These cases always take me back to November 2003 and the murder of a friend, Julia Pemberton and her son Will (my son's school friend) by her husband, his dad. (Fortunately, the older sister was away at university at the time). I was practicing as a midwife and had just attended a birth, calling my husband to say I was on the way home. He informed me of our friends' murders.
I'd known Julia as a 'school gate mum', but also, we played badminton together. Our boys were 15 and the school (that is the children there) were severely affected. As the news filtered out of the appalling circumstances of the murder, I wept often - not least for my son and his friends who had to experience this close loss - a boy, a friend, murdered by his own dad.
It is worth looking up the details as it is one of the worst cases of a woman being ignored - Julia had been warning the police for more than a year that her husband was threatening to kill her.
I was not a close friend, and so was shocked to learn that Julia, this well educated (ironically she was a Health Visitor who dealt professionally with 'domestic violence') financially well off, gentle woman had been abused by her husband for so long. That even with her knowledge and connections, she could not save herself. I am so glad that her brother Frank Mullane never let the police get away with the mishandling of this case - his work since to advocate for women like his sister is so important.
Julie - you so clearly articulate what’s had me grinding my teeth about the reporting of this murder all week. The perpetual use of the word “tragic” alongside a seemingly happy family photo centering the killer.
It’s not a tragedy, he chose to murder his wife and daughter. The most selfish act a human can enact on another.
Those children falling through ice before Christmas, that’s a tragedy.
This was cold blooded murder that did not happen in a vacuum. As you say without scrutiny to the backstory of what was probably, as identified by Prof Jayne Monckton Smith a pattern of controlling behaviour, the public learn nothing. The dots are not joined up. These femicide killings and family annihilation murders are happening week in week out. But no, most times they are framed as isolated incidents and no wider risk to the public. (Mass shootings often start with domestic murder before the killer goes on a public rampage is a fact also rarely mentioned).
I have no idea as to the legality/due process of what will or will not be disclosed to the public about anything that happened or was known about their relationship prior to the shooting, but why can’t police or media outlets give a safety signposting message of where to go for help or reporting concerns about an individual or a situation you maybe worried about. Public awareness of what constitute coercive control and domestic abuse is still stuck in the 1970s in my experience.
Well done as usual spot on - personally I would like to see an info graphic of the stages of coercive control leading to femicidei n every doctors surgery, women's clinic and in the popular media. Whilst strangulation is ore comon I also think complaints about domestic violence need to be considered when issuieing gun licences - like they should not be granted if any DV allegation or incident on record.
Thank you, Julie, for putting into such eloquent words what I have thought and, on occasion, said. These cases of men wiping out their families - so often including daughters - have not been covered for what they are: a gigantic, brutal mantrum at the end of a series of smaller, but still brutal, mantrums. The man's suicide is just a final "up yours" to the people left behind who will never get the full closure that seeing the bastard man tried and (hopefully) convicted of murder. (I say "hopefully" because it is very easy to succeed in a plea of diminished responsibility and have the crime reduced to manslaughter with a small sentence handed down).
I don't know how to stop the act of leaving a man carrying the risk of fatality to the woman and her children (as an aside, there are many cases where the children were killed first so that the woman had to live her final moments with that knowledge), but I do know that the reporting can change very easily if there is the will to do so. A man who kills his family is nothing but scum, and it is beyond time this was properly reflected.
My own father threatened to kill me with a shotgun when I was 16 years old. Fortunately my grandmother took me in for my last two years of high school, otherwise I would have ended up on the street and who knows what would have happened. Predictably my stepmother blamed me for my father's escalating violence because if it was my fault, then she could justify staying with him. However with me out of the picture to vent on, my father threatened to kill her a year later, and she finally divorced him. My stepmother was a lawyer and yet she put up with my father's violence for years before she finally left. BTW my stepmother was incredibly abusive towards me as well, so I had little sympathy for her and still don't. But she did not deserve to be abused either.
As I age, I have become cynical about the possibility of great sweeping social change on the issue of domestic violence. I believe that social protections and laws and attitudes only take us so far. It really is up to individual women to fight back directly and be willing to support other women in fighting back as well. I understand the multiple powerful pressures which cause women not to fight back, not to leave their abusers, not to step forward and support each other etc., etc. But inevitably it is up to us women to protect ourselves and our children, because the current socio-economic-politcal unrest is bound to get worse. Which of course escalates lashing out and controlling behaviors all the way around.
Maybe it is a tribal thing or maybe age, but lately I feel very close to my own native ancestral line of women who just a few generations ago would have gutted anyone who attacked them or their children. I personally believe that is the kind of determination and attitudes we need to develop. Every woman has to make her own decisions about how to fight back and there are multiple ways to do so. But I think that many women are so afraid of acknowledging and facing their own inner violence that they would rather be martyrs to the violence of men than dare to show the world how powerfully violent they themselves can be. I mean really , what female animal in nature will not fight back viciously if she or her young are threatened? We have been 'civiilized' into being victims and convinced into believing that if we effectively fight back we are not 'good' women anymore. That is the real tragedy to me, that so many women's entire identity is wrapped up in being 'good', they would rather be killed than think of themselves as 'bad' for fighting back.
I want to be clear that I am not blaming women for being attacked! I am only pointing out that abusive men might be incentivized to become a bit more self-regulating if they knew there was a good chance that the woman they abused would seriously harm them the first chance she got.
Road kill. We can't disrupt the myth of "happily ever after" so we look away. If we face the reality of domestic violence and treat it like the public safety threat it is, we strip away the romantic gauze of denial that keeps girls and women in their places.
Interesting that the English speaking world seems behind Spain and Latin America in acknowledging and addressing femicide. Overt machismo may be easier to confront than a post feminist facade.
Of the 522,000 registered gun owners in England and Wales, over 95% are male. So it follows that when it comes to gun-driven family annihilation, it’s inevitably a man thing.
I agree with you on all your points about Pattison, Julie, but I think the term “Family annihilators” was coined by Northeastern University criminologists James Fox and Jack Levin. The term used to annoy me as a academic buzzword, catch phrase because , like the term "Domestic Violence" it deflects attention away from male violence. Rebecca Dobash a Scottish anti-male violence academic was very clear about how she disapproved of the term D.V. because it covered up or misnamed MALE violence and I agree with her. But by now the term has gotten so ingrained it's hard to stem the tide. Back in the early Seventies the term D.V. was promoted by some social workers to avoid offending or hurting the feelings of men who were often in rabid denial when confronted about their violent behavior. We radical feminists were outnumbered in our assertion that male violence should be identified. But other women thought that their work on behalf of women would be resisted and hampered if men felt threatened. Yet men always feel threatened when made to look at their own behavior.
Such a recognisable pattern. I arrived in a country town once (Australia) to find it in mourning after a man had driven himself and 2 kids into the harbour. Piles of flowers and tributes to a good family man, a footy club hero etc. I asked around and people - o so sad - thought he might have been depressed. In this case he tortured his wife by leaving her alive. It’s exactly a copy of another case of a man driving his children into a dam. Police turned themselves inside out trying to prove it was an accident.
There are so many narcissistic men who can pass as caring for their family to those outside. In fact a family only exists to validate him and to act as a background to show how superior he is and how he 'knows best'. There is no genuine feeling or love for them as individuals. If the facade of his superiority is threatened he'll do anything to prevent that including murdering them all.
Its coercive control. And the femicide or familicide is the ultimate act of control. Just so happened that this interview was recently released. It fits perfectly to your article.
Jan, thank you for answering my questions. A few further points:
- Would you be happy for fathers to enjoy the same virtual immunity from prosecution for infanticide, as currently pertaining to mothers (in the UK, at least)?
- How do you imagine I'm trying to 'coerce' people? I'm just presenting my views, as you are.
- Even after birth a baby isn't 'viable' in any meaningful sense. Medical intervention is only one form of intervention.
- Your absence of empathy for men who commit suicide (in the UK, 3-4 times more men than women) is remarkable, you transform it into 'violence by men' rather than showing any human concern for them.
- "Sexual crimes, in and out the family are overwhelming committed by men." Whenever I read the word 'overwhelming' in gender matters, it's always a nonsensical claim. For the evidence on the gendered nature of sexual crimes, I refer you to pp.51-7 of our manifesto https://cafpuk.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/279a5-221128-j4mb-manifesto.pdf.
- William Collins backs up all his points with research. I take it you won't bother to read the book?
Julie, it was, of course, predictable that you'd seek to make capital out of this case.
Let's look at more common events, shall we? We know from William Collins's 'The Empathy Gap' that:
- even after excluding the 210,000+ unborn children killed every year in this country by their mothers - 10+ million since the passing of The Abortion Act (1967) - more children are killed and harmed by their mothers than by their fathers; and
- women are rarely prosecuted for the crime of infanticide (the killing of children under 12 months of age)
Julie, would you join me in wanting to see more women prosecuted for infanticide?
These cases always take me back to November 2003 and the murder of a friend, Julia Pemberton and her son Will (my son's school friend) by her husband, his dad. (Fortunately, the older sister was away at university at the time). I was practicing as a midwife and had just attended a birth, calling my husband to say I was on the way home. He informed me of our friends' murders.
I'd known Julia as a 'school gate mum', but also, we played badminton together. Our boys were 15 and the school (that is the children there) were severely affected. As the news filtered out of the appalling circumstances of the murder, I wept often - not least for my son and his friends who had to experience this close loss - a boy, a friend, murdered by his own dad.
It is worth looking up the details as it is one of the worst cases of a woman being ignored - Julia had been warning the police for more than a year that her husband was threatening to kill her.
I was not a close friend, and so was shocked to learn that Julia, this well educated (ironically she was a Health Visitor who dealt professionally with 'domestic violence') financially well off, gentle woman had been abused by her husband for so long. That even with her knowledge and connections, she could not save herself. I am so glad that her brother Frank Mullane never let the police get away with the mishandling of this case - his work since to advocate for women like his sister is so important.
I often think of the daughter who was left...
Julie - you so clearly articulate what’s had me grinding my teeth about the reporting of this murder all week. The perpetual use of the word “tragic” alongside a seemingly happy family photo centering the killer.
It’s not a tragedy, he chose to murder his wife and daughter. The most selfish act a human can enact on another.
Those children falling through ice before Christmas, that’s a tragedy.
This was cold blooded murder that did not happen in a vacuum. As you say without scrutiny to the backstory of what was probably, as identified by Prof Jayne Monckton Smith a pattern of controlling behaviour, the public learn nothing. The dots are not joined up. These femicide killings and family annihilation murders are happening week in week out. But no, most times they are framed as isolated incidents and no wider risk to the public. (Mass shootings often start with domestic murder before the killer goes on a public rampage is a fact also rarely mentioned).
I have no idea as to the legality/due process of what will or will not be disclosed to the public about anything that happened or was known about their relationship prior to the shooting, but why can’t police or media outlets give a safety signposting message of where to go for help or reporting concerns about an individual or a situation you maybe worried about. Public awareness of what constitute coercive control and domestic abuse is still stuck in the 1970s in my experience.
Well done as usual spot on - personally I would like to see an info graphic of the stages of coercive control leading to femicidei n every doctors surgery, women's clinic and in the popular media. Whilst strangulation is ore comon I also think complaints about domestic violence need to be considered when issuieing gun licences - like they should not be granted if any DV allegation or incident on record.
Thank you, Julie, for putting into such eloquent words what I have thought and, on occasion, said. These cases of men wiping out their families - so often including daughters - have not been covered for what they are: a gigantic, brutal mantrum at the end of a series of smaller, but still brutal, mantrums. The man's suicide is just a final "up yours" to the people left behind who will never get the full closure that seeing the bastard man tried and (hopefully) convicted of murder. (I say "hopefully" because it is very easy to succeed in a plea of diminished responsibility and have the crime reduced to manslaughter with a small sentence handed down).
I don't know how to stop the act of leaving a man carrying the risk of fatality to the woman and her children (as an aside, there are many cases where the children were killed first so that the woman had to live her final moments with that knowledge), but I do know that the reporting can change very easily if there is the will to do so. A man who kills his family is nothing but scum, and it is beyond time this was properly reflected.
Great article as always Julie!
My own father threatened to kill me with a shotgun when I was 16 years old. Fortunately my grandmother took me in for my last two years of high school, otherwise I would have ended up on the street and who knows what would have happened. Predictably my stepmother blamed me for my father's escalating violence because if it was my fault, then she could justify staying with him. However with me out of the picture to vent on, my father threatened to kill her a year later, and she finally divorced him. My stepmother was a lawyer and yet she put up with my father's violence for years before she finally left. BTW my stepmother was incredibly abusive towards me as well, so I had little sympathy for her and still don't. But she did not deserve to be abused either.
As I age, I have become cynical about the possibility of great sweeping social change on the issue of domestic violence. I believe that social protections and laws and attitudes only take us so far. It really is up to individual women to fight back directly and be willing to support other women in fighting back as well. I understand the multiple powerful pressures which cause women not to fight back, not to leave their abusers, not to step forward and support each other etc., etc. But inevitably it is up to us women to protect ourselves and our children, because the current socio-economic-politcal unrest is bound to get worse. Which of course escalates lashing out and controlling behaviors all the way around.
Maybe it is a tribal thing or maybe age, but lately I feel very close to my own native ancestral line of women who just a few generations ago would have gutted anyone who attacked them or their children. I personally believe that is the kind of determination and attitudes we need to develop. Every woman has to make her own decisions about how to fight back and there are multiple ways to do so. But I think that many women are so afraid of acknowledging and facing their own inner violence that they would rather be martyrs to the violence of men than dare to show the world how powerfully violent they themselves can be. I mean really , what female animal in nature will not fight back viciously if she or her young are threatened? We have been 'civiilized' into being victims and convinced into believing that if we effectively fight back we are not 'good' women anymore. That is the real tragedy to me, that so many women's entire identity is wrapped up in being 'good', they would rather be killed than think of themselves as 'bad' for fighting back.
I want to be clear that I am not blaming women for being attacked! I am only pointing out that abusive men might be incentivized to become a bit more self-regulating if they knew there was a good chance that the woman they abused would seriously harm them the first chance she got.
Road kill. We can't disrupt the myth of "happily ever after" so we look away. If we face the reality of domestic violence and treat it like the public safety threat it is, we strip away the romantic gauze of denial that keeps girls and women in their places.
Interesting that the English speaking world seems behind Spain and Latin America in acknowledging and addressing femicide. Overt machismo may be easier to confront than a post feminist facade.
Of the 522,000 registered gun owners in England and Wales, over 95% are male. So it follows that when it comes to gun-driven family annihilation, it’s inevitably a man thing.
Exactly. Depression can drive you to destroy yourself, not people you love.
I agree with you on all your points about Pattison, Julie, but I think the term “Family annihilators” was coined by Northeastern University criminologists James Fox and Jack Levin. The term used to annoy me as a academic buzzword, catch phrase because , like the term "Domestic Violence" it deflects attention away from male violence. Rebecca Dobash a Scottish anti-male violence academic was very clear about how she disapproved of the term D.V. because it covered up or misnamed MALE violence and I agree with her. But by now the term has gotten so ingrained it's hard to stem the tide. Back in the early Seventies the term D.V. was promoted by some social workers to avoid offending or hurting the feelings of men who were often in rabid denial when confronted about their violent behavior. We radical feminists were outnumbered in our assertion that male violence should be identified. But other women thought that their work on behalf of women would be resisted and hampered if men felt threatened. Yet men always feel threatened when made to look at their own behavior.
Such a recognisable pattern. I arrived in a country town once (Australia) to find it in mourning after a man had driven himself and 2 kids into the harbour. Piles of flowers and tributes to a good family man, a footy club hero etc. I asked around and people - o so sad - thought he might have been depressed. In this case he tortured his wife by leaving her alive. It’s exactly a copy of another case of a man driving his children into a dam. Police turned themselves inside out trying to prove it was an accident.
There are so many narcissistic men who can pass as caring for their family to those outside. In fact a family only exists to validate him and to act as a background to show how superior he is and how he 'knows best'. There is no genuine feeling or love for them as individuals. If the facade of his superiority is threatened he'll do anything to prevent that including murdering them all.
Its coercive control. And the femicide or familicide is the ultimate act of control. Just so happened that this interview was recently released. It fits perfectly to your article.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2CQDXKuxsxITefDPAjE8wL?si=lVTZsfdCSIuL0DpN-HpQ3w
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-64676923
This man was sentenced to life in 2001 for killing his wife and two children. He is already being considered for 'open prison'.
Jan, thank you for answering my questions. A few further points:
- Would you be happy for fathers to enjoy the same virtual immunity from prosecution for infanticide, as currently pertaining to mothers (in the UK, at least)?
- How do you imagine I'm trying to 'coerce' people? I'm just presenting my views, as you are.
- Even after birth a baby isn't 'viable' in any meaningful sense. Medical intervention is only one form of intervention.
- Your absence of empathy for men who commit suicide (in the UK, 3-4 times more men than women) is remarkable, you transform it into 'violence by men' rather than showing any human concern for them.
- "Sexual crimes, in and out the family are overwhelming committed by men." Whenever I read the word 'overwhelming' in gender matters, it's always a nonsensical claim. For the evidence on the gendered nature of sexual crimes, I refer you to pp.51-7 of our manifesto https://cafpuk.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/279a5-221128-j4mb-manifesto.pdf.
- William Collins backs up all his points with research. I take it you won't bother to read the book?
- it's long been known that women are more likely to be abused by a female partner than by a male partner, my blog piece https://j4mb.org.uk/2022/12/09/are-women-more-likely-to-be-abused-in-lesbian-or-heterosexual-relationships/ shows the ONS data. How do you reconcile this with your "women good, men bad" narrative?
Julie, it was, of course, predictable that you'd seek to make capital out of this case.
Let's look at more common events, shall we? We know from William Collins's 'The Empathy Gap' that:
- even after excluding the 210,000+ unborn children killed every year in this country by their mothers - 10+ million since the passing of The Abortion Act (1967) - more children are killed and harmed by their mothers than by their fathers; and
- women are rarely prosecuted for the crime of infanticide (the killing of children under 12 months of age)
Julie, would you join me in wanting to see more women prosecuted for infanticide?
Mike Buchanan
Party leader
JUSTICE FOR MEN & BOYS