SARAH SANDS: At last we have a chance to stop the Fifty Shades Of Grey defence that lets men murder women during sex

But, significantly, a so-called ‘rough sex amendment’ has been incorporated into the Domestic Abuse Bill to prevent alleged killers using the ‘Fifty Shades’ defence of rough sex to counter murder charges. 

Also, it would be enshrined in law that consent cannot be used as a defence to actual bodily harm.

Despite these hopeful developments, it looks as if it will take longer for popular culture to change so that throttling women is seen as a crime rather than a fantasy.

For Nimco had shown me an article in Men’s Health magazine from July which was headlined: Why some people are turned on by choking during sex – and how to do it safely, according to experts.

Really? There are experts on this?

The article starts: ‘Have you been curious about choking during sex? ‘Maybe you had a partner recently who, seemingly out of nowhere, asked you to choke them? Or perhaps you saw a porn scene recently where choking was the main attraction. What’s the deal? We have the goods.’ An ‘expert’ offers advice to the presumably mostly male readership – along with a warning.

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Domestic Abuse Bill: MPs back ban on 'chilling rough sex defence'

A ban on killers using the "rough sex defence" in England and Wales is set to become law after MPs supported an amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill.

The bill now rules out "consent for sexual gratification" as a defence for causing serious harm.

Speaking in the Commons, Home Office minister Victoria Atkins said one of the most "chilling and anguished" developments in recent times had been the increased use of the "so-called rough sex defence".

Welcoming the move, Labour's shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, Jess Phillips, paid tribute to Natalie Connolly, who died in 2016.

The 26-year-old's partner left her for dead with 40 separate injuries - he admitted manslaughter but was cleared of murder after claiming she was hurt during consensual sexual activity.

"Natalie Connolly's name and story has rung out around this chamber, been told in many newspapers and the bravery of her family will see this law changed," Ms Phillips said.

"Today, I don't want to remember her for how she died, or to allow a violent man to get to say what her story was.

"I simply want to remember Natalie, a brilliant, beautiful, bright mother, sister, daughter."

Campaign group We Can't Consent To This, which wants to make it the expectation that murder charges will be brought against those suspected of killing a person during sex, has hailed the amendment as a "victory".

‘Rough Sex’ Defence Will Be Banned, Say The Government

Rhiannon Evans

After a campaign by ministers, campaign group We Can’t Consent To This and Grazia readers, the ‘rough sex’ defence will be banned, the government said last night.The ‘rough sex’ or 50 Shades defence sees those accused of murder and assault claiming the victim consented to their death or injury as part of rough sex or a sex game gone wrong – it rose to worldwide headlines, when the killer of Grace Millane, whose murderer attempted, and failed, to use the defence.

'Rough sex' defence will be banned, says justice minister

The so-called "rough sex gone wrong" defence will be outlawed in new domestic abuse legislation, a justice minister has told MPs.

Alex Chalk said it was "unconscionable" that the defence can be used in court to justify or excuse the death of a woman "simply because she consented".

The campaign group We Can't Consent To This, which wants the defence outlawed, said the minister's response was "a big step forward".

CPS backed off assault charge over fear of ‘rough sex’ defence

Rosamund Urwin

Prosecutors declined to pursue charges against a man accused of assault because of fears he would claim it was consensual sexual behaviour — a decision that will intensify pressure to outlaw the “rough sex gone wrong” defence.

The woman involved said she had been physically and sexually assaulted but the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) told her that “the suspect could say you consented to these assaults”.

The Labour MP Harriet Harman wrote to Max Hill, the director of public prosecutions, yesterday asking him to review the case.

The letter from the CPS to the alleged victim in the assault case stated: “A prosecution could follow in relation to this offence, but the courts have shown an interest in changing the law so that the suspect could say that you consented to these assaults. This would be difficult to disprove,” citing the specifics of the case.

It went on: “If I prosecuted this offence it is likely to lead to lengthy legal proceedings in which the background to the case would have to be visited as far as the sexual practices that led to and accompanied the infliction of the injuries. In my opinion it is not in the public interest to pursue this charge.”

Grace Millane and the rise of the '50 Shades' defense in murder trials

Amy Woodyatt

Claims of rough sex gone wrong are a global concern.

"We've got a list of around 250 women who have been killed in various countries around the world by men who claim at some point that they consented to it. It seems to be especially common in places like Germany, Canada, the US, Australia, Portugal and Spain," Mackenzie told CNN. She said that cases in which defendants allege consensual rough sex follow a similar pattern in other countries as they do in the UK -- often, the deaths are not initially investigated as crimes, and if men are prosecuted, they will be prosecuted for manslaughter, receive light sentences, and in some cases, walk free.

Lise Gotell, a professor of women's and gender studies at the University of Alberta began compiling data on the use of the "rough sex" defenses after a number of high-profile cases came to court. In a preliminary search of trials heard by a judge alone, and of pretrial motions, Gotell found more than 100 cases -- including non-fatal assaults, sexual assaults and homicide -- in which the defendant claimed the woman had consented to violent sex. More than half of the cases, she said, came after 2015.

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talk radio - is social media normalising choking?

We spoke with Talk Radio on the content hosted by major social media platforms and the impact this may be having on expectations of sex among young women - and young men.

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The misogyny of the so-called “rough sex” defence

Elizabeth Sheehy, Isabel Grant, Lise Gotell

Should Canadian criminal law recognize a defence of consent to sexual practices that cause bodily harm? Strangulation involves the deprivation of oxygen to the brain, inevitably causing loss of brain cells and risking brain damage. Punching another in the face can fracture delicate facial bones or teeth and cause brain injury. Inserting a fist or sharp object in another’s body cavity can result in tearing, bleeding and internal damage. All of these activities present risks that can — and sometimes do — culminate in death.

And let’s be clear: the so-called “rough sex” defence is not gender neutral. The sex is “rough” for women, not men. “Rough sex” depicted in pornography and in practice is marked by gender asymmetry. It is overwhelmingly women who are on the receiving end of this violence and whose health and very lives are on the line. For example, women are two to four times more likely than men to report having experienced strangulation, a powerful predictor of intimate femicide.

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THE 'ROUGH SEX GONE WRONG' DEFENSE IS ALLOWING MEN TO LITERALLY GET AWAY WITH MURDER | OPINION

Harriet Harman

Since forever, men have killed their wives and girlfriends. And they've always made excuses, even saying it was her fault that he killed her. In England and Wales we had the defense of "provocation" which would mean the charge of murder reduced to manslaughter. The man would admit that he'd killed her but blame her for provoking him. The provocation alleged being that she'd nagged him, or was unfaithful, or even worse, that she was planning to leave him. It was known amongst barristers as the "nagging and shagging" defense.

In Scotland the same excuse was known as the "infidelity defense." Distraught, bereaved relatives would sit in court and hear the defendant blame her for her death at his hands. She, of course, would not be there to defend herself as the man who killed her then defined her as a horrible slut.

But now a very 21st century version of "she was asking for it" has reared its ugly head. Men are now getting away with murder, literally, by claiming that though they admit they caused the injuries which led to her death, it was not his fault as it was part of a "sex game gone wrong." She of course is not there to say otherwise. So he gets into the witness box and gives lurid, unchallengeable accounts of her addiction to violent sex and explains that the bruises that cover her body were what she wanted. The grieving relatives see him charged not with murder but only manslaughter. And they not only have to listen to him traducing her reputation in court but they have to see his description of her sexual proclivities splashed all over social media and in the newspapers. She's dead so he gets to tell the story of how he was only doing what she wanted.

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Social media make girls think choking during sex is ‘normal’

Rosamund Urwin and Esmé O’Keeffe

Teenagers are being exposed to graphic images on social media that promote life-threatening sexual acts, such as strangulation and erotic asphyxiation, prompting concerns that this is “normal” for a generation.

An investigation by this newspaper has uncovered hundreds of images of sexualised choking and strangulation on the virtual scrapbook Pinterest, the photo-sharing platform Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, and the microblogging site Tumblr. All three allow children as young as 13 onto their sites.

Fiona MacKenzie, founder of the campaign group We Can’t Consent to This, said: “Social media sites normalise it, so that for young women there becomes an expectation that they may be choked or strangled.

“We hear this from women in their twenties all the time. This was once a very niche practice; now there is a push for young women to accept it as normal — to go along with it because it’s ‘sexy’.”

Sahana Venugopal, 23, a journalism student, said that she had seen this type of explicit material on Tumblr from the age of 14. “I’d inadvertently see a lot of pornographic material because accounts would use the hashtags of other popular TV shows or media to bring followers to their porn sites,” she said.

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No One Can Consent To Their Murder: Our Friend Grace Certainly Did Not

Rhiannon Evans & Anna Silverman

‘IT’S HEARTBREAKING knowing Grace won’t be here for any more birthdays, Christmases and New Year celebrations,’ says Chloe McCombe as the friends and family of the murdered 22-year-old face their second Christmas without her. Grace Millane was strangled to death on her six-month trip abroad by a New Zealand man who claimed in court she’d consented to it and died as part of a ‘sex game gone wrong’.

Backing our campaign to end men’s ability to use this ‘rough sex’ defence, alongside campaign group We Can’t Consent To This and Harriet Harman MP, Lucy Young said, ‘Imagine losing a friend in a traumatic way. Then imagine having to hear every intricate detail of their death while the rest of the world speculates and comments. Losing Grace was heartbreaking, but what was equally awful was having to hear how she was brutally murdered, and then listen to the defence try and justify these actions as “an accident during consensual sex”. No one can consent to their murder. Grace certainly did not.’

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Johnson, Corbyn and Swinson back new laws to combat rising ‘rough sex defence’ over women’s deaths

Lizzie Dearden

The leaders of all three main parties have pledged to introduce laws combatting the rising number of killers claiming that women died during “rough sex”.  The defence was recently used by the murderer of British backpacker Grace Millane, as well as a man whose partner died after suffering 40 separate injuries in the West Midlands. Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn and Jo Swinson have now all backed new laws to stop the “rough sex defence”, which campaigners say has been used after the deaths of at least 59 women in the UK.

Harriet Harman, Labour’s former solicitor general, is among those demanding changes to make it impossible to argue a victim consented to treatment leading to their death. “This law change is enormously important,” she said. “It will put an end to men literally getting away with murder, by claiming it was ‘rough sex gone wrong’.

Campaign group We Can’t Consent To This – which was formed following Ms Connolly’s death – has counted 59 women in the UK since 1972 who were killed by men that used the “rough sex” defence. But 20 of those have come in the past five years, and campaigners fear that both the defence and non-consensual assaults during sex are on the rise.  Founder Fiona Mackenzie told The Independent: “It’s horrifying to discover how frequent these injury and murder cases are – every few weeks they come through the court.

“When the women survive they always say they didn’t consent … but when they’re dead the man gets to tell the story.”

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THE LEADERS: WE ask the questions

We also asked the leaders if they’d back Grazia’s campaign to end the rough sex defence. Grazia’s petition, with Harriet Harman and We Can’t Consent To This, calls on the government and MPs to bring the Domestic Abuse Bill back to parliament after the election, and vote to support amendments to put an end to the defence, where men claim that women consented to the violence that killed them.

‘Yes, absolutely – like many others I was frustrated that this Bill couldn’t progress because of the gridlock in Parliament,’ said Boris Johnson. ‘If we are elected with a majority, we’ll bring this Bill back as soon as possible. I agree with Harriet Harman that the ‘50 shades defence’ is unacceptable and we’ll make sure the law is clear on this.

Jeremy Corbyn told us: ‘We will absolutely reintroduce a Domestic Abuse Bill, something the Conservatives failed to do in the last Parliament. I am proud this commitment is in our manifesto, alongside our plans for a National Refuge Fund to ensure financial stability for rape crisis centres, so that no one is turned away. We will make sure that the ‘50 Shades’ defence is banned, including it directly in our bill.

And Jo Swinson said: ‘It’s a travesty that the Conservatives, in two years, have got nowhere with the Domestic Abuse Bill. Talk about dither and delay. I would bring the bill back as soon as Parliament returns, and strengthen it, by supporting a full-time, fully-funded Domestic Abuse Commissioner. Liberal Democrats want to change our justice system so it works for victims of violent and sexual crime. We’ve worked with Harriet Harman and Vera Baird, the Victims’ Commissioner, to stop the inappropriate use of prior sexual history in rape cases. Being on a certain app, agreeing to sex under certain circumstances or with certain boundaries, or once having told your friend about a sexual fantasy, does not equal consent. And it’s our responsibility to make that clear in sex and relationships education as well.’

To sign Grazia’s petition, click here

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Rough sex and rough justice: we need a greater understanding of consent

Eva Wiseman

Something is rotten in the state of sex. It’s crucial we work with campaigners counting and naming the women murdered by men who claim they consented to the violence that killed them – the website We Can’t Consent To This invites us to ask our election candidates to commit to bringing back the Domestic Abuse Bill and support amendments to end the “rough sex” defence. But murder is at one end of a wedge that sharpens to a blunt edge, where thousands of women meet thousands of men online, and go home with them to have sex that, due to the proliferation of violence in porn, veers in seconds from confusing to traumatic. “There was nothing unifying about [the men who tried to choke her],” Anna told the BBC. “Although I assume they are frequent consumers of porn. They watch that and assume that’s what women want, but don’t ask.” How can our generation deal with the often disturbing impact of modern porn?

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Women in Scotland 'appalled' by violence during sex on dates

BBC Scotland

We Can't Consent To This is pushing for clarification that individuals cannot consent to violent acts during consensual sex in Scots law. Founder Fiona Mackenzie said women often do not see this sort of violence as assault, rather as something they've "put themselves into". “There's one thing that's extremely concerning which is the widespread normalisation of violence against women in sex," she said. "We hear from women who have been choked, punched, slapped and spat on. I think that's really concerning and I think that's meaning that these defences are much more likely to work."

Last week, the BBC published research that suggests that more than a third of women, aged between 18 and 39, had experienced unwanted slapping, choking, gagging or spitting during consensual sex. However, Ms Mackenzie said that since launching her campaign, a large proportion of the women she has heard from are aged in their 40s and 50s while some have even been in their 60s. She said: "We hear particularly from women who return to dating after maybe a long relationship who are appalled by the level of violence they are being subjected to. "I don't think it is just the younger age groups."

At present the campaign has no concrete changes to present to Holyrood but has urged the Scottish Law Commission to clarify that a person cannot consent to violence leading to injury.

Ms Mackenzie, whose campaign has backing from charities such as Zero Tolerance, said that societal changes were crucial.

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The terrifying sex trend being FORCED on young women: How the murder of British backpacker Grace Millane exposed a dangerous change in sexual behaviour fuelled by online porn

Tanith Carey

When 24-year-old Karyna* met her new boyfriend on a dating website, she thought he could offer her everything she was looking for in a relationship. Well-spoken, well-educated, with two degrees and a career in web design, 28-year-old Ben* was sweet and attentive, sending her good morning texts and planning romantic dates. So Karyna, a graphic designer, believed the first time they made love after six weeks of dating would be a tender expression of their feelings for one another. Instead, as they became passionate, Ben’s hands reached up to Karyna’s throat and he started to squeeze. She recalls: ‘Instantly, I thought: “I’m going to die.”

‘I panicked and tried to peel his fingers from my neck. But he wouldn’t let go and kept pressing. His face had changed, too. He stared at me with a look of disgust. I felt completely helpless and burst into tears. At that point, he seemed to realise what he was doing. He snapped out of this strange persona he was acting out, released his hands and said: “What’s wrong?” ’ But despite Karyna’s clear and repeated requests for Ben never to choke her again, over the next few months his hands kept creeping up to her neck. He also tried slapping her around the face. ‘He’d tell me I should want to let him do it, to make him happy. He’d add that plenty of women liked it, and if I didn’t, he’d find other girls who did.’

A few years ago, it would have sounded like a terrifying brush with a sexual psychopath. Yet Karyna’s experience has become increasingly common.

Fiona MacKenzie, founder of the We Can’t Consent To This campaign, says it’s essential to bring the subject into the open. ‘We are hearing a lot from young women who have been choked without consent and gone along with it, pretending to enjoy it. ‘I would not underestimate the pressure on women to go along with this. ‘I don’t believe the men who do this are always bad. But I do believe many are being coached by porn into doing stuff that overrides their knowledge that strangling is extreme violence.’

A year on, Karyna is not only deeply traumatised by her experience, but also worried for other women. ‘It makes me feel sick knowing that my ex-boyfriend will be doing this to other women. ‘I wouldn’t want any other woman to fear for her life as much as I feared for mine.’

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Elections, abuse and awareness

In this episode we chat to Fiona Mackenzie of We Can’t Consent To This, a campaign highlighting the alarming trend of men claiming ‘rough sex’ as a defence against injuring and killing women. Author and journalist Ella Dove tells us about being ‘temporarily incapacitated’ after an accident led to her leg being amputated below the knee at the age of 25.

Let's End The 'Rough Sex' Defence

By now, you’ll likely know the name Grace Millane. On the eve of her 22nd birthday last year, the British backpacker was strangled to death by a man she met on Tinder. Last month, he was convicted of her murder after failing to persuade a jury in his native New Zealand that her death was the result of a sex game gone wrong. The case has made headlines worldwide, with Grace’s family and friends not only enduring unspeakable loss, but having had to witness claims about her sexual and private life made public – claims she is unable to challenge.

But, horrifyingly, the ‘rough sex’ claim attempted by the defence in Grace’s case is becoming increasingly common in courts. Fifty nine UK women have been killed and many more injured in what is claimed to be ‘consensual’ violent sex, according to campaign group We Can’t Consent To This (founded by actuary Fiona Mackenzie, who was outraged by what was happening). In the last five years, the defence was successful in almost half of the killings that went to trial. That’s why Grazia, alongside We Can’t Consent To This and Harriet Harman MP, is now campaigning to end the so-called ‘50 Shades’ defence – and asking for your support in backing our petition.

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The alarming rise of the rough sex defence

Too many women’s lives are ending after what those accused of their deaths say were ‘sex games gone wrong’. Anna Moore looks at why strangling has become so normalised. 

Since December 2018, a group of women have attempted to gather stories of use of the “sex games gone wrong” defence in cases where women have died. The result is the website We Can’t Consent to This. In the past decade, such killings have risen by 90%. Two-thirds involve strangulation.

The Guardian journalist Anna Moore tells Rachel Humphreys why choking during sex is on the rise. Numerous studies have shown that non-fatal strangulation is one of the highest markers for future homicide, which is why Australia, New Zealand, Canada and most US states have developed preventive legislation to strengthen police, prosecutorial and sentencing policies that surround it. Yet in the UK, it can fall under battery, the mildest assault possible. But led by Harriet Harman, women are campaigning for a change in the law.

Has violence during consensual sex become 'normalised'?

Emma Barnett - Radio 5 Live

More than a third of UK women under the age of 40 have experienced unwanted slapping, choking, gagging or spitting during consensual sex, research from 5 Live Investigates has found. Research company Savanta ComRes asked 2,002 women aged between 18 and 39 how often they experienced acts like this and if they were always wanted or welcome. 38% had experienced these acts and said they were unwanted at least some of the time, while just under two-thirds of women had either experienced it and said it was never unwanted (31%), or they had no experience, didn't know or preferred not to say (31%). The issue has come to the fore particularly after a man who was found guilty of murdering British backpacker Grace Millane in New Zealand, used the defence in court of ‘rough sex gone wrong’. To find out more, 5 Live's Emma Barnett speaks to campaigners, experts and people who have experienced such behaviour.

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'A man tried to choke me during sex without warning'

Alys Harte

Violence during consensual sex has become normalised, campaigners have warned.

It comes after more than a third of UK women under the age of 40 have experienced unwanted slapping, choking, gagging or spitting during consensual sex, research for BBC Radio 5 Live suggests. Anna, 23, says she has experienced unwanted acts of violence during consensual sex on three separate occasions, with different men. For her, it started with hair pulling and slapping. Then the man tried to put his hands around her neck. "I was shocked," she said, "I felt extremely uncomfortable and intimidated. If someone slapped or choked you on the street, it would be assault".

Campaigner Fiona McKenzie described the survey findings as "especially frightening". "I regularly hear from women who had been choked, slapped, spat on, verbally abused and punched by men they were having otherwise consensual sex with. In many cases women weren't initially able to recognise this as the traumatic assault it is."

She set up a campaign group, We Can't Consent to This, after she noticed a rise in the number of cases where women had been killed during a so-called 'sex game gone wrong' - and where consent was used as a defence or mitigation.

Anna said sex has become "very male-centric... It has become so 'pornified', there isn't much in it for women."

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Other coverage:

The Independent, The Sun, Metro, Daily Mail

The defence approach in the Grace Millane trial is no one-off. It is increasingly, shockingly common

Louise Perry - We Can’t Consent To This

Millions of people around the world now know the most intimate details about Grace Millane’s life and death, but we still know almost nothing about her murderer: his name remains suppressed by the courts and so has not been reported in the New Zealand media. Anyone who has followed coverage of the trial, however, will have read in excruciating detail exactly what he did to Grace when he strangled her to death on the night of December 1 2018.

The defendant’s counsel attempted to argue in court that Grace’s death was accidental – the result of a “sex game gone wrong”. The jury were, thankfully, unconvinced by his account. After all, what sort of person, having “accidentally” killed his sexual partner, would have – instead of calling an ambulance – taken photographs of his victim, watched violent porn, and then gone on a date with another woman, leaving her body lying in his hotel room?

For many watching the trial unfold, it would have seemed obvious that the jury would surely find the defendant guilty of murder. However, for those of us at the We Can’t Consent To This campaign based here in the UK, we knew that outcome was far from assured. We have learnt from our work in documenting killings like this that all too often perpetrators are not being held to account.

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'There's a new level of anger': the women fighting to end the 'rough sex' defence

Anna Moore

In the first 48 hours after the guilty verdict in the Grace Millane murder case, Fiona Mackenzie received 50 interview requests from the media in the UK, US and New Zealand. In the previous week, as Millane’s killer claimed she had died in a “sex game gone wrong”, Mackenzie, founder of We Can’t Consent to This, which campaigns against the “rough sex” defence, had managed to recruit a voluntary press officer to help with the deluge. Between them, they had juggled BBC Breakfast, ITN, Sky, Channel 5, local TV and radio stations, with Mackenzie also covering her full-time corporate job as an actuary.

Mackenzie launched We Can’t Consent to This last December, building the website over Christmas. The trigger for Mackenzie was the case of Natalie Connolly who was brutally killed in December 2016 by John Broadhurst. Broadhurst, her partner of a few months, left the 26-year-old bleeding to death at the bottom of the stairs in the home they shared with her eight-year-old daughter. Connolly suffered multiple blunt-force injuries but Broadhurst claimed it was the result of “rough sex”, and was found guilty of manslaughter. He was sentenced to three years, eight months. Earlier this month, he appealed to have his jail time cut but was unsuccessful. “Some people raged against the verdict but in the main, there seemed to be astonishing levels of acceptance,” says Mackenzie. “People somehow believed it, saw it as a weird one-off and thought the victim must be to blame for the riskiness of her behaviour.”

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The 'Consensual Rough Sex' Defence Is On The Rise In Murder Cases And We Need To Discuss It

Ciara Shepherd

The examples make for tough reading - yet unbelievably, the subject of 'consensual rough sex' remains fraught with grey areas, legally speaking at least. But for WCCTT founder Fiona Mackenzie, it reads starkly black and white. "The law should be clear it shouldn't matter if she consented to rough sex, that shouldn't matter at all, it shouldn't be part of a case," she tells Tyla. Fiona was inspired to create WCCTT when she heard MP Harriet Harman speak about Natalie Connelly's death on BBC Woman's Hour.

She - like a lot of other women she knew - were horrified by John Broadhurst's short sentence and concerned by the frequency in which these kinds of cases were appearing in the news.On Christmas Eve last year, Fiona decided to collate all of the cases she could immediately and launched the website.

Fiona explains how in some cases even police officers investigating these cases, coroners, and crime scene officers end up "writing them off" because they look like sex accidents gone wrong. "This defence allows people to switch their brains off," she explains. "They think 'other people must get up to this, who knows what goes on in the bedroom, maybe she asked for it'.

"That's why it's so successful. It's the ultimate in victim blaming - blaming women for their own death."

In all cases, juries have to go off the accused's word alone. The victim can't offer their side of the story, as is the sad situation with Grace. "We need a change in attitude in the criminal justice system so people know that women do not consent to this violence," Fiona adds. Aside from changing the law, Fiona hopes WCCTT can help to raise awareness about the dangers of violent sex more generally. "There's a huge issue with young women being choked, punched, slapped or just horrendously assaulted as part of consensual sex by men that they are dating," Fiona explains.

"We know this, we know it's really dangerous to strangle someone, but for some reason young men are able to override this knowledge and are choking their partners."

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Why Everyone Needs To Stop Using The Phrase “Sex Act Gone Wrong”

Jenn Selby

“British backpacker died when consensual sexual activity went wrong," screamed the headline. Not from a tabloid, not from a half-baked Men’s Rights Activism (MRA) blog, but from the BBC. After backlash on Twitter, the headline was amended to make it clear that it was in reference to what the defense in the Grace Millane case claimed, but at that point the damage was already done. The BBC was not the only one to seize on the "sex act gone wrong" claim.

According to research collected by the campaign We Can’t Consent To This, set up by Fiona Mackenzie earlier this year in response to the "rough sex" defense being used by the now-jailed millionaire John Broadhurst (Broadhurst murdered 26-year-old mother Natalie Connolly), 59 women have been killed by men in the UK in this way. Add that to the 174 women murdered this year at the hands of their partners, and you can see we are a nation in the grip of a serious crisis — one in which the media is complicit.

“The media know full well the power and control they wield in public perceptions, which makes the narratives they promote in rape and murder cases such as Grace Millane even more abhorrent," Rebecca Hitchen, campaigns manager at End Violence Against Women, explains to Refinery29. 

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Why the ‘rough sex gone wrong’ defence is dangerous for women

Joan Smith

How many times have we heard the words ‘she was asking for it’?

It’s a common response to rape trials, even though the victim’s identity is protected by a right to anonymity. None of that stops harsh speculation about her behaviour, what she was wearing and how she ended up alone with the defendant in the first place. Sometimes, victims are even named and bullied on the internet.

That’s bad enough. But now, in a sinister development, this pernicious form of victim-blaming is being used against a group of women who can’t defend themselves. In one case after another, women are being choked or beaten to death by sexual partners who claim it was an accidental side-effect of consensual rough sex – the so-called ‘sex game gone wrong’ defence.

The wider question raised by this phenomenon is as old as the hills. Is there any claim about a woman's behaviour, no matter how outlandish, that won’t meet a receptive audience? Do we really believe that the country is suddenly who full of young women who actively want to be punched, bitten and choked during sex? That they’re prepared to risk their lives to please a boyfriend or an importunate stranger?

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The fatal, hateful rise of choking during sex

Anna Moore & Coco Khan

Jan Wynne-Jones knows almost nothing about her daughter Vicky’s last living moments. She only knows that Vicky, a tall, blond, 25-year-old newlywed who worked as an account manager and who could calculate a balance sheet or assemble a wardrobe without breaking a sweat, was strangled by her husband one night in November in 2009.

“He took away Vicky, her choices, her chances, her future,” says Vicky’s sister, Lindsey Wynne-Jones. “And then he took her dignity. Even now, it’s the ‘sex game gone wrong’ that gets focused on. Even though it was disproved, it’s always going to be there.”

Since December last year, a group of women have attempted to gather “sex games gone wrong” defence killings under one place – the website We Can’t Consent to This. In the decade since Vicky’s murder, such killings have risen by 90%. Two thirds involve strangulation. Fiona Mackenzie, an actuary, set up We Can’t Consent to This following the outcry over the so-called “rough sex killing” of Natalie Connolly, 26, by her millionaire partner John Broadhurst, 40. Despite the victim having 40 separate injuries, including serious internal trauma, a fractured eye socket and bleach on her face, Broadhurst received a sentence of three years, eight months for manslaughter.

“People were talking about this defence as if it was one isolated incident and I knew it wasn’t,” says Mackenzie. Although English law does not recognise consent to choking – or any physical harm – in the context of consensual sex, the Labour MP Harriet Harman has just announced her intention to have this underlined again in the forthcoming domestic violence bill. “It needs more emphasis because defence teams are increasingly offering it up, maybe because rough sex has crept into the mainstream,” says Mackenzie. “I’ve had so many women get in touch to say they have been horrified on Tinder dates by partners who have choked them during sex. If you’re dating, it’s expected of you and if you don’t go along with it, you’re boring.”

One young man who spoke to the Guardian for this piece said he chokes his girlfriend, and has done for several years, “because she likes it”. Days later, he got in touch again. “I thought about our conversation and asked her about it. She said she doesn’t actually like it; she thought I liked it. But the thing is, I don’t: I thought it’s what she wanted.”

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