We Can't Consent to This: all the "sex game gone wrong" defences

[WomanDaresTo]

Hello - doing this under my semi-public NC.

On FWR we've been grimly collating the stories of women killed by men who claim they've died in a "sex game gone wrong". Given Natalie Connolly's killer's sentence has received rightful outrage, and given even the excellent Harriet Harman thinks this is an unusual defence, I thought it time to pull them together in one place:

www.wecantconsenttothis.uk

It's not a fun read, of course. I know it's not also complete - will keep updating but do of course let me know of other cases, and mistakes.

But perhaps we can help get to a place where women are not deemed to have consented to bodily harm, or to death.

and unmumsnetty Christmassy hugs to the families and friends of these women.

if anyone wants me I'll be having a humungous

fucking

It seems to me Broadhurst is having it both ways:

• She was so drunk that my beating didn't kill her, the alcohol did. Therefore no murder.
• She was sober enough to consent to the bottle being inserted. Therefore no GBH/assault by penetration.

Yes, this! It's such a contradiction. And to me, it just shows that people (judge/jury) were looking for a way to let him off rather than convict him by not addressing the glaring contradiction.

Happy new year vipers!

We've so far got a retweet from Harriet Harman, and tweets from Harriet Wistrich and End Violence Against Women coalition and glosswitch and moar excellent women.

I am hangover free today so have set us up on twitter

BTW if anyone fancies digging into local news archives or otherwise getting involved in this, do pm me.

May 2019 be the year when this defence gets a lot less useful to violent men

Was great to see a Twitter account appear this morning! Good work, Dares.

Thank you Sonic! Apparently the young people are all on Insta but we might need an Appointed Social Media Controller [no pay] to deal with that too.

Not sure if this case should be added to the list
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/10/bristol-grime-artist-solo-45-andy-anokye-on-trial-for-22-rapes

Quentin we will keep an eye on that case, thank you.

I've posted this on Natalie Connolly thread in petitions

An update - and not a cheering one. The attorney general has responded to requests to review the sentence of the killer of Natalie Connolly. He has declined.

We are confident that Harriet Harman will not let this lie - and we will continue to campaign on this until this is no longer the 'correct' approach by the legal system.

You can see the other women we've found on wecantconsenttothis.uk - we continue to hear more stories.

The letter from the AG is Harriet Herman's - you can see here tweet here:

mobile.twitter.com/HarrietHarman/status/1084861078599811073

This has prompted me to read the sentencing remarks from Broadhurst's trial. They are absolutely sickening. I couldn't read to the end and I have quite a strong stomach.

If a woman cannot consent to sex if she is very drunk, how can she consent to being beaten and assaulted?

Just caught up with this thread now but excellent work on pulling these cases together. The stories are heartbreaking. Glad to hear that Harriet Harman might be on the case.

Just goes to show how little the law protects some women and how readily it can be used to protect their porn soaked abusers and murderers.

You would imagine if it’s so easy for these ‘sex games’ to go wrong, there would be more female perpetrators. Its blatantly not consensual and these powerful, violent men are using to get away some really atrocious crimes.

I've just read the Twitter feed and someone posted an article by JB's lawyer (Tuckers Solicitors). It is meant to offer a retort to those like Harriet Harman who have questioned the actions of the CPS and judge in this case. But it doesn't answer what to me are the important questions raised by this case:

So what if Natalie consented at the outset. Where is the evidence that she continued to consent? And that she consented to each of the things that were done to her? It is basic stuff (term 1 law school) that consent to sexual activity needs to be continuing. If consent is withdrawn it is rape, even if consent was initially given?

Was she capable of consent to sexual activity given she was so impaired by drug and alcohol? It's hard to reconcile the accepted account of her mental and physical state with the view that she consented to all of JB's actions, and had capacity to do so?

Can consent ever extend to effectively consenting to die?

Even if the CPS was legally and strategically right to drop the murder charge what does this say about our criminal justice system's treatment of women and the role of the jury in these cases? And ditto, if the judge was right in law then we need to change the law.

This is the article:
www.tuckerssolicitors.com/john-broadhurst-found-not-guilty-of-attacking-natalie-connolly/

You would imagine if it’s so easy for these ‘sex games’ to go wrong, there would be more female perpetrators

Absolutely spot on.Hmmm, I wonder why we don't see that...

There are so many men who are into masochistic sex and yet women don't seem to accidentally kill men. How odd

Thanks for the article, TheCuriousMonkey. You're absolutely right - none of these important questions about consent have been answered at all.
I have some thoughts:

1. He answers the question 'why would anyone want a bottle in their vagina' by, essentially, saying 'people like all kinds of kinky things.' There was supposedly evidence found at the scene which showed she liked these kinds of activities (do we know for sure, though, that she searched for the websites? It's also plausible that Broadhurst found these websites which is what gave him the idea in the first place.) But this ignores two important things.
   a) it doesn't matter if Nathalie liked having bottles put in her vagina if she was incapable of consenting. She apparently couldn't sit upright or speak properly. How on earth did she consent to this activity?
   b) In UK law, you may like all kinds of activities as much as you like, but if they are intrinsically harmful you can't consent to them. In the Brown case, a group of gay men enjoyed being whipped and having hot wax poured on them. Their enjoyment and consent did not mean it wasn't a crime. Even if Nathalie wanted a cleaning bottle inserted inside her, it's evident this is such a risky activity liable to cause harm that she couldn't consent to it. I certainly see no difference in the risk between this and pouring wax on someone.

2. Why did she wish to be spanked? Well, because she was like Anna from 50 shades of grey! She cheerfully showed her family her bruises.
   However

3. As you point out, CuriousMonkey, the fact she has enjoyed and consented to being spanked does not mean she consented on this occasion. In fact, the degrees of the spanking were a great deal more serious than what had been inflicted in the past. What needs to be proven, surely, is not that she enjoyed being spanked, but that she consented to the spanking on this occasion.

4. I have no idea how the expert evidence established that Nathalie was not drunk enough to consent. Broadhurst himself said that she had inflicted the head injury during sexual activity - this head injury was caused by her being so drunk she fell over. So you can be so drunk you collapse and destroy your eye socket, and then not be able to get up, but at the same time still able to consent? Really? Furthermore, her ability to consent is put in doubt by Broadhurst saying she was talking gobbledygook and not making any sense. She wasn't able to hold her head up. This doesn't sound like 'compos mentis' to me.

Yeah, it's still super messed up to me, and all the answers seem to be obtusely missing the point. No one is clutching their pearls at Nathalie enjoying weird sex acts, or being spanked - the concern is that she wasn't able to consent to these things, and that these acts were so extreme they ended up causing her serious harm (which under UK law you can't consent to anyway.)

These are all excellent points. Just put this on twitter but previous consent to "this sort of thing" evidence in other cases has been:

-receiving texts threatening sexual violence
-talking to a previous boyfriend about bdsm
-owning french maid outfit
-being a prostitute
-man on trial saying she liked it (most common)

It is all hard to read but i've attached the "previous consent" evidence the judge talked about in sentencing of Natalie's killer - note the vast bulk of it is on Broadhurst's say so

IANAL but the text from Broadhurst's solicitors looks like a long string of opinions to me, rather than facts.

The part about "computer evidence" is terrifying. There is a bloody MASSIVE difference between fantasising about something and actually doing it. I've known people google all sorts of weird stuff out of simple curiosity. Fantasies that stay in your head don't actually cause you physical harm or pain. Lots of people might imagine or talk about certain situations without ever wanting to carry them out in real life. A bit like a man playing Call of Duty probably doesn't actually want to be shot at.

one is clutching their pearls at Nathalie enjoying weird sex acts, or being spanked

Quite the contrary, I'm now terrified that all the friends I have who I know are into a bit of light spanking or BDSM could be brutally murdered with impunity.

How on earth can any of that be classed as consent?! That is ridiculous!

The part about "computer evidence" is terrifying. There is a bloody MASSIVE difference between fantasising about something and actually doing it.

This.

I google all sorts of weird shit, especially if I come across a word I don't understand I held off from googling blueberry porn the other day which came up on feminist twitter as It was clear whatever it is it was just going to be gross but curiosity is niggling away at me as never heard of that before and I heard enough that I can't wrap my head around it. None of that computer history indicates a sexual interest it's a 'wtf seriously guys?'

I can't remember the names of the men involved, but there was a case of "erotic cannibalism" where I think it was ruled that the fact that they victim said they consented doesn't matter, as it's illegal to murder and then eat people. The only reasons I can see for the same logic not being applied to the cases being discussed here are a. the victims are all women and b. because of heavy porn exposure there are some men who have come to believe that women love pain and find pretty much anything being shoved into our vaginas to be arousing (think of the men who don't understand that we don't experience tampon use as arousing or sexual in any way). Some men seem to think that pain and humiliation are inherently sexual and arousing things for women, and I'm not sure some of them see any limits on that at all. How else do you explain anyone arguing that a woman would find having a spray bottle shoved into her vagina to be a sexual activity that she would ask for and enthusiastically consent to?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-46892417
Jailed for nine years.