Why are women worth so little? (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
“Sophie Moss was warm, bubbly and liked by everyone,” says Daniel Parkington, Moss’s former partner and father of their two children. “When I first started seeing her, all my family couldn’t believe how nice a girl I’d brought to meet them.”
Sophie loved going to the gym — “boot camp” classes were her favourite — and working with horses. But most of all, she loved her two sons, who were just five and six-years-old when she was killed by Sam Pybus, her occasional sexual partner, in February this year.
Last week, Pybus was sentenced to just four years and eight months in prison after admitting manslaughter. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) was ultimately convinced by his claim that Sophie had enjoyed rough sex and regularly asked him to choke her, and chose not to test the evidence in front of a jury at a murder trial.
At Teesside Crown Court, Judge Paul Watson QC accepted that Sophie was extremely physically and emotionally vulnerable. According to Parkington, she developed postnatal depression and sank into mental illness and alcohol abuse. By 2018, the couple had split; the boys continued living with their father, while Sophie moved to her own flat a short distance away. Parkington remained one of her few sources of support and would regularly visit, taking her food and checking on her.
Sophie, who was 33 when she was killed, lived in my hometown of Darlington. Over the past week, I have spoken to several people who knew her — many of whom admitted that she was frequently sexually exploited by men for alcohol.
There is no suggestion that one of them was Pybus, who was married but had been having occasional sex with Sophie over a three-year period. What we do know, though, is that one night in February, he waited until his wife was asleep and then made his way to Sophie’s house, having drunk 24 bottles of lager over the previous ten hours.
Pybus told police that when he woke to find Sophie unconscious, he left the flat and sat in his car for fifteen minutes while “deciding what to do”. He did not attempt to resuscitate her or call an ambulance. The hospital was a short distance away — nearer to the flat than the police station that Pybus eventually drove to in order to hand himself in. The CPS stated that evidence was then gathered from a former boyfriend of Sophie who confirmed that she enjoyed being choked during sex. This witness has not been named, and the evidence was not tested in court.
But that was just one in a series of disturbing developments in this tragic case. Last year, following a campaign from the feminist group We Can’t Consent To This, the 2020 Domestic Abuse Bill outlined how the “rough sex gone wrong” defence would no longer be permissible as a mitigation to murder. After all, the “50 Shades of Grey” defence, as it is known, quite literally blames the victim for her own death. It is also unclear how a court can determine whether violence during sex is actually consensual.
So how did Pybus evade a trial on the basis that Sophie Moss consented to being choked?
In court, Pybus said the sex was “consensual”, but admitted he had little recollection of how Sophie died. Pybus eventually conceded he must have strangled her during sex because his hands were hurting.
Why his account of events was not put before a jury is perplexing. Since setting up Justice for Women (JfW) in 1990 to advocate on behalf of women who killed violent men, I cannot recall a single case in which the CPS decided to accept a plea of manslaughter and bypass a murder trial, despite there being overwhelming evidence of abuse perpetrated by the deceased towards the defendant.
The case of Emma-Jayne Magson is just one example of the legal double standards when it comes to such cases. In 2016, Magson stabbed her partner James Knight after he attacked her and attempted to strangle her. There was a known history of domestic violence perpetrated by Knight towards Magson; on the night he died, Knight was captured on CCTV pushing Magson into the road.
She had also grown up witnessing horrific domestic violence which led to mental health problems in later life. But during the murder trial, there was no mention of any of this. Despite an appeal, Magson was sentenced to life with a minimum term of seventeen years.
Then there is the case of Farieissia Martin, who was 22 when she was sentenced to a minimum of 13 years in prison for the murder of Kyle Farrell in 2015. Martin, who had two small children with Farrell, had grabbed a knife when he tried to strangle her. Farrell’s history of violence had left Martin in fear for her life, but she was too frightened to call the police in case social services intervened and took away her children. During the trial, Farrell’s violent behaviour was inadequately explored — and Martin was convicted.
All of which raises an uncomfortable question: Why do men who kill women have it easier than women who kill men? Why is misogyny allowed to rule the criminal justice system?
In April this year, strangulation was made a specific offence in recognition of the potential for serious injuries and death. But despite this — and the abolition of the “rough sex” defence — the CPS gave Pybus the benefit of the doubt and accepted his plea to manslaughter.
“What this man did is abhorrent,” says Fiona McKenzie of We Can’t Consent To This. “There is no justice in the court’s apparent acceptance that it was violence Sophie consented to, so not really serious violence at all.” She thinks it is “absolutely right” that the Attorney General is considering whether the conviction should be referred to the appeal court as an unduly lenient sentence. “Pybus’s defence recasts sustained violence on a vulnerable woman as violence that she had asked for, that she knew the risks of and as a fatal situation she really had herself to blame for,” McKenzie tells me.
As someone who has spent years campaigning against male violence, I am shocked but not surprised at the sympathy given to some men by the judicial system while women who should be treated leniently have the book thrown at them. The horrendous irony is that had Pybus knocked Moss over when he drove to her home, he could have been given a longer sentence: the average jail time for careless driving is 4 years, 8.5 months. (And no doubt the sentence would have been longer: Pybus drove to the police station while still drunk.)
It took Parkington several weeks after Moss died to tell their sons they would never see her again. “I sat them down and told him that mummy was poorly and in hospital but that the doctors couldn’t do anything more to help her,” he tells me, distraught. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
In the meantime, Pybus could serve as little as half of his sentence — just two years and 4 months if he keeps his nose clean in prison, meaning he would be out before his 35th birthday.
What message does this send to abusive men? One that is loud and clear: that compared to men, some women’s lives are worth very little indeed.
Julie Bindel is an investigative journalist, author, and feminist campaigner. Her latest book is Feminism for Women: The Real Route to Liberation. She also writes on Substack.
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SubscribeThese are truly awful cases – nobody can deny. And this could have been a good discussion on sexual boundaries.
But once again Julie ruins any decent analysis with her misogyny myopia.
It’s not the case in the examples you gave though is it Julie? The courts saw the nuance that you are blind to. In fact it’s so obvious it is risible to call it nuance. One was strangled during a sex game gone wrong, the other was a stabbing. Do you not see the difference there?
In no way can a stabbing be seen as a sex game gone wrong, whereas the other is not clear cut, even if you feel that the evidence “was not tested in court” as you repeatedly mention. But what does testing the evidence in court look like? It’s almost impossible to prove or disprove in a he said she said case, especially if one party is tragically the victim and no longer with us.
You casually dismiss an independent witness’ evidence that she enjoyed violent sex – on what grounds? Because he was a man? Or you just didn’t like what he said? That doesn’t mean the court is victim blaming.
Thankfully the court seems a bit more balanced.
We do see the difference. Do you? Women who defend themselves and their children against violent men get significantly more lengthy sentences than men who kill women for fun, even if by accident (I would be interested to understand how you choke someone to death by accident but that’s by the by)
That is easily enough explained. There are people who put their hands on the neck of their sex partner and press because both (notice: both) parties find this exciting. The intention is that both parties survive and get off, but as it happens even relatively light pressure on the neck can lead to unconsciousness and death with surprising speed. That is why strangulation games are exceedingly risky and dangerous – and why it is even more idiotic to do anything like this when drunk.
Arguably, nobody should ever do this kind of thing at all – but there is still no intention of killing.
And there are men who watch hard core porn and think, “I will give this a go with my girlfriend”. The girlfriend is too scared to say no, then it goes wrong and the male defence is “she wanted it” even when the man knows it is a lie. And it is not tried out in front of a jury because, well, it was her own fault and jury trials should be kept for the really serious things. Yes it does happen. Yes it is keeps happening. And yes, it needs to stop.
And there are women who watch hard core porn / read 50 shades of Grey and think, “I will give this a go with my boyfriend / husband”. The boyfriend is too scared to say no, then it goes wrong and the male defence is she wanted that because thats the truth.
So one hand, we have every movie, book, video game, ad depicting women exclusively as these strong, kick ass characters who thrash men with utter nonchalance.
And on the other hand, in real life situations such as these, we have women depicted as damsels in distress who are helpless victims of cruel men, with no mind of their own.
If it’s not too much to ask for, could you make up your mind? Gets a bit confusing after a while
I’m not sure you see what I mean Heggs – you just seem to think differently, which is fine, but you should be prepared to back that up with something other than merely turning the question around again.
Julie (and you are backing her up) has picked 3 different cases with differing factors and events.
She disputes the verdicts based on nothing more than the fact that she feels all the evidence “was not tested in court” (and elaborates no further on that), and she dismisses eyewitness testimonies without a good reason.
From these 3 individual cases she then extrapolates that all women killed by men are held to double standards.
She might be right in these three specific cases, but certainly not from the basis of what she has argued here.
Of the data that is available, women receive much more lenient sentences for the same crimes as men in both US and UK. For Julie to try and refute that requires a better effort than this.
Some data:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4790924_Gender_Differences_in_Criminal_Sentencing_Do_Effects_Vary_Across_Violent_Property_and_Drug_Offenses
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337844261_Sentencing_Gender_Investigating_the_Presence_of_Gender_Disparities_in_Crown_Court_Sentences
For what it’s worth, as I said above, this article could have been an interesting exploration of the limits of consensual but ‘violent’ sex and boundaries, or even explore how it may be unfair for people who are victims and yet get harsh punishments for self defence. But it doesn’t do that.
By your logic, someone who unknowingly transmits an STD to his or her partner, is exactly the same as someone who injects her partner with a deadly toxin with an intent to murder.
Describing Bindel as an ‘investigative journalist’ is pushing it. ‘Polemical misandrist’ would be more accurate.
There is one difference one could notice:
There are people who like rough sex in various weird forms. We may not want to encourage it (playing with strangulation is crazy), but personally I would object strongly to a bunch of feminists telling me what I can and cannot consent to.,Maybe there are women who feel the same. There is nobody who likes being murdered, and we do not want to encourage the idea that you have the right to kill people and get away with it – not even if you are a woman with a troubled history.
A compromise might be to say that you *can* consent to strangulation games and other violent stuff – but that you need proof of consent if you want to use that defence after it goes wrong an you are in the dock.That should put a lid on the cheap excuses, and hopefully keep some of the dilettantes away.
not if she’d asked him to run her over,
This comment is funnier than it should be lol
That’s not an irony though it’s is an intentional feature of our justice system which fixates on motive and the expense of outcome.
More ridiculous, hate-filled garbage from a mono-tone person who has no business writing for Unherd. The sicking one dinensional tripe she spouts is an utter embarrassment when treating of such a delicate and nuanced matter.
Not so. I totally disagree with JB, but Unherd would be boring if there was not different opinions. Anyway, she deserves some respect for being consistent and for fighting for people in need, rather than playing word games, whining about micro-aggressions or trying to promote the sisterhood through the glass ceiling.
You must respect Al Qaeda as well then?
Julie highlights the fact that Pybus was heavily intoxicated at the time. Consequently, he was in no condition to consent to sex, rough or otherwise. Applying Julie’s usual standard, Pybus was a therefore a victim of ‘rape’.
There is a valid pont here. But considering that Sophie Moss was killed and Pybus was not, this is not really the right place to make that ;point.
so Pybus killed his rapist in self defence? surely Julie should be demanding JUSTICE4PYBUS.
Why indeed?
Misogynists are the source of misogyny. According to the 2020-21 CPS Report and Accounts, 66% of employees are female. Are these women failing to confront the misogynists who rule the criminal justice system or are they misogynists themselves?
According to this source:
IZA DP No. 2870: Do You Receive a Lighter Prison Sentence Because You Are a Woman? An Economic Analysis of Federal Criminal Sentencing Guidelines. … Our results indicate that women receive more lenient sentences even after controlling for circumstances such as the severity of the offence and past criminal history.
There’s an article to be written about the law’s irrational fixation with motive at the expense of outcome but this isn’t it. Driven by a coalition of leftist empathy for attackers and the rightist reluctance to make punishment fit the crime and resource incarceration. Too much misandry and too little personal responsibility.
Another day another men hating tirade.
For decades the left made several changes in the way we persecute murder in Europe. Always in the direction of greater leniency. When I say “the left” I mean Julie’s tribe. It makes me laugh when people like Julie are surprise that an excuse for human being gets a light sentence. How did this happened? Well… It happened when you believe that we are all good and we deserve a second, a third and a millionth chance. Of course he deserved to be locked away for the rest of his miserable life. But we normalized torture. Remember the mummy porn? 50 shades of idocy. Everything goes, torture is sex, a guy with a dress is a woman, soon children will be fair game. We have to go back to a time when murder was murder. You want to have risky sex? Do it but if you kill you should go to jail for 30 or 40 years.
Disturbing to note that all the comments appear to be defendinding the light sentence.
i think the comments are a reaction to Julie rather than the case of Pybus itself.
Julie is a prominent misandrist and now it turns out a misogynist, her world view does not allow for women to have agency. Bizarrely the poor deceased woman seems to have enjoyed violent sexual encounters, this wasn’t her first rodeo. Pybus the stupid horny drunk should have ran a mile when approached by her, but the drunken idiot went through with it . He strangled her, as she consented too but did not kill her on purpose.
How does Julie reconcile the fact that some women, consent to being treated violently?
Answer: she doesn’t its only the mans fault, the cases she outline in the article give the impression when a woman has killed mitigating factors should be considered but in Pybus’s case it shouldn’t
‘her first rodeo’? Your casual language is revealing, I think. And how are you in a position to know what she consented to?
i’m not but the court had this confirmed by her long term partner. You really should read the facts of the case first Penny
Good points but it’s hard to get around Pybus’ admission that his hands hurt the next day. In other words he choked the woman for a long time with excessive pressure, well beyond what one might expect in sex-play.
true Peter, but we don’t accept that drunk people can consent to sex in the first place either.
Causing death by careless driving under the influence of drink or drugs, is its own crime, its not murder because there isnt intent to kill.
Pybus deserves to be in jail for his crime, that crime is manslaughter. Maybe the courts need to invent a crime and sentencing scheme for death by dangerous sex play? its more than manslaughter but less than murder because the deceased is complicit in the act.
Except if you actually read the article, the woman was vulnerable due to addiction and mental health issues. A drunk woman cannot give informed consent as alcohol changes perception. So Pybus was as a drunk man abusing a vulnerable woman. The balance of power was swayed. So it was not a consensual arrangement.
As for JB being anti_women or anti-men, I think that it all in your heads. But for some of you to make a joke about the victim says more about your misogyny than anything else.
At least I speak from an educated place having worked with both men and women who have been through the justice system in the UK and abroad.
Except if you actually read the trial notes, the woman had a history of wanting violent sex play with previous partners. A drunk man cannot give informed consent either as alcohol changes perception. So as Pybus was drunk he was a vulnerable man being abused. The balance of power was swayed. So it was not a consensual arrangement.
Unfortunately it is impossible for the law to take in these gradations of vulnerability. Either people are competent to give consent, and then other people are allowed to act on that consent. Or they are not, and then no one can have sex with them – and they can have sex with no one. A lot of troubled people might object to have their right to have sex taken away ‘for their own protection’. Sure, kindness and decency should keep people from doing a lot of things that the law might let them do. But how do you know that this particular woman was abused and incapable of consenting – as opposed to following her own desires? Did you know her?
None at the moment are defending the sentence – just criticising the article – which is an different altogether thing.
It would be good if someone with some valid professional experience, eg, psychiatrist or psychologist, could write an article or comment on what the h*ll is going on with women fantasising and enjoying violent, potentially lethal s e x games.
Could this be compensatory as a result of modern women’s new autonomy and independence ? I never heard of such things in my youth in the 1970s and 80s, the first time I heard about it was in the early noughties when a shocked friend mentioned it.
That seems to me at least as important as this tragic case.
Female masochists existed even back then, even extreme ones. They were maybe not very numerous, nor very ‘out’, but there were writings about and by them (and against them) following from the general sexual liberation. Apparently feminists had a really hard time finding a way to deal with lesbian SM in their theories. E.g. Pat Califia (1982, he was a woman and a lesbian back then) and “Against Sadomasochism” with no less than Judith Butler on the authors list (also 1982).
Yes, I was aware of masochists, S&M, the Marquis de Sade etc, but today we seem to be dealing with something much more pervasive and common. From what I have read many thousands of women access violent porn sites, not just a few fetishists.
What I was referring to re my shocked friend was a discussion amongst young women she had witnessed, where they spoke about fantasising about being hit about before s e x. We, the older women simply could not understand, the thought of it makes me go cold. That is something other than the S&M niche going on, surely. It seems to be some kind of mass perversion. We need to understand why it is happening and addressing it as a serious social problem because people are dying as a result of it.
There is an argument that it is a result of women, psychologically, on the unconscious level, being uncomfortable with their new found independence and autonomy, and this desire for violent dominance during s e x by a significant number of them is a compensatory response. Whether that’s true or not I don’t know but it does seem to make sense.
It has become much more common and fashionable, yes. Though I wonder (never having read either) how much difference there is between ’50 shades of grey’ and various romance novels. Not sure how far we can understand the reasons between any of the weird and wonderful sexual tastes and behaviours people have, but it would, yes, be nice to know.
There is nothing “weird and wonderful” about dying in this way, or ending up in prison for years for manslaughter for that matter, please don’t try and put a happy clappy gloss on it.
Not “nice” to know surely, it would be interesting to know because it might mean we can do something about the situation.
The Crown Prosecution Service is failing utterly. The rough sex defence is supposed to have been outlawed. Why was Pybus not charged with murder rather than manslaughter? He strangled a woman – he put his hands on her neck and exerted enough pressure to kill her. Perhaps his judgment was impaired by being drunk – but so what? How is that mitigation? To all those who say she pressured him into doing it – that she wanted to be choked and knew the risk she was taking – again, so what? What dire consequences would have been visited on him had he refused to do it? Newsflash: lack of sexual intercourse never killed anyone. He had choices; perhaps his drunkenness impaired his judgment, but “No,” is a simple choice, and when men say it to women, they can almost invariably make it stick.
Disturbing number of misogynists commenting on here. How can you defend this judgement? How can it be right that Pybus doesn’t go even go to trial to test the murder charge and only gets 4 years – out in two with good behaviour. This cannot be defended. A.Spetzari – a women defending herself with what ever means available (a knife in the example given here) from being strangled by a man does not justify a life setence for murder.
I am not defending it, I am simply commenting on the general politics instead. Surely some of the others are too.
Looking a little more closely, a murder conviction requires establishing intent by the accused (as well as the absence of a justification such as self-defence). If there are no witnesses who remember anything, the two have an ongoing sexual relationship (so that there is a plausible non-criminal reason why they ended up in bed together), and there is third-party testimony that the poor woman was into strangulation, it is not necessarily unreasonable that the CPS could decide that it was not possible to establish intent. This could also be a horrific miscarriage of justice, but one would have to look at the details, the third-party testimony etc. to decide. Just like one would have to look at the details before judging that a specific murder conviction was wrong. Meanwhile I think we have the right to not have a strong opinion and comment on other aspects.
There’s no defense. But it was a product of decades of reforms in the direction of a lenient outlook toward crime. If you really want to read about injustice read the latest book of Ayaan Hirsi Ali “Prey”. It’s unbelievable the penalties given to serial rapists in Europe.
Agreed. That’s not what I was saying though – and nor was Julie. Julie was comparing the more complicated case above of Phybus and Ms Moss with a self defence stabbing. Whatever the rights and wrongs of either case those are very different things. It’s a simple point.
There is a bias against women in the court system. Why do so many women get jailed for non payment of fines relating to not paying their TV licences, for example, whereas men continue to get fined?
For too long, women are judged by male judges who have a strange view of women who are not their “own”. Women “deserve” harsh punishment so they get to know their place. I have heard that said by policemen and sheriffs. “If you don’t knock them about, how do they know how to behave”. Yes, these things are still said by men in power in 2021.
So for all of you who think the article biased, go speak to women who have been through the prison system for things men get a fine for. Otherwise be quiet until you know more.