OPINION: How to literally get away with murder?

The “Fifty Shades of Grey Defence”, as the MP Mark Garner called it, is the new way to call a “sex game gone wrong” and literally get away with murder. 59 British women have been killed during these last 47 years in claimed “consensual” violence, according to We Can’t Consent To This. In all these cases, the accused used the “rough sex” defence to justify killing these women and claimed they had consented to the violence that killed them.

This defence was first used in 1972 in the Carole Califano case. It was used twice in 1996 against 20 times in 2016. According to We Can’t Consent To This, this defence “gives a chance of a lesser charge, lighter sentence, or a death not being investigated as a crime at all.” But how did strangling become so normalised?

Every two weeks, one British woman on average dies of strangulation by her partner, according to Women’s Aid. Among them, Grace Millane, 21 years- old, Natalie Connolly, 26 years-old, Denise Rosser, 38 years-old, Charlotte Teeling, 33 years-old, and 55 other British women.

One-third of these women had met their killers the same day they died, two- thirds were strangled and all suspects were men who claimed that a consensual violent sexual activity (such as a sex game, rough sex, BDSM) had “gone wrong”. Out of 59 cases, only 35 had successful murder convictions (including 3 cases treated as non-suspicious deaths), and 5 found not guilty or with no charge.

Today, the law should be clear, women do not consent to die nor do they consent to serious injuries. Men should not be able to get away with that and use the “sex gone wrong” defence anymore. This defence should have no place in courtrooms as a defence for murder.

“In the last 5 years, 50% of “sex game” claims in homicides of women have resulted in a lesser charge like manslaughter, no conviction, or the death not being treated as a crime at all. There have been 20 UK women killed in the last 5 years. ” according to We Can’t Consent To This.

This defence is part of a whole stigma against women because they were the ones to blame, “she made me do it”, “she provoked me” and so on. There is a whole victim-blaming process going on in those cases, as seen during the Grace Millane trial, because the absent party is always to blame. But it only helps in dehumanising and discrediting the victims, as well as highlighting the double standard in the judicial system.

No one consents to their own death, none of these women consented to what happened to them. This whole issue almost suggests that if women had consented to rough sex, they also had consented to the consequences of it. In other words, they had consented to their death. She has consented, therefore, if she dies it’s her fault, she has consented to this.

One of the most recent cases is Grace Millane’s with an ongoing trial in Auckland, New Zealand. She was killed by a man she had met on Tinder, she was only 21-years-old. Ian Brookie, the lawyer of the accused, whose identity is still being protected, dared to describe Grace’s murder as “a perfectly ordinary, casual sexual encounter between a young couple” and said that Grace died “as a result of what they consensually engaged in.”

The accused was granted anonymity while Grace’s life and sexual history was spread all over the world’s headlines, and was exposed in the court in front of her family and friends. He was the only one there in the courtroom to tell his view of what happened because Grace wasn’t there anymore to say otherwise. He claimed that it was yet again a “sex game gone wrong” as many headlines called it.

This alarming issue is part of a whole pattern and has to do with the role that pornography has. Violence during sex is normalised culturally because of pornography and books such as Fifty Shades of Grey. This rise in violent pornography has normalised these types of acts, especially strangulation, pressuring a lot of women to consent to it.

But how many more cases will it take to stop this? How many more women have to die for governments to act? Many of the accused already had convictions for serious violence or were abusive. This says a lot about how gender-based violence is treated.

It is not too late to act. The Domestic Abuse Bill should be amended in England and Wales to make this defence inadmissible in courts, as the MPs Harriet Harman and Mark Garner recommend. Strangulation should also be recognised as a serious assault so these tragedies can never happen again.