Invisible Dead Men

  WEP Istanbul Convention demo - Copy

Men Killed by Their Partners

The thrust of this post is putting names, and case histories, to the statistics of men killed by their partners. You can skip straight to that, below, if you wish (see the list of 78 names, here or below, or jump to the case histories). However, my motivation for addressing this topic is the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, which, as I write, has just passed its 3rd reading in the House of Commons. More of that shortly. Here I attempt to shine a light on, not just the numbers, but the names and case histories of men’s deaths at the hands of their partners.

In doing this I am acutely aware of apparently committing the same sin as those whom I criticise, namely identity politics. One goes wrong as soon as one speaks of “men” as an undifferentiated slab of people. The male MPs who vote in favour of the Istanbul Convention are hardly to be identified with the dead men discussed below. The correct perspective on these matters is to refer only to “people”. But what is one to do when attempting to redress the gross imbalance which now exists? Let me emphasise, then, that the concentration on male victimisation herein is not intended to hide or minimise female victimisation. But the latter is already very well represented. And no one is attempting to gain political leverage by denying it.

The bald statistics of men’s deaths through partner violence are met with incredulity in some quarters, almost as if there were no real dead humans behind the numbers. And if one presses the point, there are knee-jerk responses at the ready, the first of which might be, “ah, but these are gay couples, aren’t they” – anything to avoid the implication that a woman might be the killer. No, the overwhelming majority of male deaths at the hands of a partner or ex-partner relate to women killers. The next excuse will probably be, “but the poor woman was finally hitting back after years of one-way abuse by her partner”. Well, maybe. It happens. But those cases are also a very small fraction of the total. This is demonstrated by the case histories I have gathered together. The overwhelming majority of men’s deaths due to partner violence relate either to mutually warring couples or other situations in which culpability cannot merely be re-assigned wholesale to the victim. And there are certainly many cases in which the man has endured severe violence at the hands of his female partner for years prior to eventually being killed. Examples of such cases are reviewed explicitly below. But first, some context…

Ratification of the Istanbul Convention

If you are not acquainted with the Istanbul Convention, you might like a short detour here or here.

Today, Friday 24th February 2017, the Bill to Ratify the Istanbul Convention came before parliament for its third, and final, reading within the House of Commons. On the previous Wednesday the Prime Minister, Theresa May, reiterated the  government’s support for the Bill (rather unusual for a Private Members Bill, I believe). Mrs May made reference to her strong support for initiatives to protect women from violence, citing her record as Home Secretary. Well, I can vouch for the truth of that. As Home Secretary she ushered in the ‘coercive control’ enhancement of domestic violence legislation following a process which put the “con” in “consultation”.

On Wednesday the Prime Minister reminded us of the statistics regarding domestic violence and sexual assaults against women. She was quoting the CSEW data, though she did not say so – and of course she made no reference to domestic violence against men. She is, after all, the woman who was happy to be photographed wearing the infamous “this is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt. In that she differs little from the rest of parliament.

One MP even stood up, and, in a pointed reference to Philip Davies, said he hoped that no member would (I paraphrase) attempt wrecking amendments to talk the Bill out. Reliably, Mr Davies did indeed do his level best with a 91 minute speech – and apparently he was not the only Conservative backbencher to table amendments. Nevertheless, the Bill passed its 3rd reading by 138 votes to 1 – predictably.

The Bill now moves on to the House of Lords for further consideration.

On International Men’s Day, Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, SNP MP for Ochil and South Perthshire, declared, “I am very proud of the SNP’s women’s representation, which increased from one to 20 in last year’s elections; we are 36% women but 100% feminists on these Benches”. Not surprisingly, then, when the SNP’s Dr Eilidh Whiteford, who presented the Bill, thanked those who have helped get the bill to this point, there was cheering and applause from the SNP benches.

Ah, women adherents of a feminist ideology promoting a Bill for the protection of women and girls only – who could possibly think there was anything sexist in that?

Not “film star” Emma Watson, who supported the bill.

And not the 138 out of 139 MPs of both sexes who voted in favour of it. When the issue of domestic violence against men was raised, it was met with the usual response: that domestic violence is overwhelmingly against female victims – let us not forget that, we were instructed. The survey evidence that one in three victims of DV is a man, and the evidence of the body count that one in five partner deaths is a man, somehow gets forgotten whenever this claim is made. But, more fundamentally, the numbers are not the issue – it is the empathy gap which is the issue. Is anyone claiming that domestic violence against Jews is unimportant, because such cases are only a very small proportion of the total? Of course not, because that would be hateful and immoral.

The Women’s Equality Party (WEP) Campaign

Many have argued that ratifying the Istanbul Convention is no big deal because the UK already has virtually all the required provisions in place. But if this were so, why have the women’s groups been lobbying so hard for its ratification? Here are some of the things the WEP web site states,

The Istanbul Convention helps guarantee that vital services don’t disappear. This infrastructure will allow women to thrive, rather than fight to survive.

Ah, poor women in the UK, fighting to survive. Homeless women may fight to survive, yes – but not Emma Watson or the officers of WEP, I think. The UK is not Syria. But it’s the first sentence of the quote which matters – it’s about money. The Bill will create a legal obligation for the UK government to fund organisations whose services are geared to the support of women and girls. No one knows what the cost of this obligation will be. But we know which ideology will be strengthened by the injection of yet more cash. WEP also write,

When a government ratifies the Convention, they are legally bound to follow it. So, if the UK Government ratified the Istanbul Convention, it will have to take all necessary steps set out to prevent violence, protect women and prosecute perpetrators. The UK Government will also have to ensure that there is sufficient monitoring of violence against women.

Bit sloppy, that. They mean “monitoring violence against women and girls”. From which you can conclude that monitoring violence against men is not important – well obviously – but also, and this is what should perturb even feminists, for God’s sake, violence against boys is equally unimportant.

This quote refers to the WEP’s “three Ps”: prevent, protect & prosecute. It refers exclusively to the protection of women and girls from men and boys, by preventing the violence of men and boys, and prosecuting men and boys. Got a problem with that? You need re-educating, my friend. Have no fear, there’s provision for that under the auspices of the Convention.

Here’s one of the many things that our legislature has just voted for,

Parties shall take the necessary measures to promote programmes and activities for the empowerment of women.”

Does that say “equal empowerment of men and women”? No, it does not. If – or, rather, when – the Bill is ratified, this will be the law. What does it mean? It will mean whatever the dominant lobby says it means.

Amongst many other things, one strategy, once the Convention is ratified, will be to use it as a lever to implement compulsory Sex & Relationship Education (SRE) in schools under a syllabus which the women’s lobby will have been given carte blanche to define. Indeed, the Convention requires such ‘education’ – and not just in schools and universities. The current approach to SRE emphasises the vulnerability of girls, and the threat to them posed by boys. It promotes a negative view of males (entirely consistent with the demo photograph which heads this post). Once the Istanbul Convention is ratified, this profoundly sex-biased approach will deepen further, despite the concerns now being expressed by more male-friendly voices.

WEP’s Misleading Partner Death Data

The WEP web site, under the Istanbul Convention, includes the following statistics,

This legislation is needed because on average two women in England and Wales are killed every week by a current or former male partner

The UK government signed a commitment to seeing through the Convention five years ago, but the government has failed to honour its promise. In that time, 616 women have lost their lives to gender-based violence.

Both these statements are incorrect. The latest published ONS data on partner homicides are given in Table 1 for the last five published years.

If you like round numbers, then it is, in fact, fairly accurate to say that two people in England and Wales are killed every week by a current or former partner. However, they are not all female. Averaged over the last 11 years, 88 women are killed by their partners annually, compared with 24 men. The last published data (for year 15/16) was particularly bad for men, with 28 men being killed by their partners compared with 77 women. Thus, every fortnight, , of the four victims of partner homicide, one will be a man.

This transmogrification of male victims into female victims is familiar to anyone following the CPS’s VAWG reporting approach. Here it is common practice to interpret VAWG, ostensibly violence against women and girls, as “a category of crime”, but not as a category of victim, as it literally appears to be. Complaints about this practice by a substantial body of people have thus far yielded only an inadequate response. The practice is deeply pernicious, and actually mendacious despite legalistic contortions to the contrary. It serves its adherents in two ways: it inflates the figures for (apparent) female victimisation, and it effectively hides male victimisation whilst permitting a disingenuous claim that male victimisation has been covered. Both these serve the interests of those wishing to reinforce a particular perspective on perceived disadvantage, which a wicked polemicist such as myself might regard as propaganda.

The WEP claim that 616 women have lost their lives to gender-based violence in the last five years suffers from the same gender conflation. The actual figure over 5 years for England and Wales, from Table 1, is 432 women – or 530 if you include men. I can only rationalise the WEP figure of 616 if the whole of the UK is included, and then only for male and female victims combined. Using Scottish homicide data from here and Northern Irish homicide statistics from here the number of partner / ex-partner killings in these two nations combined over the same five years as in Table 1 were 18 men and 56 women, so 74 in all. This brings the total partner killings over 5 years in the whole UK to 604 – close enough to the WEP figure – but this is again the total for male and female victims, contrary to the WEP claim.

Table 1 Partner/Ex-Partner Homicides (England and Wales)

Year (April to March) Male victims Female victims
2010/11 20 98
2011/12 18 89
2012/13 16 78
2013/14 25 86
2014/15 19 81
Total over 5 years 98 432
Average 19.6 86.4

For the totality of homicides, men are both the majority of victims and the majority of killers. (Indeed, having immersed myself in homicide cases recently, one does not have to do a count to conclude that the majority of killers are men – it is very obvious. In England & Wales, 9% of killers are women, in Scotland the most recent figure is 14%. I could make other observations about the demographic of killers which is starkly obvious without requiring a count – but I’ll leave that to the reader to explore).

Twice as many men are killed by homicide overall as women (averaged over the last five published years, there were 367 male victims of homicide per year in England and Wales and 182 female victims).

Whilst I would not wish to minimise the seriousness of domestic violence, the proper perspective on partner killings is that the numbers are small. Yes, every death is a tragedy, but nevertheless partner killings are the minority of homicides, and the number of homicides (530 in E&W) is small compared with the number of suicides (in 2013 in E&W there were 5,158 suicides, of which 78% were men or boys). So, the number of partner homicides is roughly 2% of the number of suicides.

And then there is the total number of deaths per year – which is prodigiously huge (just over half a million in E&W) because everyone dies eventually. But this would be a spurious comparison for that very reason. Of interest is the number of what may be termed ‘premature’ deaths, which might be defined as deaths before the mean longevity. Taking deaths before reaching 84 years old as a guide, the excess of male premature deaths over female premature deaths is about 37,000 men or boys per year in the UK. The top four reason, in this order, are: cardiovascular diseases, cancers, drug or alcohol abuse and suicide. Most of the excess male deaths, around 26,000, are due to the first two causes – physical health issues.

I am merely trying to put these issues in perspective. Whilst male suicide is now, finally, receiving some attention (if not actual funding), the bulk of the male excess deaths is ignored in favour of concentrating on women’s health issues by the very organisation which should promote concern. And yet we are talking about a 37,000 death differential here, compared with the very modest numbers of deaths due to partner violence, an issue which receives a very great deal of attention – such as via the VAWG programmes and the Istanbul Convention.

The Invisible Dead Men Made Visible

Last International Women ‘s Day, the ever-popular Jess Phillips, MP, read out a list of names of women killed by their male partners. She was able to do so because the list and case histories of women killed by their partners is maintained by Women’s Aid via a programme know as the Femicide Census, based on information collected by Karen Ingala Smith and recorded in her blog Counting Dead Women, and assisted by the likes of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP and Deloitte LLP. Well, you can hire expensive consultants if you have Women’s Aid’s income. I, on the other hand, have had to make do with what I can find by trawling the newspapers and media pages. So, embarrassingly, I cannot give you a complete list. But find below my best endeavours so far, incomplete though the list is. Here are the names of 78 men killed by their female partners in England, Wales or Scotland in recent years. Almost all the examples relate to the period 2011 to 2016. Summaries of the case histories of all 78 deaths can be found here.

  1. Alan Allan 34, Stabbed to death
  2. Jonathan Baines 44, Stabbed to death
  3. James Knight 26, Stabbed to death
  4. Jason Capper 45, Stabbed to death
  5. Jolyon Wray 46, Stabbed to death
  6. Tanveer Iqbal 33, Strangulation
  7. Karl Bloxham 39, Stabbed to death
  8. Shenol Erol Ali 32, Stabbed to death
  9. Mark Hopes 45, Beaten to death
  10. Stephen Burton 50, Stabbed to death
  11. Alexander Duncan 59, Stabbed to death
  12. Glyn Evans 58, Stabbed to death
  13. David Edwards 51, Stabbed to death
  14. Lee Gillespie 26, Stabbed to death
  15. Norasab Hussain 33, Stabbed to death
  16. Damon Searson 23, Stabbed to death
  17. Marc Hastings 43, Stabbed to death
  18. Phillip Nicholson 22, Stabbed to death
  19. Richard Brown 47, Stabbed to death
  20. Louis Spires 68, Suffocation
  21. David Butterworth 38, Stabbed to death
  22. Graham White 38, Beaten to death
  23. Norman Bruce 64, Stamped to death
  24. Peter Hedley 49, Beaten to death
  25. Kyle Farrell 21, Stabbed to death
  26. Robert Dobinson 33, Stabbed to death
  27. Thomas Groome 54, Blunt instrument
  28. Mark Cannon 44, Stabbed to death
  29. Ashley Meadowcroft 18, Stabbed to death
  30. Jamie Belshaw 36, Stabbed to death
  31. Alan Easton, Stabbed to death
  32. Scott Blackwood 30, Tortured to death
  33. John Fletcher 53, Stabbed to death
  34. Leonard Pollen 58, Pills & wrist slashing
  35. Geraint Hughes 60, Stabbed to death
  36. Geoffrey Carter 58, Fire/smoke inhalation
  37. Majid Khan 15 and Anum Khan 8, Arson (siblings of intended target Amjad Khan)
  38. Scott Dunne, Stabbed to death
  39. Peter Davegun 42, Beaten to death
  40. Barry Wilkins 71, Stabbed to death
  41. Czeslaw Zawadzki 58, Stabbed to death
  42. Martin Ackroyd 50, Suffocated and strangled
  43. Richard Sherratt 57, Battered to death
  44. Darren Orrett 32, Stabbed to death
  45. Peter McMahon 68, Beaten to death
  46. Nusrat Begum 36, Fire (intended victim was Dawood Hussain)
  47. Lukasz Slaboszewski 31 Stabbed to death
  48. Kevin Lee 48, Stabbed to death (she also killed non-partner John Chapman)
  49. Michael Kerr 30, Stabbed to death
  50. John Sampford 83, Strangling
  51. Michael Moss 48, Beaten to death
  52. Gareth Matthews 32, Stabbed to death
  53. Piotr Rafacz, Stamped to death
  54. Don Banfield 63, Unknown method
  55. Lionel Morl 49, Beaten to death
  56. Winston Fernandez 69, Beaten to death
  57. Sean Martin 21, Stabbed to death
  58. Alan Kopp 30, Stabbed to death
  59. James Dornan 33, “Glassed”
  60. John Whyte 50, Stabbed to death
  61. Edward Miller 20, Stabbed to death
  62. Colin Ballinger 66, Suffocated
  63. Ian Graham 51, Stabbed to death
  64. Alan Clinch 48, Stabbed to death
  65. Darren Dempsey 37, Stabbed to death
  66. Karl Jones 37, Blunt force beating
  67. Kevin Carter 30, Stabbed to death
  68. Paul Norfolk 77, Beaten with hammer
  69. Shaun Corey 42, Strangled / suffocated
  70. Carlos Vilela 45, Burnt alive (also crippling injuries to his daughters)
  71. Arunas Ramanauskas, Stabbed to death
  72. Martin Rusling 44, Stabbed to death
  73. Alan Meeking 49, Car crash
  74. David Twigg, Fire/smoke inhalation
  75. Kenneth Quy
  76. Carl Everson,41, Stabbing/stamping
  77. Andrew Oates 44, Hit with hammer
  78. Lakhvinder Cheema 39, Poisoning

In addition, here are 8 cases of attempted murder by a female partner, where the man was lucky to survive,

  • Douglas Patrick 70, Survived poisoning
  • Alexander Cameron, Survived stabbing
  • Leng Hie Tiong 38, Survived stabbing
  • Unnamed ex-husband, Survived stabbing
  • Richard O’Rourke, Survived stabbing
  • Stephen Watt 52, Survived stabbing
  • Andrew Lyle, 47, Survived being drugged, doused in petrol and set alight
  • Carl Gallagher, Contract killing went wrong

And finally, four cases of lesbian killers, or would-be killers,

  • Wendy Thorpe 42, battered to death by lesbian lover Tracy Ashfield
  • Lisa Ann Quigley 30, stabbed to death by lesbian lover Shazia Johnston
  • Leng Hie Tiong 38, survived stabbing by lesbian lover Chooi Cheung
  • Another lesbian killer was Alix Wilson, but it was not her partner she killed, rather she killed on behalf of her partner

All the above are addressed in the case histories.

Example Case Histories

Very brief case histories, and source links, for all the above cases can be found here. In the following sections I reprise a few of particular interest.

Alexander Duncan killed by Seka Richie

Seka Ritchie, 32, was convicted of the murder of Alexander Duncan in 2016. The remarkable aspect of this case is that Seka had previously been jailed for 12 months for stabbing Duncan in 2003. He didn’t seem to have any hard feelings towards her. He just said she was ‘a silly lassie’ for doing it. One can only regard Duncan as the silly one, especially as Seka Ritchie had been accused of four other assaults in Edinburgh between 2010-2013. She is one very violent woman. She proceeded to stab him again, this time to death, and no one really knows why.

David Edwards killed by Sharon Edwards

Sharon Edwards, 42, was convicted of the murder of her husband David Edwards. She stabbed him in the heart at their home after he lost his job. They had married only two months earlier in Las Vegas. She had beaten her husband throughout their relationship. Mr Edwards was on record as saying his new wife could “knock him out with one punch” and that she hit “rather hard”. She was described by others as “domineering” and “very jealous”. Mr Edwards, a criminal lawyer, was said to have been under the thumb.

Douglas Patrick killed by Jacqueline Patrick

Jacqueline Patrick, 54, was convicted of attempted murder of her husband. She put anti-freeze in his cherry Lambrini Christmas Day drink. Their daughter Katherine, 21, had encouraged her mother to spike the drink. When ambulance staff arrived, Jacqueline Patrick handed them a fake “do not resuscitate” note. A spelling mistake on the note, replicated by Jacqueline Patrick in a police test, confirmed she had written it. Mr Patrick spent several days in an induced coma before having to learn to walk and talk again during a year of rehabilitation. He had already survived an earlier attempt by his wife to kill him the previous October. Despite all this, Mr Patrick told the court he had not wanted to pursue a case against his wife and daughter and did not want to see them put in prison. In a statement he said: “I will never get over it. It broke me. I’m just a shell now. This was a person I was married to for over 25 years. A person I loved and love.” Codependency, anyone?

Fake Suicide Note

Louis Spires killed by Lynn Stallard

Lynn Stallard, 67, was convicted of the murder of Louis Spires, her partner. She smothered him with a pillow. Spires was disabled. The court heard Stallard had snapped after a fight and put a pillow over his head and sat on him. The couple had a volatile relationship for 18 years. Stallard had a previous conviction in 1988 for unlawfully wounding a previous partner. She had also received a police caution following an incident in which she struck Mr Spires with a poker, causing a burn and bruising.

Peter Hedley killed by Clare Humble

Clare Humble, 50, was convicted of the murder of Peter Hedley 49. She beat and stabbed him to death, tried to dispose of the body by burning but failed, and then buried him in Newburn Riverside Park with the help of a former boyfriend. Humble had previous for attacking her own elderly mother and a neighbour. The attack on her frail partner was extremely ferocious and grisly. Humble subjected vulnerable Peter Hedley to a sustained onslaught, smashing his face, stabbing him with broken crockery and causing horrific damage to his eye. The judge said, “This was a shocking trial and I don’t say that word lightly. You were Mr Hedley’s partner, you had been in a relationship with him for seven years and told the jury you and he saw each other as man and wife. Of all people, you knew how frail and vulnerable he was. He trusted you with his happiness and his life and you broke that trust. Only you know exactly what happened but it is clear from the expert evidence you attacked him brutally and over a long period. You punched and kicked him in the face, broke his cheekbone and ribs and left arm. You inflicted several cuts on his back with at least two broken pieces of bowl and possibly with a knife. You stabbed him several times with something sharp, you attacked his eye and maybe tried to gouge it out. You hit him with a heavy, round table top when he was already bleeding, at least three times. He must have suffered dreadfully before he lost consciousness. I am sure, after your initial attack, he would not have been able to resist you or defend himself.” Humble was branded a “practised and fluent liar” who had launched a brutal and prolonged attack on Mr Hedley.

John Fletcher killed by Caroline Loweth

Caroline Loweth, 49, murdered her partner John Fletcher 53 at her flat, stabbing him with an 8 inch long chef’s knife. She told the emergency services that he fell on the knife whilst peeling vegetables. She had a history of violence against John Fletcher who had made complaints before only to retract them and make up excuses for his injuries. The attack was the culmination of a considerable history of domestic violence. Loweth would regularly lose her temper and stab John. West Midlands Police said Mr Fletcher had made complaints against Loweth on several occasions only to retract them or give a false account about how he suffered injuries. Det Sgt Harry May said: “During this investigation it became quite clear that John Fletcher had suffered many extremely serious injuries at the hands of his partner. Fuelled by alcohol, Loweth would regularly lose her temper and stab John. In one of these attacks, John was stabbed through his bowel and had to undergo intensive surgery to save his life. The sad fact is that if he had followed through with these previous complaints he may still be alive.” I cannot help but add that if the police, and society generally, were as alive to male victims of DV as they are to female victims, John Fletcher might also be.

Scott Dunne killed by Alexia Heckles

Alexia Heckles, 35, was convicted for the murder of her partner, Scott Dunne, father of her child and former boxer. She stabbed him to death after telling him she was going on holiday to Spain without him. She got drunk then knifed Scott Dunne in the heart in the ensuing row. Police found her to have Mr Dunne’s blood spattered bank card hidden in her bra when they arrested her. Prior to the killing, neighbours said they heard so many rows through the paper thin walls, they became used to Heckles’ ‘loud angry voice for hour after hour’. A year earlier, Heckles had been arrested on suspicion of stabbing Mr Dunne in the neck with a smashed wine bottle. Although Mr Dunne told medical staff he had been attacked by his girlfriend, the case was dropped after he changed his story and said he had been injured when he was ‘jumped’ while walking home from a party late at night. Five months later Mr Dunne himself was arrested outside the flat after Heckles complained he had punched her several times in her bedroom. This case was also dropped after Heckles appeared to taunt Mr Dunne from the doorway of their flat as the officer took him away. He later told police: ‘She thinks she is the victim. She loses the plot sometimes.’ Heckles not only denied the murder but she refused to enter the dock to listen to the unanimous verdict being returned by the jury. The court later heard she had 41 previous convictions, and had served three jail terms for offences including, robbery, intimidating a witness, wounding and assault. Perhaps men should make more use of Clare’s Law?

Don Banfield killed by one or both of Lynette Banfield and Shirley Banfield

Lynette Banfield, 41, and her retired tax inspector mother, 65 year old Shirley Banfield, were convicted of the murder of Don Banfield but their convictions were later quashed because the court could not tell which of the two had done the deed. Mr Banfield disappeared 11 years earlier. No body has ever been found. Prosecutors said that shortly before his disappearance, he had complained of “assaults” which, they argued, were indicative of failed murder attempts by both women. He had also expressed concerns that “they would kill him”. The claim was that the two women killed Don Banfield, who had planned to start a new life without them, in order to get his retirement nest egg. Shirley Banfield was claimed to have enlisted the help of their daughter, Lynette, to dispose of bookmaker Don Banfield. Police never found a body, but the court heard how Lynette had written about disposing of a body in a creative writing notebook. In the book she described the smell of a corpse lingering in a car, and how glad she was when she scrapped it.

Edward Miller killed by Michelle Mills

Michelle Mills, 31, stabbed Edward Miller, 20, at least 24 times with such force that the handle of the knife broke away from the blade. Mills then waited 20 minutes before raising the alarm as her besotted partner lay dying on the living room floor of their cottage in the upmarket Leicestershire village of Scalford. The jury heard that minutes before the killing Mills had texted one of her 70 previous lovers and told him: ‘I still love you and always have. I’m sorry xx.’ In a second text she wrote: ‘I wish I’d never let you go xx.’ Moments later she took a kitchen knife and repeatedly stabbed Mr Miller to death as he sat drinking wine on their sofa. The jury heard that Mills was Eddie’s first serious girlfriend. He was 18 when they met, to her 29. Yvonne Coen QC, prosecuting, said ‘Michelle Mills was considerably older than her boyfriend and obviously had a good deal more life experience. She told police her 20-year-old boyfriend had been violent to her but the trial heard she had attacked previous partners. And Eddie had told his dad, Colin Miller, that Mills had previously pulled a knife on him. In fact she had previously attacked three other former boyfriends with a knife. Det Insp Lee Hill said: “Michelle Mills is a violent, self-centred and manipulative woman who was happy to portray herself as the victim of domestic violence at the hands of a number of her partners, including Eddie Miller.” At Lincoln Crown Court today, judge Michael Heath passed a life sentence on Mills and  described her as a ‘manipulative woman’ who had shown no signs of remorse.

Alan Clinch killed by Sandra Clinch

Four-times married Sandra Clinch stabbed her latest husband to death with a pair of dress-making scissors because he wouldn’t help her clean the house. She lashed out after he told her to ‘shut up’. Clinch was nicknamed The Hulk by neighbours because of her mood swings and violent temper, the court was told. They could hear her shouting and ranting at her husband at least once a week. Sandra was known to have a violent temper. Her family testified that she regularly lost her temper and attacked them, sometimes using household objects as weapons. Neighbours would often see and hear the couple arguing. A neighbour testified that ‘About once a week I would hear very one-sided, heated rows. Only one voice was heard, the voice of Sandra.’ He added that he closed his doors and windows because of the noise and the language used and described the defendant as ‘aggressive and scary’. The court heard that Clinch had joined her husband working at Homebase and their manager Michael Radford, described an incident when he saw Clinch attack her husband in the car park. Lisa Townsend, who lived next door to the Clinch family, described American car enthusiast Mr Clinch as ‘lovely, very helpful and hard-working’, but said he had become withdrawn lately. Withdrawn, eh? Absolutely classic.

Wendy Thorpe killed by her lesbian lover Tracy Ashfield

Tracy Ashfield, 43, used a concrete swan to batter her lesbian lover, Wendy Thorpe, to death at the home they shared following a row over money. Fragments from the ornament found in the victim’s body revealed the number of blows to have run into double figures. Ashfield then dragged her partner’s body to the bottom of the garden and covered it with pieces of wood, carrier bags and other items. The couple had been together for about four years. Ashfield had previously been violent to Miss Thorpe – causing injuries such as a broken foot – but was never convicted because her partner dropped the charges. Yes indeed, that’s what happens.

Conclusion

All male disadvantages are attributed by the feminists to “patriarchy hurts men too” and “toxic masculinity”. We are now at the stage where these insupportable sexist ideas are openly promulgated in debates in parliament. But in what way did patriarchy or toxic masculinity cause the deaths of the above men – and sometimes women – at the hands of appallingly violent women?

In ratifying the Istanbul Convention our legislature will declare that the dead men listed above do not matter. Almost no one in parliament will demur. Yet the flagrant sexism of the Convention and its VAWG antecedents would be obvious to a six year old. The reason is ancient gynocentric bias, now raised to the status of political obligation. And fear. When there is virtually unanimous agreement to something which is clearly wrong, the reason is fear. And when fear grips our rulers, totalitarianism is already in place.

The objective of the Convention is not actually the reduction of violence against women. That is merely its hook line. Its purpose is to enhance the power of the feminist movement, both through funding and through the explicit sanction it will lend to their programme – including, and especially, the vilification of masculinity. This is why the deaths of men are an irrelevance. Because the deaths of women are also irrelevant. The WEPs three Ps are actually just one P – Power.

12 thoughts on “Invisible Dead Men

  1. Douglas Milnes

    William, could you claify something for me, please? You state:
    “Indeed, having immersed myself in homicide cases recently, one does not have to do a count to conclude that the majority of killers are men – it is very obvious.”
    You quote some figures to support this conclusion. These figures, I presume, are the statistics for homicides which have convicted perpetrators. As we both know, there is a tendency to crimiinalise men more than women, which leads to an understandable partial reluctance by police to even persue cases where the perpetrator is thought to be a woman. So if 50% of homicides were perpetrated by women, we would still see something like 70% of convictions for homicides being male (I’m sure you can come up with a more accurte estimate).

    How many homicides are never prosecuted? It is reasonable to presume that a greater proportion of them are committed by women than the proportion of women convicted. If the number of unconvicted homicides (whether never solved by police or police thought they solved it but a court found otherwise) is fairly high, it might be reasonable to estimate that quite a lot of homicides are perpetrated by women.

    This is an aspect that occurred to me a while ago but I have never dug into the figures. It might be useful if you could look into it, as I’m sure you are already closer to the answer.

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    1. William Collins Post author

      To misquote Fermat, I have an answer to this question but this comment box is too small to contain it! I’ll put up a separate blog piece shortly to address it instead.

      Reply
  2. Douglas Milnes

    Before the second reading, I asked my MP to vote against the private bill. From my email on that occasion:

    “Let me make it clear that I want women to be protected. In line with our committments under the UNDHR, the EHRC and the UK’s current constitution, I also think our country should be equally concerned for the safety of men and children. Ratifying the Istanbul Convention will do little to add to safety for women in this country, it might in some cases harm the safety of women, men and children. Any additional measures that are needed for anyone’s safety should be applied through UK-specific laws adjusting UK-centric legislation, not by adopting cart-blanche bigotry and damaging ideologies. This is a case where we must throw the contaminated bathwater out, while keeping the baby safe.”

    I did’t have time to go into the issues with the Convention at that time and will be contacting my MP again. At THE VERY LEAST the sexist aspects of the Bill must be removed to comply with prior treaties and the government’s over-riding requirement to apply matters without discrimination as to sex.

    In actuality, as William Collins has already laid out, any UK Act based on the Istanbul Convention stands a chance of doing harm to women, as well as being restrictive to women’s choices. Nevertheless, the entire Act must be applied to men & boys equally to women & girls. The restrictions that will be applied is far more clearly against the country’s interests if applied to men but that must not stop us from demanding sex equality. The government will soon then have to change its mind and change the Act, for everyone.

    In a letter from my MP in February, she wrote “This Government remains committed to tackling violence against women and girls, and to ratifying the Istanbul Convention.” and “… I can report that the Government has made clear that it has carefully considered the Bill and supports its key principles, which place a duty on the Government to take all reasonable steps to enable us to become compliant with the convention, and require the Government to lay before Parliament a report setting out the steps to be taken to enable it to ratify the convention. I should make clear that there are areas which the Government has said it will consider more fully in consultation with the devolved Administrations, and return to at the later stages of the Bill.”

    I will be writing again, referencing this article and making it clear that I EXPECT my MP to represent me and all other males in her constituency and that, therefore, I expect her to ensure that any Bill passed, in relation to the Istanbul Convention or otherwise, protects men & women and boys & girls in equal measure.

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  3. Tom

    “Parties shall take the necessary measures to promote programmes and activities for the empowerment of women”

    ‘The empowerment of women’ is ambiguous enough to justify anything. In practice it’s going to mean more funding for women in business, more educational grants and scholarships, more women only networking events supported by the government, more targets and quotas, more internships for girls and so on. Whether that has anything to do with family violence, let alone reflecting the fact that men and boys are also victimized, is irrelevant. They are ideologues, and as you say it’s about power.

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  4. David

    Hi I’ve dipped into the Illustrated Empathy Gap and I must say I love it, as indeed I very much like the whole debate which goes on a round these “pieces”. When I get a bit more time I shall have to read it in earnest.
    One of many problems that we all face is our search for the Holy Grail. I strongly suspect that we each think that “the tipping point” we seek will come from our efforts. We should not allow ourselves to become disheartened by the facts that it will probably not be a single tipping point, our particular one, but that we have to be advancing on broad fronts, but there is little point in “attacking” strongholds. Playing cricket you do not bowl to a batsman’s strengths, you attempt to force him (or her) to play the shots he / she is not so good at. Playing rugby you play away from your opposition’s strengths, you avoid their strong scrummage, and play line-outs, or avoid their light-house and play scrummages. If they’ve got a match winner you try to mark him or her out of the game etc. If they win rucks, you don’t join! Thus buggering up the off-side structures that the English depended upon! We have really discovered that women have all the trump cards. In this deck of cards Queens are above KIngs. If we are not careful we will just go on attempting to prove that Kings are above Queens. I suggest we need to be almost entirely focused on “the outcomes for children.” Women’s abuse of children is virtually the same as men’s! That is the feminist’s main weak point. It is why we only hear of “2 women per week” and we don’t hear of 60 plus children – which means that a child is something like 3 times more at risk than his or her mother of lethal injury. And whereas there is something like £295 m available to help her, (victim and abuser alike! ) the child is completely dependent on its parent and Social Services who believe “all” mothers, Cafcass who will collude and judges in the family courts (and some lawyers) who will just agree with a mother’s claims “on the balance of probability” probably on the basis that it is the easier option and they will face less criticism by doing that! Child protection, safety of children, Cafcass, the children’s advocates. They all shy away from men! They automatically disbelieve men, and believe women. Pointing out the dangers to children that are built into these government run and financed system seems to me to be constructive and morally defensible and of interest to the long-term safety of children. .

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  5. William Gruff

    They mean “monitoring violence against women and girls”. From which you can conclude that monitoring violence against men is not important … but also … violence against boys is equally unimportant.

    Only female violence against boys, such as that of mothers towards their sons.

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  6. David Dodds

    Many thanks for the work that you do. It’s such a sad indictment of our government that male victims of female violence are totally ignored.
    Can I suggest that you reach out to Phillip Davies MP with this information? He seems to be a lone voice in Parliament trying to bring some balance to discussions on intimate partner violence.

    There is one other scenario which I believe is ignored when it comes to intimate partner/domestic homicide and that is cases in which the perpetrator and victim are male but a female has provoked the murder.
    The case of Antoni Robinson who was murdered in July 2010 seems to follow such a pattern. Mr Robinson’s daughters Ashleigh, 19 and Hollie, 16, persuaded their boyfriends Gordon Harding, 20 and Sacha Roberts, 19 to stab him to death in a domestic dispute over money and property.
    The girls were present at the scene of the crime and were therefore convicted along with their boyfriends, but the girls’ mother Joanne Barr who had recently split from Mr Robinson and was involved in the dispute faced no charges.
    I do wonder whether Joanne Barr was encouraging these young killers behind the scenes.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1354581/Teenage-daughters-murdered-antiques-dealer-father-row-money.html

    Reply
  7. James Murphy

    Wonderful work again! I am going to take it away and scrutinise your hard-won facts and figures, for which I thank you sincerely. Men are not asking for indulgence of their misdeeds, but they are sick of lies and deception! This argument has always been – not about identity politics – but about truth!

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  8. Groan

    I know I really should say something that adds to you piece but really I must once again thank you for bringing together the issues and evidence so clearly. As you say the forceful support for this is to cement in the current provisions of the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy. The provisions for specific funding for Women is actually “necessary” because the current earmarking of specific funding streams is actually contrary to the “Equality Duty” required of public authorities under the Equality Act. Thus governments have twice issued “guidance” and special funds under VAWG to counter the process whereby Councils and other Public Authorities change funding to reflect the evidence. From the specific women and girls services to more generic services or sometimes insisting Womansaid or Refuge services offer options for men. As you point out WAWG is sexism and is actually unlawful, though of course to be illegal it would need a court case.
    As you say the second big thing will be in education. To a large degree Schools themselves are in charge of sex or relationship education and this varies considerably in extent and content. Of course there are some feminist programmes and materials but no compulsion that makes these uniformly used. The ratification gives Gov. the job of changing this autonomy to compel schools to comply with a “national” programme.

    As you say most of the rest already is in place.

    Thank you again for this invaluable work.

    Reply
  9. Nick Langford

    Sometimes I wake up and think, wouldn’t it just be easier to accept the lies and the propaganda, and stop fighting, and become part of the huge, senseless, uncaring majority. After all, no one would notice, would they?

    And then I read a post like this one, about real people, with real children and real families, and I realise why it is necessary to keep repeating the truth, even when so few seem to want to hear it because one day, we, or our heirs, or their heirs, will prevail.

    Keep buggering on!

    Reply

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