Invisible Dead Men

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

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

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

Ratification of the Istanbul Convention

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Women’s Equality Party (WEP) Campaign

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WEP’s Misleading Partner Death Data

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

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

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

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

If you like round numbers, then it is, in fact, fairly accurate to say that two people in England and Wales are killed every week by a current or former partner. However, they are not all female. Every 17 days, of the five victims of partner homicide, one will be a man killed by his female partner.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Invisible Dead Men Made Visible

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

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

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

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

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

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

All the above are addressed in the case histories.

Example Case Histories

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

Alexander Duncan killed by Seka Richie

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

David Edwards killed by Sharon Edwards

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

Douglas Patrick killed by Jacqueline Patrick

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

Louis Spires killed by Lynn Stallard

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

Peter Hedley killed by Clare Humble

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

John Fletcher killed by Caroline Loweth

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

Scott Dunne killed by Alexia Heckles

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

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

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

Edward Miller killed by Michelle Mills

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

Alan Clinch killed by Sandra Clinch

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

Wendy Thorpe killed by her lesbian lover Tracy Ashfield

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

Conclusion

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

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

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