Fighting oppression

Penelope Jackson case: ‘Victim of horrific abuse’ convicted of murder by sexist justice system

November 12, 2021

Coventry Socialist Alternative members
Sabina Nessa and Sarah Everard: both victims of a sick, sexist system – stop victim blaming

October 2, 2021

Becci Heagney
Hidden Homicides review: exposing the systemic failures of the sexist justice system

August 24, 2021

Danni Crowter
Pride is protest! Build the fight for LGBT+ liberation

August 20, 2021

Liat Norris
Plymouth shootings: Capitalism, misogyny and Incels

August 16, 2021

Sarah Wrack and Becci Heagney, Socialist Alternative Political Committee
Black football fans like me know the struggle against racism must be built from the ground up

July 14, 2021

Daniel Rollins, West Yorkshire Socialist Alternative

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UPCOMING EVENTS

Penelope Jackson case: ‘Victim of horrific abuse’ convicted of murder by sexist justice system

CW: Intimate Partner Violence and child abuse The conviction of Penelope Jackson for murdering her husband is yet another example of the misogynistic justice system in action. This verdict flies in the face of much of the evidence put before the court, which heard allegations that the deceased, David Jackson, systematically abused and coercively controlled Penelope over a 24-year period.

Penelope testified that she had been forced to get a tattoo reading “Property of David Jackson” on her bottom as a result of his jealousy and escalating control of her life. The couple’s daughter Isabelle gave testimony that her father had once got her out of bed and made her fetch a mug she had brought Penelope for Mother’s Day, which he then smashed in front of them – an allegedly vindictive and abusive act against them both. Isabelle also said she saw him pin Penelope to the wall while her nose was bleeding, as if Penelope had been struck in the face. On another occasion he reportedly held a knife to Penelope’s throat during a party, and three people had to pull him away from her and disarm him.

History of alleged abuse

During an incident of domestic violence to which the police were called, officers observed that Penelope was scared of Jackson and had a bruise on her arm that he inflicted. Before police arrived he had allegedly smashed up the conservatory with a fireplace poker and threatened to use it on her. Penelope says she slept with a knife under her pillow as she was so scared of her husband.

Since the trial David Jackson’s brother Alan has described him as “an arrogant bully” who could be “very violent”. He claimed their mother Lillian accused David of trying to strangle her. Alan also said Jackson became angry if Penelope spoke “out of turn”, saying “He was quick as lightning to pull her up about it. Penny was cautious for what she used to say in front of him.” He said he “believe[d] Penny would have been pushed to her limits” by Jackson’s behaviour. This testimony about Jackson would have been clear exculpatory evidence, but unfortunately Alan was not called as a witness.

Despite the clear evidence of abuse, much of which went unchallenged in court, the media chose to focus on parts of the 999 call and statements made by Penelope Jackson to police after her arrest. Her comments were taken out of context to portray her as a cold-hearted killer. However, even during these statements she stated that her initial intent was not to kill Jackson, but that she snapped and stabbed him after he threatened her. She told paramedics “I agree it is a dreadful solution, but it is the only way out for me. I want him out of my life. I’ll end up in prison but that is preferable to my life now.”

Difficulty leaving

Some people may ask why Penelope didn’t leave her marriage, and why she only called the police once about Jackson’s abuse. Sadly, it isn’t that simple to leave a controlling and abusive relationship – particularly when women who do report their abusers are often not believed. Shana Grice reported her ex-boyfriend to police for stalking her, and was fined for “wasting police time” – a few weeks later, he murdered her in her bed. There is also a lack of support for women who want to leave abusive relationships but have nowhere to go. Domestic violence shelters have had their funding cut repeatedly over more than a decade of austerity measures. Women cannot access the support they need to leave their abusive partners. Instead of cuts, what’s actually needed is a massive expansion of funding and resources for these services, and the labour and trade union movement has a vital role to play in both fighting to defend what currently exists and to demand much more.

There is also another ongoing trial in which a woman killing her reportedly abusive partner is a subtext. Olivia Labinjo-Halcrow stabbed Gary Cunningham in the leg, and was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Consequently her six-year-old son Arthur was placed in the custody of his father and stepmother, Thomas Hughes and Emma Tustin. After a year living with the couple Arthur was found dead with catastrophic brain injuries and salt poisoning – they are now on trial for murder and child cruelty. If Olivia had been offered support rather than handed a prison sentence, perhaps Arthur would still be alive today.

Misogyny

The judge in the case showed his misogynistic bias in his sentencing remarks, dismissing the history of abuse in their marriage as “points of friction that the lockdown would have exacerbated” – despite the court hearing testimony of incidents over 20 years ago, long before the lockdowns. He said he had “no doubt that [Jackson] was nothing like the person [Penelope] claimed” – again, this is despite unchallenged evidence of abuse being presented in court. This is shocking, but unsurprising given the role of the unelected judiciary, and their inherent misogyny. The “Women Who Kill” report by the Centre for Women’s Justice was critical of the role of judges, saying many have a “very limited understanding” of gendered violence.

There is a clear double standard in the prosecution of women who kill their partners compared to men, with some being convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter rather than murder on the grounds that their partners “nagged” them, or even by arguing that their victims consented to the abuse causing their death – the so-called “rough sex” defence.

Sexist violence goes unpunished

Joseph McGrail walked free from court after kicking his partner to death, the judge saying of his victim “this lady would have tried the patience of a saint”. Les Humes stabbed his wife to death in front of their children, and was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds that he “lost control” because she was leaving him. David Hampson beat his wife to death with a hammer, buried her body in the garden and coerced their daughter into lying about her murdered mother’s whereabouts for two years: he was sentenced to six years for manslaughter. Just this year, Anthony Williams was convicted of manslaughter after he admitted to “choking the living daylights” out of his wife, Ruth – his excuse was that he “snapped” after just five days of lockdown. He was sentenced to just five years in prison.

John Broadhurst inflicted over 40 injuries on Natalie Connolly, including fracturing her eye socket and spraying bleach in her face. The next morning he stepped over her body, made breakfast and washed his car before calling 999. He told paramedics Natalie was “dead as a doughnut”. He successfully used the “rough sex” defence, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to three years and eight months in prison. James Morton allegedly strangled 16-year-old Hannah Pearson to death after giving her alcohol and putting her to sleep in his bed, as she was unable to get home. He smashed her phone before ringing 999. He successfully claimed her death was accidental, and was sentenced to 6 years in prison for manslaughter. Many more of these tragic cases are listed at https://wecantconsenttothis.uk/.

Penelope Jackson case similar to others

Penelope Jackson’s case is reminiscent of many others, including that of Sally Challen, whose conviction for murder was overturned in 2019. Earlier this year we highlighted the case of Ellie Wain, who sentenced to life in prison for stabbing her abusive boyfriend. Other women like Sara Thornton and Kiranjit Ahluwalia also had their convictions overturned, after support from the Campaign Against Domestic Violence – a campaign initiated by Militant, one of Socialist Alternative’s forerunner organisations. The CADV was hugely influential in making intimate partner violence a trade union issue, and in developing a political understanding of the roots of intimate partner violence in a capitalist system that breeds misogyny. Malcolm X said “you can’t have capitalism without racism” – and you can’t have capitalism without misogyny either.

Penelope Jackson’s legal team is preparing an appeal, and we hope they are successful. The legal precedents set in other cases unfortunately do not go far enough to ensure this, however, and they certainly won’t prevent other women being charged in the same way. The Centre for Women’s Justice and other groups have proposed a number of reforms, such as mandatory training for all police officers and judges on domestic abuse, including coercive control. These changes would of course be welcome, and any training given should be given under the control of the trade unions, groups representing black communities and other people of colour, women’s groups and LGBTQ+ groups. Socialist Alternative members recently helped to organise a meeting for probation officers through the NAPO trade union, delivered by an author of the “Women Who Kill” report for the Centre for Women’s Justice. This is a small-scale example of what should happen nationally.

Police protect the system

But these changes don’t go far enough. Additional training won’t change the fundamental nature of the police and the judiciary under capitalism: they exist to protect the system, not to protect ordinary people. As gender-based oppression is inherent to capitalism, the role of the police includes enforcing misogyny. The murder of Sarah Everard by PC Wayne Couzens, and the subsequent revelations that police failed to deal with several complaints against him over his conduct towards women, have also made it even clearer that the police are systemically misogynistic – as has the disgusting news that police officers took photos of the murdered bodies of Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, and “used degrading and sexist language to describe the victims”. All riot police, Special Branch and undercover units that are used to spy on activist groups should be abolished immediately. We need democratic, community controlled bodies to protect women and workers.

Serious changes to the criminal justice system will require a different kind of society – not the system we have now, which is based on the exploitation of the majority of working-class people, and propped up by the promotion racism, misogyny and oppression. A united working class movement can fight for the end of the capitalist system and a socialist world.

Socialist Alternative demands:

Justice for all those convicted of fighting back against abusive partners! Open an independent inquiry under the control of the trade unions and women’s rights organisations, looking into all cases of women who have been convicted after suffering abuse

Stop the cuts – create fully funded and publicly run domestic violence services – every abuse victim must have somewhere safe to go

We need a justice system that treats women with respect. No to unaccountable police and unelected judges – give workers and communities full democratic control over the police and justice system!

Fight for a socialist world free of oppression and violence!
Sabina Nessa and Sarah Everard: both victims of a sick, sexist system – stop victim blaming

Sabina Nessa, 28, was tragically murdered on the 18th September. Upset and anger has once again enraged the nation. How could this have happened again? How many more women will be killed while just trying to go about their lives, going to meet a friend at a pub on a Saturday night?

Sabina was a teacher in Lewisham. Hundreds attended a vigil and spoke out about the type of caring and funny person she was, including her colleagues and fellow National Education Union members. People across the country sent their thoughts and love, feeling on a personal level the loss of a young woman being senselessly killed.

80 women killed

But it is more than just personal loss. Sabina was murdered just 6 months after Sarah Everard, whose death had sparked big protests across the country. In between these two tragedies, 80 women were killed in the UK. All nameless women who were murdered, usually by someone known to them such as their partner, former partner or family member.

Women are not safe in their homes or on the streets and this is something which is brought home in a stark way by these events, the reason why people are angry and demanding change.

Police powers not the answer

Firstly, calls for more police powers and more police officers are not only completely insensitive given the vile details of the murder of Sarah Everard, they are also completely ineffective. The majority of survivors of domestic abuse will have horror stories of how the police didn’t intervene multiple times when called, not to mention the huge psychological manipulation and abuse by perpetrators which often mean women are too scared to seek help to begin with.

Secondly, it is completely irresponsible for Scotland Yard to simply declare “the streets are safe for women” in the wake of Sabina’s murder. They are not, and the police cannot be trusted to keep us safe. Equally laughable are suggestions that women should “flag a bus down” or call 999 to check on a police officer if they feel unsafe. It’s an absolute indictment of the police force that people are even discussing ways to keep themselves safe if approached by an officer!

This is, of course, not a new issue for many people. The police force in a capitalist society are not there to defend ordinary people, they are there primarily for the protection of private property and the state. There are many examples of the police being used to violently attack protests and workers’ picket lines, as well as infiltrating left-wing political groups, forming relationships with their female members as a way of spying on them. In addition, the police investigators, the so-called ‘Independent’ Office of Police Conduct (IOPC), seems to never find the police in the wrong. It was the case with undercover police officers forming relationships with people, apparently not an official policy but the actions of a few bad apples; the violent handling of the Sarah Everard vigil which the police claimed no wrong-doing; and the 17 out of every 18 police officers accused of sexual assault who never face further investigation.

Democratic control

As Socialist Alternative has explained previously, any investigations into police conduct must be carried out by genuine independent inquiries, including representatives from the victims families, trade unions, women’s rights and anti-racist organisations and so on. We also need democratic control over where police are deployed, how they carry out investigations, and over the hiring and firing of police officers to be able to drive out sexist, racist, homophobic and transphobic police officers.

The murders of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa and the other 80 women in between is not just an issue of the institution of the police. The scale of violence against women reflects just how sick capitalist society is and the urgency of fighting for real change. Socialist feminists understand that the oppression of women is part and parcel of class society, with attitudes of male power and control over women being promoted from the top but permeating throughout society.

Police failings

These ideas are clearly very dominant within the police force itself. Wayne Couzens, the murderer of Sarah Everard, a serving police officer who used his position to falsely arrest and kidnap Sarah, was also part of a WhatsApp group with other police officers who sent each other misogynistic, homophobic and racist messages. He was reported to have carried out a number of indecent exposures, as far back as 2015, but the police never seriously investigated it, despite ‘only’ having to run a car registration number check to be able to identify him.

These acts of sending sexist messages, making female colleagues feel uncomfortable and other behaviour are often considered to be ‘low-level’ and as such not taken seriously. However, going unchallenged in workplaces, communities and education establishments up and down the country, together they make up a society which perpetuates and reinforces problematic attitudes towards women, particularly of women’s sexuality and ideas of male entitlement.

In an extreme way this can lead to the murder of seemingly random women on the streets, as was the case with Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa. The murderer of Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry who were killed in June 2020, Danyal Hussein, was part of a government ‘deradicalisation’ programme, believing that he needed to ‘sacrifice women’ to be successful, including that he could cast spells to make himself more attractive to women. Jake Davidson, who shot and killed 5 people in Plymouth in August, was part of the misogynistic ‘incel’ movement, which blames women for their perceived failings.

Not just bad apples

The establishment narrative around these cases is often of deranged individuals, as if they are not products of the society around them, and of victim blaming, emphasising that women shouldn’t go out by themselves at night. This is being pushed back against by many people, who are calling for the focus to be on those who carry out violence rather than those who are victims of it.

To achieve this in a genuine way, we need to build a mass movement of working class and young people of all genders which can seriously challenge the deeply embedded misogynistic ideas within capitalist society. These ideas originate at the top of society, the capitalist class , who need the division, inequality and exploitation of the working class to keep themselves in their privileged positions, reflected in the dangerous ‘war on woke’ being waged by the likes of Boris Johnson. We need to fight for a socialist feminist alternative which will struggle for the end of violence against women, for safe streets for all and a society free from oppression – a socialist society.
Hidden Homicides review: exposing the systemic failures of the sexist justice system

Content warning: graphic discussion of domestic violence and murder

At least one woman is murdered by her current or former male partner every three days in the UK. Shamefully there is no centrally compiled list of these women – it is left to individual activists to try and keep track of how many femicide victims there are, and to remember them.

The above figures only represent the number of homicides that we know about, however. The podcast Hidden Homicides highlights the cases of a number of women who were in abusive relationships and died suddenly in potential homicides.

Police failings

A common theme in these cases was the abject failure of the police to protect the victims, and subsequently to properly investigate their deaths. A stark example of this is the murder of Susan Nicholson. Her killer, Robert Trigg, had been reported to police 13 times for domestic abuse, and one of his previous partners – Caroline Devlin – had died in similar circumstances to Susan. Despite this, police did not prosecute him for any of these incidents and did not even arrest him at the time of Susan’s death. An initial inquest wrongly ruled that Susan’s death was accidental – Trigg was not prosecuted until Susan’s parents hired investigators themselves and proved that he was responsible for both her and Caroline’s deaths.

Another woman, Katie Wilding, was found dead next to her abusive former partner Mitchell Richardson, surrounded by drug paraphernalia. Despite Richardson having been reported to police repeatedly, and legally not allowed to contact Katie due to the abuse he inflicted on her, police quickly ruled the death to be an accidental overdose. Richardson’s mother cleaned the flat in which she found the bodies for an hour before calling emergency services, but was not prosecuted for this as the police did not consider it a crime scene. Police failed to adequately store the evidence – when they opened the evidence months later “there was a multitude of black flies coming out of the bags”, rendering the evidence useless.

Failure to adequately preserve relevant evidence was even more starkly apparent in the case of Emily Whelan. Emily’s partner, who her parents believed was coercively controlling her, reported that he had found her blue and not breathing. Her death was quickly ruled to have been caused by a seizure. When Emily’s mum visited her house after her death she saw that Emily and her children’s belongings had been packed up as if they were ready to leave – without her partner. A victim of abuse ending the relationship threatens the abuser’s control, and can be a trigger event for an escalation in violence. Concerns were raised by Emily’s family and eventually her partner was arrested and questioned, and a second postmortem was ordered – but due to the local hospital and subsequently the local council failing to adequately store her body, it had begun to decay. A particularly concerning aspect of this was that petuchiae – red spots in the eyes, a common sign of strangulation – had been present at the first postmortem but had gone by the time the second was carried out. As a result the pathologist was unable to rule out any third party involvement in her death.

Louise Tickle does an excellent job of bringing these tragic cases to light on Hidden Homicides, and highlighting the appalling police failures involved. Sussex Police in particular are singled out as having failed in four cases, leading to four preventable deaths. She puts forward some positive demands for reform of how the police deal with sudden deaths in relationships where domestic abuse was known to occur: for example, police should initially assume it is a homicide investigation rather than a tragic accident or illness. This would ensure that proper postmortems were immediately carried out. She also proposes that nationwide statistics should be centrally collected on all sudden deaths of women known to be in abusive relationships, so the scale of this problem can be accurately understood. However, these changes will not protect women who are currently living in abusive relationships – the whole approach of the justice system needs to change.

Institutional problems require systemic change

Unfortunately, Louise does not link the problems with how the police approach domestic abuse to a wider critique of the misogynistic justice system as a whole. She highlights “insultingly short” sentences for abusers, but doesn’t mention the far more severe sentences given to women who defend themselves against violent men. It appears that she thinks the police’s careless approach to domestic abuse can be reformed through better training: while of course no-one would oppose better training in handling domestic abuse, for any agency that comes into contact with victims, the problems with the police are institutional.

The Met Police in particular has a disgraceful record on sexism. They failed to arrest PC Wayne Couzens for exposing himself, and two days later he brutally murdered Sarah Everard. Spy cops have for decades abused their positions to take advantage of women they are investigating, even to the extent of having children with them. These issues cannot be reformed out of the police. Instead we should immediately disband all spy cops units, along with riot police and special branch, and replace police forces with democratically controlled bodies that are specifically designed to protect women and workers, not to protect capitalism.

Malcolm X famously said that you can’t have capitalism without racism. You also can’t have capitalism without sexism. We need a socialist society, not a capitalist system built on the backs of women, workers and all oppressed people.

“International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women 2016 – Jamaica” by UN Women Gallery is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Fighting oppression

Penelope Jackson case: ‘Victim of horrific abuse’ convicted of murder by sexist justice system

Sabina Nessa and Sarah Everard: both victims of a sick, sexist system – stop victim blaming

Hidden Homicides review: exposing the systemic failures of the sexist justice system

Pride is protest! Build the fight for LGBT+ liberation

Plymouth shootings: Capitalism, misogyny and Incels

Black football fans like me know the struggle against racism must be built from the ground up

GET INVOLVED!

UPCOMING EVENTS

Penelope Jackson case: ‘Victim of horrific abuse’ convicted of murder by sexist justice system

History of alleged abuse

Difficulty leaving

Misogyny

Sexist violence goes unpunished

Penelope Jackson case similar to others

Police protect the system

Socialist Alternative demands:

Sabina Nessa and Sarah Everard: both victims of a sick, sexist system – stop victim blaming

80 women killed

Police powers not the answer

Democratic control

Police failings

Not just bad apples

Hidden Homicides review: exposing the systemic failures of the sexist justice system