Handbook on Sexual Violence (73 page)

(2007: 294)

More broadly, when discussing all the prostitute women who have been murdered during the past four decades, including Sutcliffe’s victims, he rejects victim-blaming explanations which focus on prostitutes ‘getting killed as a consequence of putting themselves in harm’s way’, and instead focuses on the failure of the police to keep vulnerable groups of women safe:

The police . . . collectively failed to police appropriately; collectively failed to deliver a service to one group within the community; and collectively failed to give to these women the protection of the state.

(2007: 96)

Wilson’s observations chime with key aspects of the analysis put forward in this
chapter, particularly the need to shift the focus from individual murderers to the wider socio-economic/cultural structures within which both victims and

perpetrators exist. Only when such wider structures are addressed will it be possible to challenge the dominant heteropatriarchal social order which sustains the male fratriarchy that has allowed violence against women to become normalised. Only then will it be possible to address the most serious fallout from that normalisation of violence – sexual murder.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Jennifer Brown and Sandra Walklate for their encouragement and helpful comments, and to Joe Sim, Steve Tombs and Dave Whyte for their support.

Further reading

For further reading on the topic of hegemonic masculinity and its relationship to the state, please see: Connell, R.W. (1994) ‘The state, gender and sexual politics: theory and appraisal’, in H.L. Radtke and H.J. Stam
Power/Gender
. London: Sage; Franzway, S., Court, D. and Connell, R.W. (1989)
Staking A Claim
. Polity Press. This book also contains a section on the subject of sexual violence.

For further elaboration on the phallocentric nature of law, please see: Smart, C. (1989)
Feminism and the Power of Law
. London: Sage; Smart, C. (1995)
Law, Crime and Sexuality
. London: Sage. For a detailed and thoughtful account of the Peter Sutcliffe case please see: Burn, G. (1984)
Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son: The story of the Yorkshire Ripper
. London: Pan Books. For an elaboration on the subject of serial killers and their victims – particularly prostitute women – please see: Wilson, D. (2007)
Serial Killers
. Winchester: Waterside Press.

Notes

1. See for example, the case of Richard Holtby in
   The Guardian
   , 21 June 2006.
   

2. Exemplified by Mary Ann Cotton, who was suspected of having killed 22 members of her family in the latter part of the nineteenth century (Adam, H.L. (1911)
   Women and Crime
   . London: T.Werner Laurie).
   

3. One notable exception is that of Karla Faye Tucker, executed in Texas in 1998
   

   (Herberle 1999: 1108).
   

4. Carol Ann Lee’s book
   One of Our Own
   (2010) presents a more forecful approach to the issues of Hindley’s agency.
   

5. In terms of domestic violence, national statistics consistently indicate ‘that on average,
   

   two women are killed a week ‘‘by a current or former partner’’ which ‘‘constitutes 42% of all female victims of homicide.’’ Additionally, the Council of Europe found ‘‘that domestic violence is the biggest cause of death and disability for all women under the age of 44’’ ’ (
   Guardian
   19 April 2006; Edwards 1989; Boyle 2005 in Ballinger 2009: 21). Moreover, ‘approximately 80% of all domestic abuse victims are women, and ‘‘around one in three women who arrive at inner-city accident and emergency hospital departments have suffered domestic abuse’’ ’ (
   Guardian
   20 June 2007 in Ballinger 2009: 21). Furthermore, domestic violence accounts for a quarter ‘of all violent crime’ (Itzin 2000: 357) and only 37 per cent of men would reject the possibility of using violence against their partner (Mooney 2000: 38).
   

   Thus, despite numerous attempts to demonstrate that women are guilty of domestic abuse on a par with men, this is easily disproved by statistics alone – there simply is no research data available to date which demonstrates equivalence in the number of men who have lost their lives or been seriously injured as a result of a violent attack by their female partners.
   

6. When the Ripper killed again the chanting changed to ‘Ripper 13, police 0!’ (cited in Bland 1992: 240).
   

7. Remy applies the concept of fratriarchy to men who ‘attempt to preserve something
   

   of the atmosphere of the stag night well into middle age. Some . . . simply never really grow up, and remain psychologically trapped in the fratriarchal men’s hut for the rest of their lives. In rebellion against female values, particularly those associated with the mother. .. the fratriarchal fraternity ... usually has a markedly delinquent character, including a penchant for gratuitous violence’ (Remy 1990: 45).
   

8. For an elaboration of police culture, particularly the ‘cult of masculinity’ within this profession at the time of the Sutcliffe investigation, see Smith, D.J. and Gray, J. (1983)
   Police and People in London
   . London: Policy Studies Institute, especially pp. 91– 97.
   

9. This phrase is borrowed from Ward Jouve’s book
   The Street-Cleaner
   (1986) London: Marion Boyars).
   

10. This is exemplified in the case of Albert DeSilvo, the Boston Strangler who, despite harbouring consuming rage ‘against his drunken, brutalizing father... nevertheless
    

    had his crimes rationalised through the pathological mother-son relationship’ (Caputi 1988: 66).
    

11. Smith in
    The Independent
    , 13 April 2007.
    

12. See, for example, the case of Richard Holtby, who was cleared of murder after having strangled his ex-partner Suzy Healey, who had threatened ‘to go out with someone else’, and who consequently was considered to have ‘been subjected to a ‘‘low degree’’ of provocation’ by the trial judge, hence, was convicted of manslaughter (
    The Guardian
    , 21 June 2006).
    

13. Indeed, the recent inquiry concerning the Metropolitan Police’s investigation of the
    

Worboys case raises serious questions about the state’s failure to protect all women from sexual violence. Worboys remained at large – raping and sexually assaulting ‘at least 85 victims’ – after police officers failed to follow up various lines of inquiry, thus missing ‘crucial investigative opportunities’ and ‘committing serious errors of judgements.’ The IPPC concluded its report by upholding ‘complaints against five Met officers’ (
The Guardian
, 20 January 2010).

References

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Ballinger, A. (2009) ‘Gender, power and the state: same as it ever was?’, in R. Coleman,

J. Sim, S. Tombs and D. Whyte (eds)
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. London: Sage. Bindel, J. in
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, 5 August 2005.

Bland, L. (1984/1992) ‘The case of the Yorkshire Ripper: mad, bad, beast, or male?’, in J. Radford and D.E.H. Russell (eds) (1992)
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Bourke, J. (2009) ‘Foreword’, in R.J. Herberle and V. Grace, V (eds)
Theorizing Sexual Violence
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C. Itzin. (eds)
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Chapter 15
‌

Violence, sex and the child

Stephanie Petrie

Meet Stephanie Petrie

Stephanie Petrie is currently an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool after a long career as a social worker and manager of social services in statutory and third sector organisations in the north and Midlands. Much of this work was concerned with children and women who had experienced violence and abuse, usually from those known to them. Sometimes the way in which state organisations and professionals responded or failed to respond was also abusive. During her professional life Stephanie used a range of methods developed to create opportunities for children, young people and adults to have a meaningful and realistic say in what happened to them in professional and legal decision-making processes. As an academic she has transferred these methods to research with which she has been involved to help young participants to be better able to share the actuality of their world as they experience it. With others she has been involved in studies about teenage pregnancy and young parenting; girls’ educational achievement in a seaside town; children’s day care; lone parents and welfare reform and child abuse. A professional commitment to respect for persons and their competencies is grounded in formative personal experiences including being the daughter of an immigrant, a survivor of male violence in the home and harassment in the workplace, and a lone parent.