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.

I'm not aware of anyone denying it exists.

Generally they object to it being used as a reason not to discuss the issue. If anything, declaring anything and everything transphobic probably does more to make people discount it than anything GC people say.

I said its complex and I stick by that. I don't think its comparible to blaming a rape victim for wearing a skirt.

Women who are murdered tend to be the victims because of social reasons which make them more vulnerable. This might be lifestyle related (prostitution for example - usually driven by economic reasons) or because they are killed by a partner and have struggled to leave them (because they can't access a shelter or have been victims of emotional or financial abuse and don't feel able to escape).

In these cases, they have been murdered by a murderer and we should look at what drives the murder but there's also lots of reasons why we should look at the circumstances of the victim to find opportunities where the victim could have found help and changed their circumstances so they were less at the mercy of these killers too.

That's not blaming the victim for who they are or what they did. It's asking the question - could society have done things differently to make them less vulnerable. Has society failed them in some way too? That's a valuable question. And it's worth examining because it also says a lot about the killer too and how they select a victim and how you can maybe tackle the problem from the point of eliminating issues relating to the murderer.

In this case the killers were looking for a vulnerable victim. It could be one of a number of victims. Why Brianna was more vulnerable than the others remains a valid question - could Brianna have been safeguarded better? As is why do you have two teen killers in the first place? Was there a safeguarding failure to identify just how troubled and dangerous they were?

If these were 30 year olds we'd not have the same questions. It'd be a different case. The fact they were all teens is a question that doesn't go away.

Perhaps the authorities are acting to try and reduce likelihood of copy cats etc.

I would find it extraordinary if a lesbian or gay man was killed by two people saying they wanted to see if it xxx xxx a man or a woman and people didn’t say that was homophobia.

It's a complex case, it would be interesting to know what made the other 4 children on the list stand out, but the very fact that other children were targeted means that hate crime can be ruled out.

There are other complexities at play. It seems that the mother and father are at odds over how to remember their child (judging by various social media posts). And stations like ITV seem to be covering this very heavily as opposed to other murders, which receive a lot less attention. I would argue that whilst the transgender status of the victim was not the primary cause of the murder, it appears to be playing a major role in the reporting.

So cross this morning to hear some apologist for them on the news about how one is autistic and one has selective mutism. As if that excuses anything.

I don't, genuinely, understand why this is in the gender discussion of munsnet.

The two culprits tried to murder a different child two weeks before this murder. There was a plot to kill one out of five potential candidates. Four out of five were not transgender.

We tend to talk about the safeguarding of children a lot in this section.

Trans activists have blamed people like JK Rowling for this child’s death on Twitter. Go and ask them why they’re doing that and you’ll see why it’s relevant to discuss this here.

Teenager on teenager murder is sadly getting fairly common, especially stabbings. most cases get a tiny fraction of the media coverage.

I think it's a combination of Briannas trans status and the ferocity of the murder and behaviour of the 2 who killed Brianna that has created all the media coverage.

I have no doubt that if the CPS and the police and some elements of the media could have pinned this as a transphbic hate crime they absolutely would have.

It's a complex case, it would be interesting to know what made the other 4 children on the list stand out

The defence barrister for Boy Y said in court that most of them had annoyed Girl X in some way or were a perceived threat to her relationship with her boyfriend. Including Brianna, who apparently had known her boyfriend since childhood.

I have no doubt that if the CPS and the police and some elements of the media could have pinned this as a transphbic hate crime they absolutely would have.

This. It's not exactly something they shy away from normally.

It is not specific to this case though. Police refer to every trans victim AND perpetrator as ‘especially vulnerable’ regardless of individual vulnerabilities.

Though all victims of intentional crime must have been vulnerable by definition or they wouldn’t be a victim of an intentional crime. That includes 45 year old healthy straight white men on high salaries living in a comfortable house in an otherwise safe community.

It is not specific to this case though

But my post was, the thread of the conversation was and the police officer quoted was, all being specific to this case. And in this specific case there was vulnerability, it wasn’t just part of an oft-repeated trope and I think it’s inappropriate to claim as such.

It's about addressing these failings with more mental health support for young people, for mindfulness to be introduced into the syllabus

Not more mindfulness! There is no evidence that mindfulness as practiced in school is useful. But it wastes a lot of time.

Too often these interventions are based on tiny studies, with no control, in tightly managed situations, and any possible effect evaporates when transferred to real world situations.

One thing I couldn't understand was has a girl X didn't have any blood on her and I wondered whether she had washed everything in the washing machine that night. She certainly clever enough to do that. It just seemed that if the boy was the only one stopping, and poor Brianna was stabbed so many times, that the girl X would have some blood on her.

I also can't get past the fact that the handwritten notes on planning the murder were left on the bedroom floor. Surely if you had come back from either witnessing or performing a murder, you would get rid of any evidence like that?

What was also terrifying was that the girl and boy didn't seem to go home in any kind of heightened state. They clearly thought they would get away with it, but seem to have been quite calm. I can't imagine how awful it must be for their parents to think of speaking some that night without realising what they had done.

Two things were discussed in court determinedtomakethiswork about the top examined by the Police possibly being different to the top girl X was wearing during the crime. That, perhaps, girl X had multiples of the same top and a duplicate article of clothing was presented or that the top presented to the Police was only similar to the actual top worn but was actually a different article of clothing. No conclusion was reached.

A horrible and pointless crime that ended a young life and ruined the lives of many.

I wish Brianna’s mum’s lots of success in her campaign for better mental health in schools.

There really is something horrible about what the usual suspects (India et al) are saying here.

We know the teenagers had a list of victims so they're really saying "it's JK Rowling's fault that Brianna was picked rather than one of the other potentials" as if it wouldn't have been quite as bad if one if those was picked instead.

Why are comments referring to IW by their correct sex being deleted? Like all ideologies, no one has to believe in them if one doesn't want to. Why is gender identity ideology any different?

It's very hard to make any generalisations from this case, I think, partly because we don't know very much about the upbringings and backgrounds of the two murderers.

When Blake Morrison (who wrote a book about the Bulger case) was interviewed on Today this morning, he said he thought that, while the internet/social media played a part in the decision to kill (girl X had watched lots of violent content), the bigger factor was that the two of them acted together. Neither of them would have committed murder on their own, but they egged each other on.

Similar cases include the Bulger case, the Parker-Hulme case (in New Zealand) and the 19th century case of brothers Robert and Nathaniel Coombes, who killed their mother, though only one was convicted.

It seems to me that although stabbings are, sadly, now common, cases such as these, which involve two people cold-bloodedly planning a murder, are exceptional. The peculiar and twisted psychology that leads two children to commit such a crime is hard to understand. I'm not at all convinced that better mental health policies would make any difference.

Jolyon is an utter buffoon and also boasted about battering a fox. Why anyone would pay him for advice is beyond me.

It seems to me that although stabbings are, sadly, now common, cases such as these, which involve two people cold-bloodedly planning a murder, are exceptional. The peculiar and twisted psychology that leads two children to commit such a crime is hard to understand. I'm not at all convinced that better mental health policies would make any difference.

I agree, not in this case, but I think they would help other children.

the bigger factor was that the two of them acted together. Neither of them would have committed murder on their own, but they egged each other on.

And then added to that was the social media trail they left enabling the police, the court, and then to public to see the lead up to the crime. That's a new element that technology brought to this.

They will be named at sentencing next year.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-67783963