Another Case of ‘Poor Me Syndrome’: Rape is never isolated or inexplicable
Image by StockSnap at Pixabay
Yesterday at Birmingham Crown Court, 61-year-old former teacher Michael Leydon was jailed for six years and six months after being convicted of rape. He’ll likely be out of prison in around half of that time. Leydon claimed that he had had consensual sex with the victim. After he raped her, he sent her a text message claiming that drink, tablets and stress were the reason he had behaved as he did. In another message he stated that he hadn’t known what he was doing, “You said last night that I should have stopped on the night I took advantage of you against your will - believe me I wish I had. If I had known what I was doing I would have”.
Leydon was portrayed as a ‘respectable’ man. He taught history in the 1980s at schools in Redditch, Hereford and Worcester. He was a school governor. His barrister claimed that he was a man of previously ‘good character’.
The rape was presented as a one-off, isolated incident by Leydon’s defence team. They painted a picture of depression and anxiety driving this upstanding citizen to make a ‘mistake’. Even the judge jumped on the bandwagon, stating “In a single moment you lost leave of your senses. It is difficult to comprehend why you did that”.
Much was made of the tough time Leydon was going through when he committed the rape. Leydon’s son Christopher, 28 years old at the time, had been arrested and was facing multiple charges relating to child sex offences. He was later convicted of these offences, which included rape. These events, it was argued, had placed significant pressure on Leydon. That’s right folks, here it is again, Poor Me Syndrome.
This kind of excuse is something we see so often in cases of men’s sexual violence against women. It’s just not their fault. They can’t help themselves. They’re experiencing a difficult time and they’re vulnerable. They have no control over their behaviour. They experience moments of madness. Poor lambs. Of course, this is an absolute load of nonsense. Plenty of men face adversity and challenges in their lives. This does not lead to an irresistible urge to go and sexually violate women.
Rape is never a one-off or an isolated incident in which an otherwise decent man ‘loses it’. Rape is a crime of entitlement. It’s a crime committed by men who believe that they have a right to women’s bodies. Sexual violence is a choice justified by an entrenched misogynistic value system. This value system doesn’t spontaneously emerge overnight either – it’s a dogma, a creed, an ideology which is normalised, rationalised and reinforced over the course of years and decades.
That Leydon’s son was convicted of sexual offences speaks volumes about the misogyny lurking in the background of this case. The sense of entitlement he felt to violate vulnerable children is one and the same as that behind his father’s behaviour in committing rape. Look into the backgrounds of men like them and you will see multiple other symptoms of misogyny. A so-called ‘traditional’ view of who women are and how they should behave. A failure to tolerate anything other than a very fixed, rigid idea of family life. A need to exert control over the women and children in their lives. A tendency to speak down to women, demean them and ‘shush’ them when they’re speaking ‘out of turn’.
Men who see women as equals, as human beings with inalienable rights to be respected and valued, do not rape them.
We must stop excusing sexual violence as an ‘out of character’ aberration caused by stress, pressure, anxiety, substances and start seeing it for what it is – a choice.
