Justice for Jane

The Chris Langham trial has brought pornography and its darkest side into the public spotlight once more. I am intending to blog about that at a later date, but for now I would like to focus on another trial that was concluded earlier in the summer: the trial of Graham Coutts, who was found guilty of the murder of Jane Longhurst for a second time.

For the uninitiated, Coutts murdered Jane, a special needs teacher and musician, in 2004. He strangled her and then hid her body in a rented storage container, before losing his nerve some time later, dumping the body in a wood and setting fire to it. The pathologists involved were unable to tell with certainty whether she was strangled with a pair of tights, or whether she was asphyxiated by manipulating pressure points on her throat.

Coutts was known to be a BDSM practitioner with an obsessive interest in “strangling” his female partners and was a user of “necrophiliac” pornography sites. He was initially found guilty by a jury, but appealed, claiming that Jane’s death was the result of a BDSM sex “game” gone wrong.The original judge did not give an alternative consideration of manslaughter to the jury, so the retrial, which Coutts lost, was ordered.
Feminists, particularly those of a radical nature, followed this case closely, especially as Jane’s mother, Liz, launched a campain against violent and necrophile porn, which resulted in some new legislation being drawn up.

What the radfems were shocked by was the outcry against Coutts’s conviction and the resulting campaign.
I have read through the transcript of the original trial and the testimony that Coutts gave is garbled, inconsistent and unreliable; he gives no real explanation of how Jane came to collapse, stop breathing, vomit blood and die. He gives no indication that he tried to seek help. In other statements he admits there was no previous sexual relationship between them but still expects the jury to believe that she consented not only to sex but to this peculiar and violent sexual act – hardly the stuff of first-date dreams. His excuse for concealing her body for so long was to protect his pregnant girlfriend – whom he had supposedly cheated on! Yet a small army of his supporters defended him to the hilt. They seized on one tiny piece of evidence released during the original trial: Jane had made a brief and cryptic comment to a work colleague a couple of years previously that something she had done with a boyfriend “took her breath away”. This, to a sane observer, would mean that she had enjoyed something she and her lover did very much, perhaps more than she anticipated or perhaps just “a lot”. It is a cliched phrase common in films and Mills&Boon novels.
Unless, of course, you are one of the violent porn users and BDSM fanatics who campaigned for Coutts’s release. Then, this phrase was an admission that Jane too was a BDSM practitioner who enjoyed breath restriction as part of sex. All this despite the fact that several of Jane’s former lovers testified that this was untrue and that she had shown no such inclination with them.
This grasping at straws by porn and violent sex apologists was doubly hypocritical considering their wailing and gnashing of teeth at the use of forensics from Coutts’s computer showing that he accessed violent and necrophile porn, some on the day of Jane’s murder. To go through files on a man’s computer, a BDSM dom’s computer, to analyse his porn usage was unfair, prejudicial and misleading. To seize on one comment a woman made in a corridor and to question her former boyfriends about their sexual habits was acceptable and necessary. It is just another version of the old sexual double standard, brought in to the 21st century.

The jury thought differently and wasted no time in convicting him once again for murder, aided by the judge.

Before the case, I had no particular opinion on BDSM. Now, I am shocked at how a section of the BDSM community did not distance itself from a violent murderer like Coutts, who himself admitted that he had confided to a psychiatric worker that he was worried that his obsession would lead to him killing a woman.

Most people get through life without the need to throttle their partners in bed or stare at images of simulated murder victims.

The backlash against Liz Longhurst’s campaign, which aims to help protect women (and men) from suffering as her daughter did, is depressing. The legislation as it stands, is not perfectly clear and needs tightening up, but the reasoning behind it is there. While we have a sexual culture that celebrates domination, real and implied violence and “pushing the limits”, there will be too many who push things too far, with the blessing of the “free speech” and “sexual freedom” advocates. One man’s sexual freedom is another woman’s sexual hell. (Or even, sometimes, another man’s hell too.)

The BBFC, Censorship and Manhunt 2

This week the video game Manhunt 2 was refused a certificate by the British Board of Film Classification, due to its extreme, bleak and unrelenting violence.
The Manhunt series has never been far from controversy, particularly when it was cited in a murder trial involving two teenage boys. The game was “cleared” of being a factor in the killing, but the reputation has remained.
Many commenters in the games and media world have decried the BBFC’s actions, with terms such as “nanny state” being bandied around. Now, I have not played wither Manhunt game and have no desire to do so, but I do have some inside knowledge of how video games are classified for sale to the public.
The certification is handled by PEGI, a European independent body, and the BBFC if the game contains considerable cinematic elements. Both have published guidelines which are freely issued to all game companies. In other words, Rockstar Games know what the rules are about what can and cannot go in a game.
So this was not an arbitrary act of censorship or the result of a campaign by Daily Mail readers, it was the BBFC following its own rules. They do not go around banning games at random; this was only the second game refused a certificate in the history of organised rating.
Another important point is game retailers’ continued refusal to make a concerted effort to enforce the games’ age ratings. It is still easy for a ten year old to buy an 18-rated game, or to persuade a parent to buy it for them, as many people still view games as something for children and disregard the warnings. Insisting on ID for 15 and 18-rated games would reinforce the message that the products are not for children, although retailers would lose sales so they are reluctant to do it.
As an adult who enjoys gaming, I do wish the industry would sort itself out and stop obsessing over pushing the boundaries of violence (and increasingly sex, especially in Japanese import games.) There is so much more to games than testosterone-fuelled killing spree simulations, and plenty more avenues that could be explored.
Aren’t games supposed to be fun, anyway?