The “Snapping” Myth: Men who kill women are exerting control, not losing it
Today BBC News reported that 39-year-old Helen Almey[i], a PE teacher and mother of three, had been killed at her home near Derby. Martin Griffiths, her partner, had also died. It is believed that they had both been stabbed to death. Rhys Hancock, Helen’s husband, from whom she had separated earlier in 2019, has been charged with both murders. Neighbours claimed that Helen was moving on, getting her life together and had started a new relationship with Martin. The Sun reported that over the Christmas period, Helen had to call 999 after being threatened. Commenting on the killings in that article, an anonymous neighbour stated “I can’t say I’m shocked…The marriage was on and off. I lived close enough to know what went on and so did some of the other neighbours”. The case has been referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct in relation to contact Helen had with Derbyshire Police prior to her death.
Further details are likely to emerge in the coming days and I’m not going to say any more about this specific case given that a police murder investigation is underway. We must let the criminal justice process run its course. However, we can use this opportunity to highlight some key facts about domestic homicide and identify the barriers to tackling this urgent issue.
Domestic homicide is inherently gendered. In other words, whether someone is male or female will have a huge influence on their experience of it. Women are much more likely than men to be killed by current or former intimate partners. The Office for National Statistics reported that in the three-year period 2014-2017, 82% of 293 female domestic homicide victims had been killed by a partner or ex. Of the 107 male domestic homicide victims, 42% had been killed by a partner or ex – around half the proportion. The most recent statistics show that the year ending March 2018 saw the highest number of female homicide victims since 2006. The charity Refuge reports that two women a week in England and Wales are killed by partners or exes. A BBC investigation last year claimed that domestic homicides were at their highest rate in five years. This is a problem of epidemic proportions.
These homicides do not come ‘out of the blue’. Often when we read newspaper articles about domestic homicides, they describe men as having ‘snapped’, ‘lost it’ or become consumed by ‘red mist’. That’s nonsense. Someone does not go from being a psychologically healthy partner one day to a killer the next. There is always a history of controlling and abusive behaviour that escalates over time and culminates in a homicide - as Dr Jane Monckton-Smith explains in this video about her Domestic Homicide Timeline. Such a history may be easily evidenced and quantifiable, consisting of a long list of police records and reports of domestic abuse. But often, it’s not. Abusive behaviour frequently goes unreported and unrecorded, unseen or denied by people around the victim and perpetrator.
One of the key problems we are still battling is the ‘violence model’ – the idea that abuse isn’t abuse unless there is a visible, physical injury. However, abuse can take many forms including emotional, financial and psychological as well as physical. I tend not to think in terms of what abuse looks like but in terms of what a perpetrator of abuse sets out to achieve. This isn’t about the objectives, it’s about the aim. What all abusers are striving for is control – to dominate another person, to strip away their liberty and autonomy, until everything they are, they are for the abuser[ii]. If abusers don’t have to resort to physical violence to achieve control, they won’t.
Instead abusers may isolate and deprive, cutting off access to a victim’s friends and family, arguing that these relationships are negative and destructive and that the victim only needs the abuser - no one else. Abusers may take over everyday decisions like what a victim can wear, where they can go and who they can see. They might monitor their finances. They might engage in a slow destruction of the victim’s self-worth, beginning with minor criticisms under the guise of ‘helping’ the victim to be ‘better’ at things and escalating to directly putting them down, telling them they are worthless. They may enforce ever-changing and humiliating rules – for example restricting when the victim can shower or how often they are allowed to wash their clothes. They may coerce the victim to participate in illegal activity. They may threaten to harm or kill the victim, their children and / or pets or cause criminal damage to property. They may stalk the victim, gain access to their smartphone and / or place tracking devices on their vehicle or property. They may possess sexually explicit images of the victim that they threaten to disclose.
All these behaviours help achieve the aim of control. Abusers might use some or all of them and may or may not combine them with acts of physical violence. In a 2017 research report in association with the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, a history of controlling behaviour was identified in 92% of homicides in which women were killed by men. So, let’s be clear, physical violence alone is not the only ‘red flag’ to look out for when trying to prevent domestic homicide.
These killings are not a loss of control, they are an attempt to exert control. If an abuser feels that he is losing or has lost control of the victim, he will become fixated on getting that control back. If he feels that the victim is regaining her autonomy and independence in some way – through deciding to leave, through starting a new relationship or some other perceived ‘rejection’ – he will change his methods because the current approach to domination is not working. The aim is still control but the objectives have shifted. The criminologists Dobash and Dobash[iii] describe this as ‘changing the project’, from controlling her through keeping her in the ‘relationship’ to destroying her for leaving it.
Abusers do not see women as equals in healthy relationships of trust, respect, reciprocity and mutuality. They see them as enemies to defeat, possessions to own, prizes to win. The ideological frameworks of contemporary society condone and encourage these attitudes. Abuse thrives behind the neoliberal vision of the intimate partnership as private and off-limits. All are deemed equally free and able to make choices in their personal lives. This makes it challenging to recognise cases where one partner has engaged in abusive or controlling behaviour towards the other, removing their liberty and independence to such an extent that the playing field is anything but level.
Abusers don’t look how you might expect them to look. The scary, big, unemployed, drunken brute stumbling in from the pub and knocking his partner around the house might be a reality in some cases but far from all. Many abusers hold down jobs and positions of importance and authority. Many of them appear to be respectable ‘family men’. Abusers are not abusive all of the time. If they were, no one would date them or marry them. Sandra Horley[iv] describes ‘The Charm Syndrome’ when telling the stories of abuse survivors,
Each of these men, in his own way, is a charmer. Not just in the eyes of their partners, but in these eyes of many people they meet. Not only do they charm their partners, but they are able to get away with behaving abusively because unconsciously they use charm to convince everyone (including themselves) that they are great guys. After all, how could such terrific characters be abusers?...the common characteristic all of these men share is their ability to make a woman feel special. To charm them.
One case that embodies The Charm Syndrome is the case of Kirstie and Jill Foster. On August Bank Holiday in 2008, they were killed by such a charmer, Kirstie’s father and Jill’s husband Christopher Foster. Looking through the window into the lives of the Fosters, they appeared to be a regular upper middle-class family, exuding success and accomplishment, living a life that many of us can only dream of. In 2008, a former associate described Christopher as a good family man, a nice chap, ordinary, everyday, a good businessman[v].
The family lived in a large mansion in the Shropshire countryside. Christopher had come from humble beginnings in Wolverhampton and become a successful entrepreneur, designing a chemical formula that protected oil rigs in the event of fire. When he shot and killed Kirstie, Jill, the family’s animals and set fire to the house, the newspapers claimed he had ‘lost it’ due to his bankruptcy and the impending repossession of the house. There were claims that he’d taken the lives of his family before succumbing to the fire himself because he wanted to ‘protect’ them and save them from a life of poverty. He was portrayed as almost altruistic. This otherwise normal man had just ‘snapped’.
The truth was very different. Christopher had been an abuser since his teenage years, using and manipulating others for his own ends with no regard for their rights or feelings. His brother alleged that Christopher sexually abused him when he was 11[vi]. In 1983, Christopher married Jill. The wedding marked the end of Jill’s relationship with her sister Anne. The two women fell out after Christopher would not allow Anne to be a bridesmaid at their wedding. They would only see each other three times after this, once at Kirstie’s christening in 1993 and at the funerals of their parents. Christopher called the shots. What he said, went.
He didn’t care who he upset. He tore around the local roads in his supercars and on powerful motorbikes. His dogs continually barked in their kennel outside. Christopher developed an interest in collecting guns and incurred the wrath of the people next door when he shot at pigeons whilst his neighbour’s children played in their garden. Jill’s sister Anne said that Christopher had at least eight affairs, all with trophy blonde women and that Jill knew about them, “But she played the dutiful wife and kept quiet”[vii].
When he purchased the Shropshire mansion in 2004, his insistence that high walls and fences be erected at the property along with a heavy security gate were not so much about keeping people out as keeping people in. In the year before his death, he spent £80,000 on shooting[viii]. He displayed his expanding collection of expensive firearms at home, sometimes simply propped up against the wall in the kitchen. The open and reckless way in which he kept these weapons was indicative of something else – a message to those around him of his capacity and readiness for violence. They were a threat.
Mother and daughter were animal lovers - Jill kept doves and Kirstie was passionate about her dogs. Christopher became enraged when the doves got into the garage and defecated on his luxury cars. He would go out to the garage with a gun and if the doves didn’t fly out, they were shot. Christopher took one of Kirstie’s Labradors out down a country lane and shot it dead. The dog had apparently been bothering sheep. Christopher could have taken the dog to a rescue centre or sold it. But no, he decided to kill it and he wanted to do this himself. By killing their animals, he sent out an important message to Kirstie and Jill. I am capable of violence. If you don’t fall in line, you could be next. When people are afraid and the threat of violence is real, they are easier to control. Jill and Kirstie were trapped.
These are just some examples of the controlling and abusive behaviours that emerged when I took the time to research the case of Jill and Kirstie Foster. I will talk about their case in a special long-read blog later this year. I wanted to spend some time describing their case here to highlight examples of the scope and types of behaviour that abusers use to control and to emphasise that domestic homicide does not ‘just happen’, ‘out of the blue’.
Abuse is a dripping tap rather than a tidal wave. It does not discriminate based on social class, ethnicity or age. It is highly personalised, the abuser identifying the victim’s vulnerabilities, anxieties, strengths and needs and tailoring the ‘control project’ accordingly. In 2015, the types of behaviour I’ve described throughout this blog were criminalised in England and Wales under a new offence of Coercive Control. Unfortunately, we have a lot of work to do in raising awareness of it, most people don’t know what coercive control is, let alone what to do about it.
If we are to tackle domestic homicide and save the lives of women and girls like Jill and Kirstie Foster, we need to change the way we think about abuse. Men who kill women do not ‘snap’. There is always a history of abusive and controlling behaviour. This behaviour may or may not include acts of physical violence and may or may not have been reported to police. Abusers are charming, likeable and attractive. Domestic homicide is preventable and most importantly, its everyone’s business.
I am running the Bath Half Marathon in March 2020 to raise
funds for Women’s Aid, an organisation raising awareness and supporting victims
of domestic abuse. You can sponsor me at https://bathhalf2020.everydayhero.com/uk/liz-is-running-the-bath-half-for-women-s-aid
Footnotes
[i] I am referring to her as Helen Almey rather than Helen Hancock given reports that she had recently chosen to revert to her maiden name.
[ii] Stark, E. (2007). Coercive Control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[iii] Dobash, R. E. & Dobash, R. P. (2009). Out of the blue: Men who murder an intimate partner. Feminist Criminology, 4(3), 194-225.
Dobash, R. E. & Dobash, R. P. (2015). When Men Murder Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press
[iv] Horley, S. (2017). Power and Control: Why charming men can make dangerous lovers. London:
Vermillion.
[v] Mark Hughes. (2008). A Murder Mystery or a Family on the Run? The Independent, 30th August, page 16.
[vi] Penny Wark. (2011). Christopher Foster’s brother speaks out: ‘Why did nobody try to stop Chris from killing his family?’, The Telegraph, 27th November, page 27.
[vii] Jon Ronson. (2008). ‘I’ve thought about doing myself in loads of times’, Guardian Weekend, 22nd November, p. 5
[viii] Penny Wark. (2009). ‘This was the culmination of his life and personality’: seven months after Christopher Foster burnt down the family home and killed his family, Andrew Foster reveals the agony of his brother’s legacy,. The Times, 7th April, pages 2-3.
