very proud of).

Just to add I got a note back from my MP the same day promising to look at the draft bill carefully. But they didn’t sound already familiar with these issues at all, so please do write to your MP to focus their minds. The model letter linked to on the we can’t consent to this website is great, it’s quick to do. Women deserve justice

Gosh this is appalling. I hope you manage to make changes with this campaign.

'the CPS confirmed they won’t prosecute violence where the defendant might say it was consensual''

Errr sorry.....WHAT???

How the fuck the CPS can legally or morally justify taking that position I can not understand. It’s horrific. I really, really hope that MPs will act on this opportunity to protect women.

@Wondersense

'the CPS confirmed they won’t prosecute violence where the defendant might say it was consensual''

Errr sorry.....WHAT???

Aye - the CPS's response makes it crystal clear that law change is needed on this, and it's parliament that must do it.

Utterly outrageous.

Harriet Harman has asked the Director of Public Prosecutions (who leads the CPS) to intervene in this - I so hope that the woman gets the best outcome in her case. But even if not, by sharing this CPS response, she will have made better outcomes for other women so much more likely.

A retired police chief (Stephenson?) wrote a book, serialised last week on Radio Four. On Friday they reached the part where he described a 12 year old child being groomed by a gang member with whom she had, in his words "consensual sex". So, a senior police chief doesn't know a child cannot give consent.

In the same episode, he mentioned crime statistics. It would be surprising if he said that when reporting the overall numbers of knife crimes, the police exclude from the total all victims with black skin, and all Moslem victims, wouldn't it? He didn't say that. But what he did say was that when police report total numbers of reported rapes, the exclude all victims aged over a certain age, and all victims under a certain age.

Elsethread, someone posts that of the 'Protected Equalities', there is only one group, namely Sex, excluded from protection against hate crime. (Hence, presumably, the loophole to threaten rape and murder of women .)

Who knew that Age, either young or old, was an official bar to even being counted on crime statistics?

As a matter of fact, I would suggest that possibly all complexity of different rules for different labels for harming people might usefully be dumped, in favour of a catch all offence.

Possibly something like 'wilfully or negligently causing fear or injury'. It would eliminate the vagaries of deciding between charges of manslaughter or of murder, and eliminate the excuse that "she liked being hurt". It would remove the medieval peculiar status of rape and make conviction simpler, if it was among other assaults involving fear and injury.

The penalty could be on a scale, from frightening by maliciously letting off fireworks next to a known battlefield survivor, through a damaging sexual assault of a kind which is technically not defined as rape, through to taking life.

At least one poster elsethread has mentioned enjoying some bondage games. That would not cause true fear or permanent injury. (If the relationship does not involve a respected 'safe word', it is no harmless hobby and does not merit protection under law for the assailant. If the submissive partner genuinely 'enjoys ' being seriously injured, they both know that the dominant partner has no defenc e under law, since no such 'consent' may be legally valid. Causing any injury would put the assailant at risk of being found guilty, just as an underage child's 'consent' to sex would. )

Incidentally the catch all offence would mean that a careless driver who killed or injured negligently and one who mounted the pavement as part of a gangland vendetta, could both be charged and convicted fairly easily. As could the care home attendants, for example, caught by secret cameras amusing themselves by wilfully terrorising an autistic girl who, they knew, had a horror of ballons.

Signed and will email MPs tomorrow. Thank you for all of your work on this hugely important issue. The notes about rate of successful defence and CPS position on prosecution are just plain mind blowing.

You are all brilliant.

We hear that MPs will discuss this in parliament TOMORROW at the bill committee.

Please please if you haven't already, tweet or email your MP this evening to ask them to sign up to these changes

example tweet
example email

Bump

BUMP - TODAY MPs will debate proposals to end the use of rough sex defences

please do get in touch with your MP

We will be watching very closely

Thank you!

I listened online to this morning's committee stage. With the last speaker - I guess he was a Government minister although I didn't catch his name - finally coming up with some much needed sense on the new clauses NC4 onwards. Although it was like an adult patiently explaining "grown-up stuff" to a bunch of enthusiastic but half-wit kids.

UPDATE - really good movement today from Alex Chalk, who is repping the Government on this.

As a reminder we want the Government's own proposals to match, and go further than those proposed by Harriet Harman and others. Getting wide support from MPs, from 6 parties, was key to that.

THANK YOU to all who wrote to MPs on this. The Government today gave real confidence they will act on this - but it's now over to them to confirm exactly how.

Here's our update: Jess Phillips gave really moving speech on the need for these amendments, and really proud she used our research to show how horrifically often these claims have been made.

Alex Chalk responded for the Government - and promised the Government will come back with its own proposals by Report stage of this bill. This is what we had hoped: that the amendments would keep pressure on the Government to make its own proposals, and today we heard more on the intent, if not yet the detail, of those proposals.

In particular, Alex Chalk said:
That Harriet Harman and Mark Garnier had run a formidable campaign and have engaged very closely and constructively with the Government.
It was “unconscionable for a defendant to say that the death of a woman, and it is almost invariably a woman, is justified, excusable, or legally defensible, because that woman had engaged in violent and harmful sexual activity, which resulted in her death, simply because she consented. That is unconscionable, and this Government is committed to making that crystal clear.”
The Government will make sure that their proposals go further than the scope of the Domestic Abuse bill, ensuring that (for instance) women who’d only just met the men will be protected, leaving no “wiggle room” for defendants.
Speaking of his time as a defence and prosecution barrister: “your job as a defence advocate is to exploit whatever wiggle room there is in the law – our job here is to close that down.”
And that the Government’s own proposals will “give practitioners – but more importantly people - the absolute clarity on what is and what is not acceptable.”
And gave assurance that the Government’s aim is to set out their approach to “rough sex” in time for the bill’s report stage.
Jess Phillips MP agreed with withdraw the “rough sex” amendment for “no consent to death” on the basis that the Government’s intent to make its own proposals by Report Stage, saying “I am very pleased to hear that we will have intention at Report, and I speak entirely for the hon member for Wyre Forest and for Camberwell & Peckham in that regard.”

More on this when we see what the Government do next, but this is a huge step forward.

Thank you for the update and for making all this happen!!! Fantastic achievement. Hope you are celebrating! Let us know as and when if we can further support on this.

It's really really really good - the best thing has been the MASSIVE positive response to the news.

Only the small matter of the Government delivering on what they promised, next.

Huge, vast, bottomless thanks to MNers for supporting this and helping us push.

This defence has precedent. For many years, wife murderers almost invariably got let off lightly by claiming they had discovered the wife was an adulterous slut, and in every newspaper report the same 'taunt' defence was used i.e. she admitted it and said she and the lover laughed at the husband's manhood and inadequate performance in bed , so the husband suddenly saw a mist, and without knowing what he was doing, he killed her. Judges, juries and the entire court were mainly male, and had total sympathy and belief.

There were even remarks along the lines that any man would do the same and couldn't be blamed, and that a man wasn't culpable for what he didn't know he did, during a 'red mist'.

Signed. It is absolutely appalling that this even needs a petition.

Signed and will e-mail.

I have emailed my MP. Thank you for raising this.

Signed and shared. It's shocking and desperate how we as a society (not just the UK but internationally) are going backwards so very fast on keeping women and girls safe.

By the way - people who complain that the feminist board is single issue, that's because thankfully other feminist issues like this one are posted and visible on all the boards. As they should be!

Signed, written to MP.

Link here for the truth about this campaign - Thank you Secret Barrister

Oh yes the ‘secret’ misogynist.

He’s right to draw attention to the fact that this does not change much.

But for this:

So the concern is entirely understandable. But here’s the difficulty: while, undoubtedly, unscrupulous guilty defendants will exploit this to try to avoid justice, there will also be some defendants for whom it is the truth.

Just as, on rare occasions, someone may genuinely walk into a door, there will be people engaging in BDSM who - with no intention of causing serious injury - cause the death of their partner.

And if they didn’t have that intention, they shouldn’t be convicted of murder

he can fuck right off.

It’s so fucking rare as to be negligible whereas 2 women are killed a week by their partner or ex partner and thanks to the patriarchal criminal justice system, BDSM gone wrong provides a popular defence.