#Another man claiming a woman being choked to death was a sex act gone wrong

[coochiequeens]

Finland’s Center for Legal Protection of Health Care also stated that Penttilä should be classified as an extreme danger to others, and the Appellate Court intervened and extended his prison term by one additional year.“ The original sentence was only 9 and a half years and that was the THIRD woman he strangled to death.

A Finnish serial killer who targeted young girls and women has been categorized as a “female” criminal by Wikipedia, prompting criticism on social media. Michael Maria Penttilä, 57, has been described by national media as the “only Finn to meet the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) definition of a serial killer,” having sexually abused and strangled multiple female victims to death, including children. Penttilä was born Jukka Torsten Lindholm, but is also known as Michael Pentholm.

Penttilä has a lengthy criminal record, which was recently highlighted in response to the revelation that he is classified as a “female” by Wikipedia. Many women expressed their outrage using the hashtag “notourcrimes,” which indicates opposition to male violence being recorded in statistics as having been committed by a woman.

Even as an adolescent, Penttilä committed sexually motivated and violent crimes. In 1981, at the age of 16, he abducted a teen girl, locked her in a basement, and beat her. Penttilä choked the girl with scarves and threatened to rape her, but she was able to flee. As punishment for the sadistic offense and a series of petty thefts, Penttilä was held at the Kerava Youth Facility in 1984 for one year.

Penttilä’s first known murder victim was of his own mother, Laina Lahja Orvokki Lindholm, whom he strangled on August 26, 1985, just after his release from the youth detention center. However, the crime was initially considered accidental by authorities, and the verdict in Penttilä’s case was ultimately decided to be wrongful death.

The next year, Penttilä met two 12 year-old girls and convinced them to accompany him to his apartment by promising to give them money to buy alcohol. He then locked one of the victims in the bathroom before using a belt to fatally strangle the other girl. Penttilä proceeded to rape the surviving girl, who was eventually able to escape after neighbors overheard her screams for help and contacted law enforcement.

It was only upon his arrest for the rape and murder of the young girls that the truth about Laina Lindholm’s death was revealed. During interrogations, Penttilä described to police how he had waited for his mother to fall asleep before donning her blue leather gloves and one of her scarves and choking her to death. He told authorities he killed his mother because she had begun dating another man since divorcing his father, and because he blamed her for not attempting to secure an early release for him from the youth facility.

In March of 1987, the Oulu District Court ruled that Penttilä was guilty of the murders of his mother and the child, and sentenced him to 9 years and seven months’ imprisonment. Despite this, the Rovaniemi Appellate Court intervened and held that Laina Lindholm’s death was not a murder, but instead a lesser crime of negligent homicide, and reduced his sentence to seven years.

Disturbingly, Penttilä confessed that he visited his mother’s grave after the killing.

Just one year after Penttilä was granted parole in May of 1992, he again choked a woman to death in his apartment in Kempele. The victim was a 42 year-old woman identified in press as Arja, and Penttilä admitted to causing her death, but claimed the murder was accidental and a result of engaging in the sadomasochistic sexual practice of erotic asphyxiation. 

Months later and while in prison, Penttilä told law enforcement his chilling motive behind the slaying. He said that he had confessed to having a “sexual abnormality” to Arja. Before her death, he told Arja that he was only capable of sadomasochistic sex, which included bondage, whipping and strangulation.

The Oulu District Court sentenced Penttilä to 9 and a half years, and a psychiatric evaluation was conducted. The examination concluded that Lindholm was sane and aware of his actions, and was therefore guilty. Finnish media reported that “[Penttilä’s] sexual inclination towards S/M sex and desire for strangulation did not show up in the examination because he focused on being as normal as possible.”

Finland’s Center for Legal Protection of Health Care also stated that Penttilä should be classified as an extreme danger to others, and the Appellate Court intervened and extended his prison term by one additional year.

In 2000, while incarcerated in Hämeenlinna Central Prison which houses both male and female inmates in separate wards, Penttilä began to wear make-up and dress in women’s clothes. According to psychiatric reports, Penttilä had a preoccupation with a hyper-masculine and violent male ideal, despite his fetishistic crossdressing tendencies. 

However, the prison’s director soon forbade him from wearing make-up and dresses, citing concerns about security. Penttilä then filed a formal complaint to Parliament’s ombudsman and attempted to argue that he was being discriminated against because female inmates were permitted to wear “men’s clothes.”

While in Hämeenlinna, Penttilä was granted permission to marry a woman named Hannele Pentholm, who was convicted of killing her husband and serving a life sentence. The two were married a short time, only two years, and after their divorce Penttilä adopted the name Michael Maria Penttilä and began claiming to be a lesbianwoman.

After he was released on parole in November 2008, Penttilä again attacked three more women on separate occasions. In May of 2009, he attempted to strangle a healthcare worker who he had called to his home to perform chiropractic services. The woman was eventually able to escape after calming Penttilä down and convincing him to release her.

He continued his violent pattern twice more: first strangling a female housecleaner he had hired to tidy his apartment, and the second just three weeks afterwards.

On June 11 of 2010, the Oulu District Court sentenced Penttilä to six years for three aggravated assaults and attempted aggravated assault, as well as aggravated rape and deprivation of liberty. The next year, the Rovaniemi Appellate Court once again interfered with the ruling and reduced Penttilä’s sentence to just four years and five months. The final verdict was upheld in October of 2012.

Penttilä was released in December of 2016, and just two years later, he murdered a prostituted woman by strangling her with stockings in his Helsinki apartment. Additionally, he had been found to have planned to murder a 17 year-old girl in 2017.

He is now serving a life sentence for the brutal slaying. 

During deliberations to determine whether Penttilä should be charged with homicide or the lesser crime of manslaughter, the court heard how he had spent hours of each day viewing pornography depicting asphyxiationleading up to the murders he had committed.

Psychologist Jan-Henry Stenberg told the Helsinki Court of Appeal that Penttilä’s pornography consumption illustrated the premeditated nature of his crime and highlighted the tendency for pornography use to escalate towards more extreme content. It was revealed that Penttilä had mimicked the actions of one of the men in a pornographic video he had watched.

Despite repeatedly targeting women and girls for sexually motivated violence, Penttilä is now listed as a “female serial killer” on Wikipedia, where editors have argued amongst themselves over this classification in the site’s open-access backend.

The page was initially created in 2018 under Penttilä’s birth name, Jukka Lindholm. 

Few changes were made until last month when, on April 5, a trans activist Wiki editor known as Maddy from Celeste updated the serial killer’s name to Michael Maria Penttilä and cited “deadnaming” as the reason.

Editor Maddy from Celeste, a pseudonym which is a nod to a video game character and its developer, is credited with having created the page “Transgender history in Finland,” and identifies as queer, trans, and non-binary.

“A serial murderer has zero rights – stop with the pathetic gender crap, HE is not a she,” reads one comment on the article’s edit page.

Other comments can be seen in the edit history and depict a back-and-forth exchange over “misgendering”, with one anonymous editor stating, “This person was born a male. Humans cannot change sex.”

In July of 2019, the category labeled “transgender serial killers” was deleted by Wikipedia editors. However, a category does exist for “female serial killers,” and Penttilä is one of two entries in the section regarding Finnish criminals.

Penttilä’s sadistic killing spree resembles the criminal behavior of American serial killer Harvey Marcelin. Marcelin, who identifies as transgender and uses the name Marceline Harvey, murdered three women and dismembered two of his victims’ bodies. Marcelin similarly targeted women trafficked in the sex industry, and is currently being held in the women’s ward at Rikers Island in New York. 

Like with Penttilä’s entry, a dispute between various Wikipedia contributors broke out over Harvey’s pronounsin 2022.

By Genevieve Gluck

Genevieve is the Co-Founder of Reduxx, and the outlet's Chief Investigative Journalist with a focused interest in pornography, sexual predators, and fetish subcultures. She is the creator of the podcast Women's Voices, which features news commentary and interviews regarding women's rights.

[sparkinsidewrites]

The Devil Inside - Chapter Seventeen

Title: The Devil Inside

Chapter: 17/18

Character/Pairing: Davey Havok/Adam Carson; Adam Carson/OFC

Genre: Angst

Rating: Explicit

Summary:  Faith and fear are two of the strongest forces in our lives. Adam had never questioned himself or his beliefs. But what happens when he stumbles across his greatest temptation in the eyes of another man? Written with Havoksangel.

Authors Notes/Warnings:  Nothing in this piece ever happened. I claim no ownership nor do I make any sort of profit from this, other than pride and a sense of amusement.

SEVENTEEN

Aubrey sat on the couch staring dumbly at the wall. Adam had been gone for hours. She wasn’t sure if he'd gone to Davey or just gone to drive around, but he wasn’t back yet and that bothered her. Had she made a mistake in letting him go? Did he go to Davey's and realize that a man was what he wanted and not her? Those thoughts terrified her. Could he really choose Davey? What about them, their family? She shook those thoughts away. It wasn’t in her hands anymore. All she could do was sit and wait.

With shaking hands, Adam pulled the car into the driveway of his house. The home he'd shared with Aubrey for nearly three years. Guilt churned through him. He'd betrayed her yet again. Broken her heart. He hated himself for that. For hurting her. She was the one person who didn't deserve it.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Adam turned off the ignition, unbuckled his seatbelt and slowly, hesitantly, opened the car door. Could he really do this to her? Was this tentative relationship he was building with Davey worth losing the woman he'd been in love with for nearly thirteen years?

Aubrey heard the car pull up and barely resisted the urge to go to the door. She wasn’t ready to know yet and the minute she looked at him she was going to become aware of what had happened. What lay in store for her future. Their child’s future. And she wasn’t sure she was ready to know. With her hands on her lap, she sat and waited.

In all the years they'd lived here, Adam had never been so afraid to walk up to that door. He knew Aubrey was inside, waiting for him. Had been for longer than he cared to think on. The moment he opened that door, she would know. She'd see it. She knew him well enough to know. To read him.

Sighing, he raised his hand, leaving it hovering over the door handle. Shaking, he pulled it quickly back. He wanted to run, wanted to hide. He wanted to disappear. Hurting her was the last thing he ever wanted to do. And he'd done it. Several times. God, he couldn't do this. He couldn't face her.

Dammit, Carson, he mentally berated himself, you have to do this. You can’t lie to her. Not anymore. You promised her you wouldn’t and you’ve already betrayed her trust enough. Steeling himself once more, Adam slowly turned the handle, pushing the door open. This was it. There was no turning back now.

Aubrey turned to the door, locking her eyes on his as it slowly opened. She caught the glimpse of fear swimming in them and knew immediately. Her heart sank.

"Aubrey," he whispered, seeing the pain and disbelief swirling in her eyes. Oh God, what had he done?

She looked down. "You were with him," she stated plainly, her voice even though Adam could pick up the barest hint of hurt lacing them.

He nodded silently. "I'm sorry."

She turned on the couch and stared blankly at the wall. What could she say? That she forgave him and was happy he'd found someone? That was bullshit. She was hurt. She was angry. How could he do this? Why wasn’t she enough? What had she done wrong?

Adam stood in the doorway, afraid to enter the room. Afraid to do anything more to upset her. To hurt her. He’d caused enough pain and he’d be damned if he caused her anymore. "I didn't mean for this to happen. I love you, Bree. I love you so much..."

"But you love him too, don’t you?"

"I think so," Adam started. He didn’t know anything for certain. There was still so much left unsaid, untouched "...I could...I don't know. I didn't plan on this."

"Come in," she said calmly, her body language betraying her uncertainty and pain. "We have to talk."

He cautiously entered the room, his eyes falling from hers to the floor. "I never wanted to hurt you."

She nodded in acknowledgment. She knew he didn’t mean it but that didn’t make knowing hurt any less. Swallowing she closed her eyes for a moment before raising them to him once again. "I want you to answer my questions honestly. I need you to do this. To not be afraid of how I’ll react. Can you do this for me, Adam? For us?"

Adam’s eyes darted up to hers, uncertainty shining in them. He wasn’t sure he could do this. That he could tell her the things he feared she’d ask him.

"Did you sleep with him?"

Closing his eyes, Adam nodded, offering a weak, "Yes."

She took a deep breath, knowing the answer from the moment he’d walked through the door. The glow on his face when he walked in. Even though he was terrified, he still had that look in his eyes that she'd seen so many times. That had been only hers. "More than once?"

Again, he nodded.

"How many times?"

"Twice," he murmured, his hands trembling at his sides. He couldn't look her in the eyes. Not now. Not after she knew.

She swallowed hard and looked up at him. Something was different. Something was even more off than when he first told her. There was more guilt. "What changed from the first time to this time?"

"What?" he choked out, missing her question completely.

"You are acting even more guilty than you did before. What did you two do different? What happened?"

"I...He didn't...It was me...I just...I'm so sorry." Adam fumbled over his words. He'd taken Davey. It had been his call. HIS choice. He had wanted it. Initiated it. His choice.

"Stop," she whispered, raising her hand, "Go back. Without stuttering."

Adam took a deep breath, his hands still shaking, "I...I started it. I...took...I took him." He'd said it. She knew. He couldn't take it back now. He'd changed everything. He'd lost her.

Aubrey closed her eyes. "Fucking?"

"The first time," he whispered.

"You made love to him," she said, pain filling her eyes. It wasn’t a question. It was a realization.

Silently, Adam nodded. He'd made love to Davey. He'd WANTED to make love to Davey. It hadn’t only been about sex. About lust. He cared for him. And that thought terrified Adam.

Aubrey looked at him. "Did it feel better with him?"

"Different," he whispered, shaking his head.

She looked down and held her stomach protectively. "Adam, when you think of not having him around, what happens?"

Adam’s eyes slipped closed, tears he’d been fighting off slowly trailing down his cheeks, "It hurts."

She looked at him, seeing the tears trailing down his face and she knew. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, he'd fallen in love with Davey. There was something about him that had made Adam forget all he'd known and to Aubrey that spoke volumes. "If... if I told you that you could still see your child, would that help?"

Sobs shook Adam's trembling form. Fear, relief and guilt flooded through him all at once. Aubrey shouldn't have to do this. Shouldn't have to suffer because of him. Because of what he wanted. It didn't seem fair that he was given this chance and Aubrey was left alone. "You shouldn't have to do this. You shouldn't have to make that kind of a decision. God, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm a horrible person. I hurt you. I ruined everything. I'm so sorry."

"Stop." Her voice was stern. "I don’t want apologies. That isn’t going to fix anything." She took a deep breath. "We are both adults and we are having a child together. In my eyes being with a man is a sin, you know that." She turned her attention to him completely. "However, you’ve fallen in love with him. This is something we are going to have to deal with. I have no right to keep you from this baby. Its half yours," she paused. "But I do have the right to forbid Davey from being around this child."

Adam nodded, knowing how hurt she was. How angry. He'd betrayed her. Lied to her. Gone against everything she believed. She should have hated him. He deserved that. "I understand."

"You’ve told him that you wanted to be with him, haven’t you?" she asked, her voice softening. As much as this hurt her, she still loved him and wanted him to be happy. She had just thought that it would be with her.

"Yes," he whispered.

She hung her head, for the first time all of it sinking in. She'd lost him. Lost all they’d built. Tears stung in her eyes. "He makes you happy?" She whispered.

Adam nodded. "It scares me. All of this scares me."

"Because you do love him."

"I wish I didn't. It would be easier if I didn't." He hated himself for muttering those words. He was breaking one heart. How could he even think of breaking another? What kind of bastard was he?

"But you do." She told him. "I want to hear you say it."

Confusion spread across his face, "I...I don't understand."

"If you are leaving me for him, I want to hear you say you love him." She needed this. Needed to know that he wasn’t just lust and temptation that had wretched Adam from her life.

The sharpness of her words stung, but he couldn't blame her. Couldn't deny her anger or her pain. "I...I love him."

"He has no idea that you do, does he? If you could barely say it to me, you haven’t said it to him." She turned her attention down to her hands. She didn’t want to look up anymore. She didn’t want to look at him.

"I'm scared, Aubrey. Th this changes everything. This changes me. I don't know what I'm doing and I'm scared to death." She didn't need to hear this. Didn't need to know. But she had been his best friend for as long as he could remember. He trusted her. Needed her. He loved her.

She looked up at him, her hardened expression softening. He was hurting. She wasn’t blind to that. He needed her. Slowly she got up and walked over to him.

"I don't want to fuck this up anymore. I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to hurt anyone. If if you don't want me to do this...If you don't want me to be with him, I'll leave. I'll just go. I'd rather die than hurt you. I just want to make this right." The words tumbled from his lips in a rush. He just wanted to fix this. To stop the hurt he’d caused.

Aubrey silently wrapped her arms around him. She was hurt and angry but she still loved him. Despite everything, she wanted him happy. She was a Christian woman and she never held grudges. She didn’t hate. "I want you to be where you feel you need to be."

"I don't deserve this. Why are you doing this?" Adam choked out between his tears.

"Because I love you and I want you happy," she whispered. "I love you enough to let you go."

Adam leaned back into her warmth, his body still shaking. "I know it doesn't mean much and I know it doesn't fix this, but I'm so sorry Bree. I never wanted this to happen. I never wanted to become this. To hurt you."

She buried her head in his neck, inhaling him. "I know you didn’t. You've never once hurt me deliberately." Her hold was tight and she knew she was going to eventually have to let him go, but right now this felt nice. Holding him like this felt nice. "I made you happy, right?"

"You're my world," he told her honestly.

She pulled back and looked up at him, locking their eyes. She could feel the tears stinging her own, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away.

"You will always matter to me, Bree. I'll always love you." He wanted her to know this. To understand. She was everything to him and leaving her was killing him. Hurting her killed him.

Aubrey nodded. There was no doubt that he'd loved her. She leaned towards him, hoping he would understand. She needed this. Needed to feel him like this if only for one last time.

Closing his eyes, Adam let his lips press softly against hers. This was their last kiss. A kiss goodbye. The thought sent a flash of pain through his heart.

Tears fell from her eyes as she kissed him. He was so warm and she had wanted to spend her life with him. Holding him. However she knew she wouldn’t and it was unfair to her, him and their baby to hold him to a life he would be miserable in. "I love you," she whispered as she pulled away.

"I love you too," he whispered back, knowing that if she'd asked, he would give up everything for her.

"You will be staying with him, I presume. Or am I moving out?"

"The house, anything you want, is yours. How could you think I would make you leave?" he asked her in disbelief. This was her home, he could never rob her of that. Never.

She shrugged. "I just assumed that because you were the one paying for it I would have to leave." She hated this uncertainty. But there was nothing either of them could do about it. Things were never going to be the same and adjusting to that would take time.

Adam shook his head, "This house is as much yours as it is mine. You shouldn't have to leave it because of me."

She nodded. "Are you going to be staying with him then?"

"I don't know...We hadn't really discussed that. Maybe. That or I'll get a small apartment somewhere...I'll figure something out." His voice was calmer now, his trembling ceased.

"Please let me know where you go. I want you to be a part of this baby's life and that includes everything."

Adam nodded. "I promise." He didn't want to lose this child. It was a part of them. Something they'd made out of love. He couldn't lose that.

"Take care of yourself, Adam."

"Promise me you will too. And call me if you need something. Anything. I'll be there in a heartbeat."

She nodded. "I promise."

"Thank you," he murmured, kissing her forehead softly.

"For what?" she asked softly.

"For everything. For being the woman I feel in love with. For loving me. For not hating me for all I've done, even though I know in my heart you should. Just thank you."

"I could never hate you. As much as I want to, I just can’t. I don’t even hate Davey. He's beautiful. Anyone would have been tempted."

"I'm so sorry."

"Stop. I don’t want you to apologize. If you love him, you shouldn’t have to."

"I'm not apologizing for that...I just. I'm sorry for hurting you. If I could take away the pain I've caused you, I would."

"I know you would," she said, leaning up to kiss him one last time. "I forgive you, Adam."

"Thank you," he whispered again, pressing his lips to hers. He was grateful to have her forgiveness, her love. He needed that.

She pulled back and smiled softly, with tears in her eyes. "Now, go before I change my mind and tie you up in the basement." She was trying her best to be a good person about this, to not hurt him any worse than he already was. God, knows he deserved to be hurt for what he'd done, but she just couldn’t do that to him. She couldn’t be that malicious.

Adam nodded, pulling back from her embrace. He knew the sacrifice she was making. Knew that behind her joking words and cheerful tone, she was breaking apart inside. "I love you," he told her once again, before turning and heading for the door. Taking a deep breath he walked from the house, pulling the door closed behind him.

[shanedakotamuir]

She was fatally strangled. The media is making it about her sex life.

A photo of Grace Millane during a vigil at Civic Square on December 12, 2018, in Wellington, New Zealand. | Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

Grace Millane’s story is part of a larger pattern of victim-blaming.

Grace Millane was 21 years old when she was fatally strangled, stuffed into a suitcase, and buried in an area west of Auckland, New Zealand, in December 2018.

Those facts are not in dispute, the Guardian reports. But the man accused of killing her, who has not been publicly named, said in his trial that she died accidentally during “violent sex.” And so media outlets in the US and UK have chosen to focus on the particulars of her sexuality rather than the circumstances of her death.

A headline at the New York Post reads, “Killed backpacker Grace Millane was into choking, BDSM: court evidence.” The London Evening Standard took a similar tone: “Grace Millane was member of BDSM dating sites and asked ex-partner to choke her during sex, court hears.” And the Daily Mail blared, “Grace Millane’s killer told police ‘she ASKED him to choke her during sex because she was a fan of the 50 Shades Of Grey films’, court hears.”

While the particulars of what happened between Millane and her killer are important in his trial, as prosecutor Brian Dickey pointed out, “you can’t consent to your own murder.” So by focusing on Millane’s alleged interest in BDSM, many argue, media outlets are engaging in damaging victim-blaming and salacious clickbait. It’s part of a bigger pattern in which female crime victims are treated as though they’re guilty of something, with the media and the public digging through their past for damaging details, or simply speculating about them based on who they are.

Grace Millane died after being strangled. Defense attorneys are blaming her interest in BDSM.

Millane, a British woman backpacking in New Zealand, was killed on December 1, 2018, according to the Guardian. The accused is a 27-year-old New Zealand man who met her on a Tinder date.

His defense lawyers have said that Millane died accidentally after asking the man to choke her during sex, and that the man then “panicked,” causing him to conceal and bury her body.

But prosecutors say that accidental death by strangulation during sex is rare, and that it would have taken “sustained effort and strength” to kill Millane. Meanwhile, they say, the man did not seem panicked after her death, but instead “was cool, calm, in control” as he bought a suitcase to dispose of her body, and even set up another Tinder date while her corpse was still in his room.

Moreover, the prosecution notes, killing someone with “reckless intent” is grounds for a murder conviction in New Zealand, even if the death is not intentional.

“The defendant was causing harm that was likely to cause death,” Dickey told the jury, which is slated to begin deliberating on Friday. “You kill somebody by conscious risk-taking, in this country, that is murder.”

Despite all this, media coverage of the trial has often focused on Millane’s sexual interests. “British backpacker Grace Millane was a ‘naive’ member of multiple BDSM dating sites — and encouraged partners to choke her during sex, according to evidence introduced at the trial of her accused killer in New Zealand,” the New York Post reports, adding that “police found records of chats the 21-year-old had sharing her fetishes on explicit bondage, domination and sadomasochism sites such as FetLife and Whiplr.”

An earlier Post story is headlined, “Tinder date admits to strangling Grace Millane, says she begged for ‘50 Shades of Grey’ sex.” The Independent, meanwhile, began a recent story with the line, “British backpacker Grace Millane was ‘naive and trusting’ and gave a list of fetishes to a man through a BDSM website, her murder trial has heard.”

To some degree, it’s no surprise that defense lawyers would bring up Millane’s sexual history at the trial. Though some laws in the US limit the practice, it remains common for defense attorneys to discuss victims’ pasts in sex crimes trials as a way of discrediting their accounts. In this case, the crime alleged is murder, but attorneys for the accused clearly want to argue that what happened on December 1 was part of a pattern for the victim, not an act of cold-blooded killing.

Defense attorneys routinely employ myths about rape to get juries on their side, politics professor Caroline Heldman wrote at Vox in 2017. These myths include “the idea that people provoke rape through their actions, that you can tell if someone has been raped by the way they act afterward, that women commonly make false rape reports to seek revenge, and that waiting to report a rape means it didn’t happen.”

These myths are not supported by evidence, and when defense attorneys and others endorse them, it can discourage survivors from coming forward, Heldman writes.

Still, it’s reasonable for media outlets to cover the defense’s strategy in the case of Millane’s death. But the way they cover it matters. As Jenn Selby writes at Refinery29, some publications’ headlines and framing suggested that the narrative of Millane’s death as “sex act gone wrong” was fact, rather than an argument the defense was trying to make. Meanwhile, journalist Ione Wells noted on Twitter that many media outlets were leading with the defense’s argument without giving equal prominence to the prosecution.

And even if their headlines included a nod to the fact that the “sex act gone wrong” angle was just something the defense was claiming, that message may not have been clear to ordinary readers, Wells said. “A lot of the public don’t know that ‘a court hears’ here means *from the defence* — and could easily read these lines as if they were objective fact. None of these headlines have attribution,” she wrote.

A lot of reports on Grace Millane have decided to report the defence today without referencing the prosecution. Here's a reminder of how to report cases like this: https://t.co/1oxwBpfOjo Here's a reminder of what the prosecution said - inc the photos he took of her dead body: pic.twitter.com/qyCD7HnjJM

— Ione Wells (@ionewells) November 19, 2019

While the attention to Millane’s sexual past may reflect a cultural tendency toward victim-blaming, it’s also a strategy by media outlets to drive clicks by focusing on sex. Similar forces were likely at work in coverage last month of allegations that Rep. Katie Hill had inappropriate relationships with staffers. In that case, many headlines focused less on the potential for professional misconduct and more on the allegation that Hill and her husband were in a “throuple” with another woman.

The focus on the defense’s arguments is doubly questionable given that the accused’s past may actually be more relevant to the case than Millane’s. One previous partner of the accused told the court that she was “terrified” when he sat on her face and smothered her, according to the Guardian. And several women he met through Tinder said they cut off contact with him because he made them uncomfortable. Yet it’s Millane whose alleged sexuality has been the subject of countless headlines, often paired with photographs of her smiling face.

Her story is part of a bigger pattern

The coverage of Millane’s death is reminiscent of the treatment of many female crime victims before her. Survivors of sexual assault, for instance, are often blamed and smeared by defense teams and the media. At Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial last year, defense attorneys said that Andrea Constand, who said that the comedian drugged and assaulted her, was a “so-called victim” who wanted his money. Later in 2018, when Christine Blasey Ford came forward to say that Brett Kavanaugh, then a nominee to the Supreme Court, had sexually assaulted her, right-wing media outlets dug (or attempted to dig) into her past.

One, Real Clear Investigations, reported that according to an anonymous source, yearbooks from Ford’s high school “feature a photo of an underage Ford attending at least one party, alongside a caption boasting of girls passing out from binge drinking.” The yearbooks “also openly reference sexually promiscuous behavior by the girls,” the site reported.

Meanwhile, the right-wing site Gateway Pundit published a story titled “Kavanaugh Accuser Is Unhinged Liberal Professor who Former Students Describe as Dark, Mad, Scary and Troubled.” The story was based on online reviews left by students of a different Christine Ford.

Nor are female murder victims safe from this kind of digging. The effect is even more pronounced when the victims — unlike Millane, who was white — are trans women of color. After 18-year-old Jaquarrius Holland was fatally shot in 2017, Chagmion Antoine wrote at the Women’s Media Center that to many Americans, women like Holland “are seen not as innocent victims but as predators.” She quotes a commenter on the blog New Now Next, who says, “it sounds like these trannies were prostitutes who deceived straight male clients into thinking they were women.” And, Antoine notes, comedian Dave Chappelle has also echoed damaging narratives about trans women “tricking” men.

Since Millane was white, her story was bound to get more attention than the stories of many missing or murdered girls and women of color. But her family is still confronted with media coverage that treats her private sexual history as though it somehow justifies her death. It’s a reminder that when girls and women are victims of crimes, they’re often victimized yet again by the justice system that’s meant to protect them, and by the people tasked with telling their stories.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2QFmx7m

[timalexanderdollery]

She was fatally strangled. The media is making it about her sex life.

A photo of Grace Millane during a vigil at Civic Square on December 12, 2018, in Wellington, New Zealand. | Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

Grace Millane’s story is part of a larger pattern of victim-blaming.

Grace Millane was 21 years old when she was fatally strangled, stuffed into a suitcase, and buried in an area west of Auckland, New Zealand, in December 2018.

Those facts are not in dispute, the Guardian reports. But the man accused of killing her, who has not been publicly named, said in his trial that she died accidentally during “violent sex.” And so media outlets in the US and UK have chosen to focus on the particulars of her sexuality rather than the circumstances of her death.

A headline at the New York Post reads, “Killed backpacker Grace Millane was into choking, BDSM: court evidence.” The London Evening Standard took a similar tone: “Grace Millane was member of BDSM dating sites and asked ex-partner to choke her during sex, court hears.” And the Daily Mail blared, “Grace Millane’s killer told police ‘she ASKED him to choke her during sex because she was a fan of the 50 Shades Of Grey films’, court hears.”

While the particulars of what happened between Millane and her killer are important in his trial, as prosecutor Brian Dickey pointed out, “you can’t consent to your own murder.” So by focusing on Millane’s alleged interest in BDSM, many argue, media outlets are engaging in damaging victim-blaming and salacious clickbait. It’s part of a bigger pattern in which female crime victims are treated as though they’re guilty of something, with the media and the public digging through their past for damaging details, or simply speculating about them based on who they are.

Grace Millane died after being strangled. Defense attorneys are blaming her interest in BDSM.

Millane, a British woman backpacking in New Zealand, was killed on December 1, 2018, according to the Guardian. The accused is a 27-year-old New Zealand man who met her on a Tinder date.

His defense lawyers have said that Millane died accidentally after asking the man to choke her during sex, and that the man then “panicked,” causing him to conceal and bury her body.

But prosecutors say that accidental death by strangulation during sex is rare, and that it would have taken “sustained effort and strength” to kill Millane. Meanwhile, they say, the man did not seem panicked after her death, but instead “was cool, calm, in control” as he bought a suitcase to dispose of her body, and even set up another Tinder date while her corpse was still in his room.

Moreover, the prosecution notes, killing someone with “reckless intent” is grounds for a murder conviction in New Zealand, even if the death is not intentional.

“The defendant was causing harm that was likely to cause death,” Dickey told the jury, which is slated to begin deliberating on Friday. “You kill somebody by conscious risk-taking, in this country, that is murder.”

Despite all this, media coverage of the trial has often focused on Millane’s sexual interests. “British backpacker Grace Millane was a ‘naive’ member of multiple BDSM dating sites — and encouraged partners to choke her during sex, according to evidence introduced at the trial of her accused killer in New Zealand,” the New York Post reports, adding that “police found records of chats the 21-year-old had sharing her fetishes on explicit bondage, domination and sadomasochism sites such as FetLife and Whiplr.”

An earlier Post story is headlined, “Tinder date admits to strangling Grace Millane, says she begged for ‘50 Shades of Grey’ sex.” The Independent, meanwhile, began a recent story with the line, “British backpacker Grace Millane was ‘naive and trusting’ and gave a list of fetishes to a man through a BDSM website, her murder trial has heard.”

To some degree, it’s no surprise that defense lawyers would bring up Millane’s sexual history at the trial. Though some laws in the US limit the practice, it remains common for defense attorneys to discuss victims’ pasts in sex crimes trials as a way of discrediting their accounts. In this case, the crime alleged is murder, but attorneys for the accused clearly want to argue that what happened on December 1 was part of a pattern for the victim, not an act of cold-blooded killing.

Defense attorneys routinely employ myths about rape to get juries on their side, politics professor Caroline Heldman wrote at Vox in 2017. These myths include “the idea that people provoke rape through their actions, that you can tell if someone has been raped by the way they act afterward, that women commonly make false rape reports to seek revenge, and that waiting to report a rape means it didn’t happen.”

These myths are not supported by evidence, and when defense attorneys and others endorse them, it can discourage survivors from coming forward, Heldman writes.

Still, it’s reasonable for media outlets to cover the defense’s strategy in the case of Millane’s death. But the way they cover it matters. As Jenn Selby writes at Refinery29, some publications’ headlines and framing suggested that the narrative of Millane’s death as “sex act gone wrong” was fact, rather than an argument the defense was trying to make. Meanwhile, journalist Ione Wells noted on Twitter that many media outlets were leading with the defense’s argument without giving equal prominence to the prosecution.

And even if their headlines included a nod to the fact that the “sex act gone wrong” angle was just something the defense was claiming, that message may not have been clear to ordinary readers, Wells said. “A lot of the public don’t know that ‘a court hears’ here means *from the defence* — and could easily read these lines as if they were objective fact. None of these headlines have attribution,” she wrote.

A lot of reports on Grace Millane have decided to report the defence today without referencing the prosecution. Here's a reminder of how to report cases like this: https://t.co/1oxwBpfOjo Here's a reminder of what the prosecution said - inc the photos he took of her dead body: pic.twitter.com/qyCD7HnjJM

— Ione Wells (@ionewells) November 19, 2019

While the attention to Millane’s sexual past may reflect a cultural tendency toward victim-blaming, it’s also a strategy by media outlets to drive clicks by focusing on sex. Similar forces were likely at work in coverage last month of allegations that Rep. Katie Hill had inappropriate relationships with staffers. In that case, many headlines focused less on the potential for professional misconduct and more on the allegation that Hill and her husband were in a “throuple” with another woman.

The focus on the defense’s arguments is doubly questionable given that the accused’s past may actually be more relevant to the case than Millane’s. One previous partner of the accused told the court that she was “terrified” when he sat on her face and smothered her, according to the Guardian. And several women he met through Tinder said they cut off contact with him because he made them uncomfortable. Yet it’s Millane whose alleged sexuality has been the subject of countless headlines, often paired with photographs of her smiling face.

Her story is part of a bigger pattern

The coverage of Millane’s death is reminiscent of the treatment of many female crime victims before her. Survivors of sexual assault, for instance, are often blamed and smeared by defense teams and the media. At Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial last year, defense attorneys said that Andrea Constand, who said that the comedian drugged and assaulted her, was a “so-called victim” who wanted his money. Later in 2018, when Christine Blasey Ford came forward to say that Brett Kavanaugh, then a nominee to the Supreme Court, had sexually assaulted her, right-wing media outlets dug (or attempted to dig) into her past.

One, Real Clear Investigations, reported that according to an anonymous source, yearbooks from Ford’s high school “feature a photo of an underage Ford attending at least one party, alongside a caption boasting of girls passing out from binge drinking.” The yearbooks “also openly reference sexually promiscuous behavior by the girls,” the site reported.

Meanwhile, the right-wing site Gateway Pundit published a story titled “Kavanaugh Accuser Is Unhinged Liberal Professor who Former Students Describe as Dark, Mad, Scary and Troubled.” The story was based on online reviews left by students of a different Christine Ford.

Nor are female murder victims safe from this kind of digging. The effect is even more pronounced when the victims — unlike Millane, who was white — are trans women of color. After 18-year-old Jaquarrius Holland was fatally shot in 2017, Chagmion Antoine wrote at the Women’s Media Center that to many Americans, women like Holland “are seen not as innocent victims but as predators.” She quotes a commenter on the blog New Now Next, who says, “it sounds like these trannies were prostitutes who deceived straight male clients into thinking they were women.” And, Antoine notes, comedian Dave Chappelle has also echoed damaging narratives about trans women “tricking” men.

Since Millane was white, her story was bound to get more attention than the stories of many missing or murdered girls and women of color. But her family is still confronted with media coverage that treats her private sexual history as though it somehow justifies her death. It’s a reminder that when girls and women are victims of crimes, they’re often victimized yet again by the justice system that’s meant to protect them, and by the people tasked with telling their stories.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2QFmx7m

[gracieyvonnehunter]

She was fatally strangled. The media is making it about her sex life.

A photo of Grace Millane during a vigil at Civic Square on December 12, 2018, in Wellington, New Zealand. | Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

Grace Millane’s story is part of a larger pattern of victim-blaming.

Grace Millane was 21 years old when she was fatally strangled, stuffed into a suitcase, and buried in an area west of Auckland, New Zealand, in December 2018.

Those facts are not in dispute, the Guardian reports. But the man accused of killing her, who has not been publicly named, said in his trial that she died accidentally during “violent sex.” And so media outlets in the US and UK have chosen to focus on the particulars of her sexuality rather than the circumstances of her death.

A headline at the New York Post reads, “Killed backpacker Grace Millane was into choking, BDSM: court evidence.” The London Evening Standard took a similar tone: “Grace Millane was member of BDSM dating sites and asked ex-partner to choke her during sex, court hears.” And the Daily Mail blared, “Grace Millane’s killer told police ‘she ASKED him to choke her during sex because she was a fan of the 50 Shades Of Grey films’, court hears.”

While the particulars of what happened between Millane and her killer are important in his trial, as prosecutor Brian Dickey pointed out, “you can’t consent to your own murder.” So by focusing on Millane’s alleged interest in BDSM, many argue, media outlets are engaging in damaging victim-blaming and salacious clickbait. It’s part of a bigger pattern in which female crime victims are treated as though they’re guilty of something, with the media and the public digging through their past for damaging details, or simply speculating about them based on who they are.

Grace Millane died after being strangled. Defense attorneys are blaming her interest in BDSM.

Millane, a British woman backpacking in New Zealand, was killed on December 1, 2018, according to the Guardian. The accused is a 27-year-old New Zealand man who met her on a Tinder date.

His defense lawyers have said that Millane died accidentally after asking the man to choke her during sex, and that the man then “panicked,” causing him to conceal and bury her body.

But prosecutors say that accidental death by strangulation during sex is rare, and that it would have taken “sustained effort and strength” to kill Millane. Meanwhile, they say, the man did not seem panicked after her death, but instead “was cool, calm, in control” as he bought a suitcase to dispose of her body, and even set up another Tinder date while her corpse was still in his room.

Moreover, the prosecution notes, killing someone with “reckless intent” is grounds for a murder conviction in New Zealand, even if the death is not intentional.

“The defendant was causing harm that was likely to cause death,” Dickey told the jury, which is slated to begin deliberating on Friday. “You kill somebody by conscious risk-taking, in this country, that is murder.”

Despite all this, media coverage of the trial has often focused on Millane’s sexual interests. “British backpacker Grace Millane was a ‘naive’ member of multiple BDSM dating sites — and encouraged partners to choke her during sex, according to evidence introduced at the trial of her accused killer in New Zealand,” the New York Post reports, adding that “police found records of chats the 21-year-old had sharing her fetishes on explicit bondage, domination and sadomasochism sites such as FetLife and Whiplr.”

An earlier Post story is headlined, “Tinder date admits to strangling Grace Millane, says she begged for ‘50 Shades of Grey’ sex.” The Independent, meanwhile, began a recent story with the line, “British backpacker Grace Millane was ‘naive and trusting’ and gave a list of fetishes to a man through a BDSM website, her murder trial has heard.”

To some degree, it’s no surprise that defense lawyers would bring up Millane’s sexual history at the trial. Though some laws in the US limit the practice, it remains common for defense attorneys to discuss victims’ pasts in sex crimes trials as a way of discrediting their accounts. In this case, the crime alleged is murder, but attorneys for the accused clearly want to argue that what happened on December 1 was part of a pattern for the victim, not an act of cold-blooded killing.

Defense attorneys routinely employ myths about rape to get juries on their side, politics professor Caroline Heldman wrote at Vox in 2017. These myths include “the idea that people provoke rape through their actions, that you can tell if someone has been raped by the way they act afterward, that women commonly make false rape reports to seek revenge, and that waiting to report a rape means it didn’t happen.”

These myths are not supported by evidence, and when defense attorneys and others endorse them, it can discourage survivors from coming forward, Heldman writes.

Still, it’s reasonable for media outlets to cover the defense’s strategy in the case of Millane’s death. But the way they cover it matters. As Jenn Selby writes at Refinery29, some publications’ headlines and framing suggested that the narrative of Millane’s death as “sex act gone wrong” was fact, rather than an argument the defense was trying to make. Meanwhile, journalist Ione Wells noted on Twitter that many media outlets were leading with the defense’s argument without giving equal prominence to the prosecution.

And even if their headlines included a nod to the fact that the “sex act gone wrong” angle was just something the defense was claiming, that message may not have been clear to ordinary readers, Wells said. “A lot of the public don’t know that ‘a court hears’ here means *from the defence* — and could easily read these lines as if they were objective fact. None of these headlines have attribution,” she wrote.

A lot of reports on Grace Millane have decided to report the defence today without referencing the prosecution. Here's a reminder of how to report cases like this: https://t.co/1oxwBpfOjo Here's a reminder of what the prosecution said - inc the photos he took of her dead body: pic.twitter.com/qyCD7HnjJM

— Ione Wells (@ionewells) November 19, 2019

While the attention to Millane’s sexual past may reflect a cultural tendency toward victim-blaming, it’s also a strategy by media outlets to drive clicks by focusing on sex. Similar forces were likely at work in coverage last month of allegations that Rep. Katie Hill had inappropriate relationships with staffers. In that case, many headlines focused less on the potential for professional misconduct and more on the allegation that Hill and her husband were in a “throuple” with another woman.

The focus on the defense’s arguments is doubly questionable given that the accused’s past may actually be more relevant to the case than Millane’s. One previous partner of the accused told the court that she was “terrified” when he sat on her face and smothered her, according to the Guardian. And several women he met through Tinder said they cut off contact with him because he made them uncomfortable. Yet it’s Millane whose alleged sexuality has been the subject of countless headlines, often paired with photographs of her smiling face.

Her story is part of a bigger pattern

The coverage of Millane’s death is reminiscent of the treatment of many female crime victims before her. Survivors of sexual assault, for instance, are often blamed and smeared by defense teams and the media. At Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial last year, defense attorneys said that Andrea Constand, who said that the comedian drugged and assaulted her, was a “so-called victim” who wanted his money. Later in 2018, when Christine Blasey Ford came forward to say that Brett Kavanaugh, then a nominee to the Supreme Court, had sexually assaulted her, right-wing media outlets dug (or attempted to dig) into her past.

One, Real Clear Investigations, reported that according to an anonymous source, yearbooks from Ford’s high school “feature a photo of an underage Ford attending at least one party, alongside a caption boasting of girls passing out from binge drinking.” The yearbooks “also openly reference sexually promiscuous behavior by the girls,” the site reported.

Meanwhile, the right-wing site Gateway Pundit published a story titled “Kavanaugh Accuser Is Unhinged Liberal Professor who Former Students Describe as Dark, Mad, Scary and Troubled.” The story was based on online reviews left by students of a different Christine Ford.

Nor are female murder victims safe from this kind of digging. The effect is even more pronounced when the victims — unlike Millane, who was white — are trans women of color. After 18-year-old Jaquarrius Holland was fatally shot in 2017, Chagmion Antoine wrote at the Women’s Media Center that to many Americans, women like Holland “are seen not as innocent victims but as predators.” She quotes a commenter on the blog New Now Next, who says, “it sounds like these trannies were prostitutes who deceived straight male clients into thinking they were women.” And, Antoine notes, comedian Dave Chappelle has also echoed damaging narratives about trans women “tricking” men.

Since Millane was white, her story was bound to get more attention than the stories of many missing or murdered girls and women of color. But her family is still confronted with media coverage that treats her private sexual history as though it somehow justifies her death. It’s a reminder that when girls and women are victims of crimes, they’re often victimized yet again by the justice system that’s meant to protect them, and by the people tasked with telling their stories.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2QFmx7m

[corneliusreignallen]

She was fatally strangled. The media is making it about her sex life.

A photo of Grace Millane during a vigil at Civic Square on December 12, 2018, in Wellington, New Zealand. | Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

Grace Millane’s story is part of a larger pattern of victim-blaming.

Grace Millane was 21 years old when she was fatally strangled, stuffed into a suitcase, and buried in an area west of Auckland, New Zealand, in December 2018.

Those facts are not in dispute, the Guardian reports. But the man accused of killing her, who has not been publicly named, said in his trial that she died accidentally during “violent sex.” And so media outlets in the US and UK have chosen to focus on the particulars of her sexuality rather than the circumstances of her death.

A headline at the New York Post reads, “Killed backpacker Grace Millane was into choking, BDSM: court evidence.” The London Evening Standard took a similar tone: “Grace Millane was member of BDSM dating sites and asked ex-partner to choke her during sex, court hears.” And the Daily Mail blared, “Grace Millane’s killer told police ‘she ASKED him to choke her during sex because she was a fan of the 50 Shades Of Grey films’, court hears.”

While the particulars of what happened between Millane and her killer are important in his trial, as prosecutor Brian Dickey pointed out, “you can’t consent to your own murder.” So by focusing on Millane’s alleged interest in BDSM, many argue, media outlets are engaging in damaging victim-blaming and salacious clickbait. It’s part of a bigger pattern in which female crime victims are treated as though they’re guilty of something, with the media and the public digging through their past for damaging details, or simply speculating about them based on who they are.

Grace Millane died after being strangled. Defense attorneys are blaming her interest in BDSM.

Millane, a British woman backpacking in New Zealand, was killed on December 1, 2018, according to the Guardian. The accused is a 27-year-old New Zealand man who met her on a Tinder date.

His defense lawyers have said that Millane died accidentally after asking the man to choke her during sex, and that the man then “panicked,” causing him to conceal and bury her body.

But prosecutors say that accidental death by strangulation during sex is rare, and that it would have taken “sustained effort and strength” to kill Millane. Meanwhile, they say, the man did not seem panicked after her death, but instead “was cool, calm, in control” as he bought a suitcase to dispose of her body, and even set up another Tinder date while her corpse was still in his room.

Moreover, the prosecution notes, killing someone with “reckless intent” is grounds for a murder conviction in New Zealand, even if the death is not intentional.

“The defendant was causing harm that was likely to cause death,” Dickey told the jury, which is slated to begin deliberating on Friday. “You kill somebody by conscious risk-taking, in this country, that is murder.”

Despite all this, media coverage of the trial has often focused on Millane’s sexual interests. “British backpacker Grace Millane was a ‘naive’ member of multiple BDSM dating sites — and encouraged partners to choke her during sex, according to evidence introduced at the trial of her accused killer in New Zealand,” the New York Post reports, adding that “police found records of chats the 21-year-old had sharing her fetishes on explicit bondage, domination and sadomasochism sites such as FetLife and Whiplr.”

An earlier Post story is headlined, “Tinder date admits to strangling Grace Millane, says she begged for ‘50 Shades of Grey’ sex.” The Independent, meanwhile, began a recent story with the line, “British backpacker Grace Millane was ‘naive and trusting’ and gave a list of fetishes to a man through a BDSM website, her murder trial has heard.”

To some degree, it’s no surprise that defense lawyers would bring up Millane’s sexual history at the trial. Though some laws in the US limit the practice, it remains common for defense attorneys to discuss victims’ pasts in sex crimes trials as a way of discrediting their accounts. In this case, the crime alleged is murder, but attorneys for the accused clearly want to argue that what happened on December 1 was part of a pattern for the victim, not an act of cold-blooded killing.

Defense attorneys routinely employ myths about rape to get juries on their side, politics professor Caroline Heldman wrote at Vox in 2017. These myths include “the idea that people provoke rape through their actions, that you can tell if someone has been raped by the way they act afterward, that women commonly make false rape reports to seek revenge, and that waiting to report a rape means it didn’t happen.”

These myths are not supported by evidence, and when defense attorneys and others endorse them, it can discourage survivors from coming forward, Heldman writes.

Still, it’s reasonable for media outlets to cover the defense’s strategy in the case of Millane’s death. But the way they cover it matters. As Jenn Selby writes at Refinery29, some publications’ headlines and framing suggested that the narrative of Millane’s death as “sex act gone wrong” was fact, rather than an argument the defense was trying to make. Meanwhile, journalist Ione Wells noted on Twitter that many media outlets were leading with the defense’s argument without giving equal prominence to the prosecution.

And even if their headlines included a nod to the fact that the “sex act gone wrong” angle was just something the defense was claiming, that message may not have been clear to ordinary readers, Wells said. “A lot of the public don’t know that ‘a court hears’ here means *from the defence* — and could easily read these lines as if they were objective fact. None of these headlines have attribution,” she wrote.

A lot of reports on Grace Millane have decided to report the defence today without referencing the prosecution. Here's a reminder of how to report cases like this: https://t.co/1oxwBpfOjo Here's a reminder of what the prosecution said - inc the photos he took of her dead body: pic.twitter.com/qyCD7HnjJM

— Ione Wells (@ionewells) November 19, 2019

While the attention to Millane’s sexual past may reflect a cultural tendency toward victim-blaming, it’s also a strategy by media outlets to drive clicks by focusing on sex. Similar forces were likely at work in coverage last month of allegations that Rep. Katie Hill had inappropriate relationships with staffers. In that case, many headlines focused less on the potential for professional misconduct and more on the allegation that Hill and her husband were in a “throuple” with another woman.

The focus on the defense’s arguments is doubly questionable given that the accused’s past may actually be more relevant to the case than Millane’s. One previous partner of the accused told the court that she was “terrified” when he sat on her face and smothered her, according to the Guardian. And several women he met through Tinder said they cut off contact with him because he made them uncomfortable. Yet it’s Millane whose alleged sexuality has been the subject of countless headlines, often paired with photographs of her smiling face.

Her story is part of a bigger pattern

The coverage of Millane’s death is reminiscent of the treatment of many female crime victims before her. Survivors of sexual assault, for instance, are often blamed and smeared by defense teams and the media. At Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial last year, defense attorneys said that Andrea Constand, who said that the comedian drugged and assaulted her, was a “so-called victim” who wanted his money. Later in 2018, when Christine Blasey Ford came forward to say that Brett Kavanaugh, then a nominee to the Supreme Court, had sexually assaulted her, right-wing media outlets dug (or attempted to dig) into her past.

One, Real Clear Investigations, reported that according to an anonymous source, yearbooks from Ford’s high school “feature a photo of an underage Ford attending at least one party, alongside a caption boasting of girls passing out from binge drinking.” The yearbooks “also openly reference sexually promiscuous behavior by the girls,” the site reported.

Meanwhile, the right-wing site Gateway Pundit published a story titled “Kavanaugh Accuser Is Unhinged Liberal Professor who Former Students Describe as Dark, Mad, Scary and Troubled.” The story was based on online reviews left by students of a different Christine Ford.

Nor are female murder victims safe from this kind of digging. The effect is even more pronounced when the victims — unlike Millane, who was white — are trans women of color. After 18-year-old Jaquarrius Holland was fatally shot in 2017, Chagmion Antoine wrote at the Women’s Media Center that to many Americans, women like Holland “are seen not as innocent victims but as predators.” She quotes a commenter on the blog New Now Next, who says, “it sounds like these trannies were prostitutes who deceived straight male clients into thinking they were women.” And, Antoine notes, comedian Dave Chappelle has also echoed damaging narratives about trans women “tricking” men.

Since Millane was white, her story was bound to get more attention than the stories of many missing or murdered girls and women of color. But her family is still confronted with media coverage that treats her private sexual history as though it somehow justifies her death. It’s a reminder that when girls and women are victims of crimes, they’re often victimized yet again by the justice system that’s meant to protect them, and by the people tasked with telling their stories.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2QFmx7m