Guilty verdict in Brianna Ghey case

[RoyalCorgi]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/20/brianna-ghey-found-guilty-murder

Not a surprise - it felt very clear-cut.

Of the roughly estimated 700,000 autistic people in the UK, how many of them have been found guilty of murdering trans girls with transphobia directly cited as a motive by a judge during sentencing?

Why are you and several other posters so desperate to defend this guy now that it has been overtly stated by a judge that transphobia was in fact a motive?

I know you often deliberately avoid the point to make your own point, but that’s not what I said is it?

I am not defending this boy, nor his comments. Show me where I did that. You can’t. What I actually did was to point out that to attribute his comments to “society’s transphobia” is incredibly shallow.

Who is defending him then? People have said that they agree he made dehumanising, transphobic comments. They disagree that it was a prime driver in this murder. And indeed it was considered secondary by the judge to Scarlett Jenkinson's violent fantasies and her wish to see a wide range of people suffer. The Cheshire police who investigated the case felt it wasn't the motive at all.

The sentencing uplift was always an option and Brianna was clearly a highly vulnerable child.

I know you often deliberately avoid the point to make your own point, but that’s not what I said is it?

I am not defending this boy, nor his comments. Show me where I did that. You can’t. What I actually did was to point out that to attribute his comments to “society’s transphobia” is incredibly shallow.

Well said.

In one way Hatched you are doing the excusing by putting blame for this boy’s comments on “society” rather than the likely myriad of complex psychological factors at play.

Of the roughly estimated 700,000 autistic people in the UK, how many of them have been found guilty of murdering trans girls with transphobia directly cited as a motive by a judge during sentencing?

Also murders of trans people are extremely rare, so it's hardly surprising there haven't been, unless you think there is some particular reason why autistic people should be involved?

Just on this point, I used to have an alternative provision company that took kids who had been expelled and were in PRUs onto our community garden and one of the things we requested was full disclosure on what they did to get kicked out of mainstream school, and what they had done since.

We were told most providers didn't even ask, and were sent a report so that we could prepare the sessions with that knowledge in mind. We spent hours discussing each session, how to manage each person and reporting back to the PRU every day on what had taken place.

It wouldn't surprise me if even if it had been given, that nobody read it and discussed with the staff how this person would be taught and monitored. Schools just don't have time or resources to do that sort of in depth work with troubled kids.

Just to repeat what I've said previously.

Warrington has historically had one of the bottom ten £ per pupil out of all English Councils. I believe this has improved slightly in recent years as the formula was re done which improved Warrington's situation slightly. Its absoluetly dire. I wouldn't be at all surprised if budgets were at play with regards to placing kids in wholly inappropriate settings.

In addition to this the Council is on the brink of bankruptcy due to financial mismanagement. There's technically enough coming in to cover services adequately. The problem is the Council thought they could be clever and invested money in private sector schemes to 'safeguard future income' (One was solar I think). Except these investments went tits up. One collapsed completely. So the money was lost. Taxpayers money. All cos some civil service knobber though it was a good idea, persuaded the counsellers and it got signed off. If Warrington doesn't end up with a section 114 notice with 18 months, I'll be staggered. The net result is that services are being cut to try and balance the books in a rush. Cuts that wouldn't have to be made, if they'd not tried to be clever dicks.

If you want an idea of how badly run the whole council is, there was a local bin strike recently. Not just for a week or two. From October to the week before Christmas. The council took the union to court for striking illegally. They lost. Three days later the strike was magically settled.

All these things are not going completely unnotice (the bin strike particularly I think will stick in memories)

I would really not be surprised at strange results at the local elections in May, due to these various issues that perhaps go against national trends.

I know all councils have massive issues with management but Warrington really is putting in a good bid for the Most Incompetent Council.

Warrington council is an absolute joke. The bin strikes were particularly horrendous. We had to pay privately to avoid rubbish piling up but there are a few houses locally who still have bags and bags of rubbish outside. There were problems with rats in the local area.
Funding is constantly being cut. Our area is overgrown, the drains aren't being cleared leading to areas of standing water on the roads, the paths are dirty and inaccessible.
We have been promised a transit site for travellers for years to prevent illegal encampments; apparently there is funding set aside for this, yet nothing has happened in regards to this and the council are still going bankrupt despite £2m sat in the bank for this.
The council don't listen to the local people. Time and time again there have been petitions against certain things and yet the council gives the green light to build monstrous warehouses without the infrastructure behind it to cope with the increased traffic.
And I'm not sure how much say she has on the matter but I'm not keen on the MP. She doesn't speak for me.

I've read this morning on twitter that a man had warned the council and schools who were involved with Brianna regarding his own daughter telling them that a child would be killed unless they got their safeguarding policies sorted out. Sadly it fell on deaf ears and here we are.

There are definite concerns over the funding of the council, but at the same time all of those in charge will still keep their jobs and "lessons will be learned".

Currently I'm just seeing a culture generally (both public and private sector) or people just not doing their jobs properly (sometimes deliberate) and not seeing any punishment for doing so. It's not difficult to pass on the information about the murderer's previous incidents, but no one really cares, they'll all keep their jobs.

It really is a complex case, and a number of factors have led to what's happened. Interestingly for a number of posters who want to focus on one thing, they're not saying much about the case, just self-projection and ME, ME, ME.

The problem I have with the uplift in sentencing is that transphobia was a secondary driver and theres clear evidence that it would have been someone else if they had turned up or Brianna hadn't been available.

Brianna was on the list because they stood out because they were trans. It was also why they were vulnerable.

But where would this be, if the victim had been a girl?

Why were the others on the list? What was it about them, that made them stand out as targets? Would there be an uplift in sentencing if they had been victims?

This is relevant in terms of the fact, that its effectively saying that these kids aren't equal - one has more value or social capital than any other potential victim who this girl had in her sights.

We can't really argue the idea that its somehow a deterrant, because why don't we do the same for other groups of kids who stood out / were particularly vulnerable?

No one is going to ask for a sentencing uplift for 'the smelly kid' who gets murdered or the 'ginger kid' who gets murdered. That isn't going to get labelled as a hate crime. It seems a fundamental misunderstanding of more generalised school bullying tbh. I'd argue that if you are going to do uplifts for hate, then it shouldn't just be restricted to a limited list of prescribed identities, but simply associated with a clear concept of non-conformity/disadvantage/particular social vulnerbility and power and control dynamics.

I CAN understand an uplift if its a PRIMARY motivating factor whereby someone is sought out exclusively because of their identity. As in the ONLY people on the list were trans. But this isn't the case. Its explicitly stated that it was a SECONDARY factor. This is someone with a fascination with murder looking for a suitable victim and theres always going to be a similar process of finding 'the other' for whatever reason and they are always going to be vulnerable.

We don't know who else was targetted and a potential victim, but I do think the existance of knowledge that Brianna wasn't the first option and that there were others potentially in the mix is highly relevant to this particular case. Its somewhat frustrating.

I don't think this is a 'downplaying' of transphobia to state this either. Its about recognising the complexity of the case and that theres a few difficult issues at play. Transphobia was present.

Thats why I say the issue here isn't really trans per se. Its the vulnerability that trans produces (and demostrates that any kid who is trans needs to be viewed in various ways through a safeguarding lens) but its not transphobia as the single driver and it has the effect of blinding everyone to the issue of the other children who this girl was considering who were obviously also vulnerable in their own right for some reason.

I'd also say that there's questions about picking up on social cues - another potential victim didn't take the bait because they saw red flags. Brianna didn't. Why was that? Especially considering the known comorbity levels of autism in the trans community. And this is especially curious knowing the other guilty party is autistic. There's a whole bunch of questions about how autistic kids are being diagnosed and supported within Warrington associated with this case.

I find it somewhat counter productive to just write this case off as a 'hate crime' and due to transphobia for that reason, which a bunch of activists are absoluetely desparate to do, so they have their 'perfect victim' poster child. This is in part to close down some of the more difficult and contenscious conversations about safeguarding this is throwing up.

Brianna wasn't just vulnerable because they were trans and that needs to be highlighted. They were vulnerable because their needs were not being identified and suitably risk assessed because of various failures in safeguarding more generally and if we box this as a hate crime, thats also easier to drop off the radar. The council can go, "oh well, its cos transphobia lets blame The Daily Mail" etc etc rather than having a good hard look at their handling of the case and including, controversially, perhaps how social transitioning in schools is handled.

There are MANY conversations around this that are not happening. Kids themselves can not express the impact on them freely. Nor are we fully exploring whether all kids are properly understanding whats going on - noting how seem to be under the impression that you can biologically change sex - and the specific understanding levels amongst certain groups like other autistic kids.

It doesn't sit well with me to be caught in a trap of over simplifying or conventiently pigeon holing this particular case so we can all move on to the next horror news story.

Its not just two individual children to blame here. There's clearly a whole pile of institutional issues here as well. But again its easier to demonise the female killer (which is almost somehow more evil than any other male killer) and the autistic male (who is just such an awful cliche) in some pretty piss poor prejudices and stereotypes which other in their own right, rather than talk about the safeguarding of children.

There isn't a cat in hells chance of any lessons being learnt.

Thats the depressing thing.

Its just a race to cover your own backside as quickly as possible and hope that the public and press forget the case as quickly as possible.

This is where I lament the loss of the local press holding local government to account.

The problem I have with the uplift in sentencing is that transphobia was a secondary driver and theres clear evidence that it would have been someone else if they had turned up or Brianna hadn't been available.

I ended up listening to the judge's sentencing yesterday as I don't want to read the media stuff. The judge was talking about whether to use higher or lower of two possible baselines for the minimum term. Transphobic motivation would be one possible reason to uplift, but so would sadistic behaviour. The judge mentioned both, but sadistic behaviour as primary (driven by the girl but the boy knew about it and went along with it), transphobic comments as secondary.

My understanding from what she said is it sounds like some uplift would have been made for the transphobic contribution either in the baseline or in aggravating factors. Which is fair enough, he was. In the real sense, not in the acknowledging sex exists cry wolf sense.

That doesn't mean the judge was saying it was primarily a transphobic murder, she was clear that it was primarily driven by the girl's sadistic desire to kill, and transphobia was a secondary motive particularly on the part of the boy in the case of this particular victim. It could easily have been another victim and been homophobia.

Hope I'm paraphrasing accurately enough, I'd recommend anyone to listen to what the judge actually said, I thought it was very clear and fair.

Yes, I use the term is quotes because it's the term authorities use unironically in full knowledge that they won't do anything and won't change.

Exactly. The judge was very good and clear and covered the things being talked about here, but people clearly haven’t watched it. I agree that people should actually watch the judgement.

Generally the definition of hate crime works when the victim is not known to the perpetrator and then it becomes clear that it is the motivation behind the crime.

But when the victim is known to the perpetrator there's usually a lot more going on.

We don't hear other cases where for instance a man has referred to his victim victim as a "bitch" and then sentencing refers to misogyny as a secondary factor.

I think judging by this case 3 men are killed each week, 2 women killed each week, 1 trans person every 7 years.

Generally the definition of hate crime works when the victim is not known to the perpetrator and then it becomes clear that it is the motivation behind the crime.

Just watch the judgement. Eddie didn’t know Brianna; that’s exactly what happened in this case.

This is a huge issue across all SEND settings.

And CAHMS services are stretched beyond comprehension.

And not one party is talking about it.

There are going to be many more cases where children with particular needs are not receiving the correct help leading to tragedies in the years to come.

Interesting article.

I agree that there should be radical changes to child online access via phones.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brianna-ghey-scarlett-jenkinson-murder-social-media-b2490172.html

That doesn't mean the judge was saying it was primarily a transphobic murder, she was clear that it was primarily driven by the girl's sadistic desire to kill, and transphobia was a secondary motive particularly on the part of the boy in the case of this particular victim. It could easily have been another victim and been homophobia.

Yes, there was an allegedly gay boy who he and his male friends called a "nonce" who was also on the list.

Just watch the judgement. Eddie didn’t know Brianna; that’s exactly what happened in this case.

That's a good point. He met Brianna for the first time at the bus stop.

I share Esther Gheys concerns about what children and teens can access online. She is also really honest that yes she is talking about the stuff Scarlett and Eddie were accessing but she is also concerned about the sites Brianna was accessing (pro Ana, self harm, etc) and how she had little control over this and how it made Brianna suffer.

It's interesting that a lot of tech leaders don't allow their children social media access.

I'm surprised that no one seems to be talking about how Brianna's ASD and ADHD diagnoses made her incredibly vulnerable. Anxiety, social struggles and difficulty making friends, being 'too' trusting, not recognising people's ulterior motives ,being quite innocent and naive, really wanting to make friends......

To me these things made her an easy target and are much more relevant than her being trans.

I agree although its all interelated because her ASD and anxiety made Brianna much more prone to feeling the wrong sex/in the wrong body and I would have thought all the SM accessed by Brianna will have reinforced this. Its so insidious. I think her mum has acknowledged that and the difficulty with having control and oversight over that too.

I am not sure if anyone has linked this today of Brianna’s mother talking to Laura Kuenssberg. She is compelling because of her compassion for the parents of the killers, the voice she is giving to the need to help children mentally, and the need to protect them from harm on the internet, and also because of how she does not hate the killers, and how harmful hate is to the person who feels it, though she said she cannot forgive them.

Regarding the killer Eddie’s motivation being a hate crime against a transgender person, Brianna’s mother said that she thought it was a factor but that she thought Eddie was a ‘hate-full’ person, and his ‘hate-fullness’ would have found an outlet on anyone. This is just my paraphrase though, from memory, from about 14 minutes in.
Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001w2s8