Thank you Julie, for your campaigning and for speaking up for those who would not be heard – such as Sharon.
We know how sexual abuse has been trivialised when meted out to those lower down the social pecking order – the conspiracy of silence bordering on complicity that existed for years around the Rotherham abuse scandal spelt that fact out clearly for a great many of us. Put those cases alongside the rather more sensationalised cases and relentless mass media coverage of cases of abuse by famous men such as Harvey Weinstein and and we see the glaring difference,
Recently, we have seen deluded people trying to rebrand pedophiles as Minor Attracted People, there are even those who go so far as to say that children enjoy such attention and advocate for greater understanding of pedophilia. We live in a sick society where many are happy to see things brushed under the carpet rather than confront and speak out.The media reaction, or rather the conspiracy of silence -around the film Sound of Freedom is a good example of that.

The tragic example of Nikki and Sharon is given as the pretext for some sweeping judgements in the second half of the article about victims dismissed and women disbelieved or blamed.

The exact opposite is true: a lazy, incompetent police force was only to happy to believe the community’s view that the misfit man was the perpetrator.

And then, when the case collapsed, the police force was none too keen on much further investigation because it would reveal the lazy thinking that had mislabelled the misfit man as the accused.

In short, Sharon’s story isn’t about a system that viewed women as irritants. It is the age old story of public institutions slowly turning into bureaucracies, useless and self-serving. It’s the story of everything from the thousands who die of NHS negligence each year to faltering electricity supplies.

Julie applies feminism to every social situation like a Birmingham screwdriver. And creates division that ensures the status quo prevails. Julie seems like the sort of person who would rather sabotage change, than put to oneside her beliefs.

A horrific story, but the thought also crossed my mind reading it – what about George Heron, and what he went through?

As a police officer of 29 years, I can say that if you plunge headlong into this, indeed revel in it in order to satisfy the crusader within, not only will you become a magnet for horror, you will transform your life into a grim distorting mirror which inhibits discernment and sense of proportion.

I have never met a police officer in 29 years who trivializes sexual violence.

Any society is better for journalists and campaigners like Julie Bindel shining a light and calling out injustice. It’s not necessary to agree with all of her broader views (I don’t) to respect her integrity and courage, and to welcome the impact of her work on improving the response to violence against women and girls (including standing up to many of her political tribe over the trans issue.)

I lived in Yorkshire during the Ripper period, her evocation of police attitudes then is not wrong. As a child a couple of years before that I remember the police turning up to the house of my friend a few doors down, and radioing back that it was ‘just a domestic’ before driving away and leaving her mother to face the consequences alone.

Injustice wreaks havoc on so many lives beyond the immediate victims. Julie Bindel is basically a Good Thing, and I hope Unherd will continue to publish her work.

Thank you so much for your mighty fight, so appreciated by so many.

This is a harrowing and tragic story and I applaud you for bringing it to a wider audience. I don’t doubt that it would have had a profound effect on you and it would take a good degree of bravery to stay the course.

Absolutely no doubt either about the appalling way that this has been handled, or about the utter hell that Sharon has been through, but I’m not sure I completely agree that this is a prima facie example of a misogynistic police investigation, or necessarily of a lack of respect for working class women (though I concede there may have been elements of both). There is, without a doubt, a third victim here, Heron, a man falsely accused and very possibly fitted up for a crime he did not commit – maybe because he was different, who knows? This might have been more understandable if leads had dried up, but the actual murderer was 3 doors down the road and already known to the police.

Very little can compare to the horrors that Sharon has gone through, and it’s wonderful that you’ve told her tale, but rather than a tale about misogyny, could this not be more about a lazy and complacent police force who had (have?) more interest in settling old scores with the local weirdo than they did (do?) about bringing about true justice and getting a real killer off the streets? And about an innocent man ruthlessly driven out of mainstream life who’s story nobody appears to have the appetite to tell?

Thank you Julie for all your campaigning and hard, harrowing work.

Sad to see that even in the context of a tale as horrific as this and the personal toll it has taken on you, the usual suspect commentators still feel the need for some feminist bashing.

Thank you Julie, wonderful writing as usual – I’m glad justice was finally served on this dirtbag, and I hope Sharon and everyone involved finds peace. Be nice if he gets a bit of street justice in there too!

It’s a sickening tale, that’s sadly not unique, meaning you and your work, are still very much needed, and appreciated.

“Investigating yet another atrocity, over the past few years, I have been overwhelmed by anxiety and depression, unable to sleep.”
Julie, I’m not surprised. As a radical feminist you’re only interested in male violence against women and girls. This means you are utterly BLIND to female violence against men, women and children, and your toxic writings inevitably make many women more anxious than they should be about male violence towards women and girls, given how rare it is.Feminists are the only group of people actively seeking to RAISE women’s anxiety, for their own nefarious purposes.
In the real world, it’s long been known that:
(1) Men and boys are far more often the victims of violence than women and girls. (2) Domestic violence isn’t a gendered phenomenon, the most comprehensive literature review ever undertaken being the 2013 Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project (PASK13) https://domesticviolenceresearch.org/. (3) Women are more likely to be abused in lesbian relationships than in heterosexual relationships https://j4mb.org.uk/2022/12/09/are-women-more-likely-to-be-abused-in-lesbian-or-heterosexual-relationships/.
It’s about time Unherd stopped being a propaganda platform for feminists, and published pieces by anti-feminists in the interest of balance.
Mike Buchanan
JUSTICE FOR MEN & BOYS
http://j4mb.org.uk

Then something shifted. Investigating yet another atrocity, over the past few years, I have been overwhelmed by anxiety and depression, unable to sleep. I now understand why some activists retire.

It seems Ms Bindel’s armour has cracked after years of bearing witness to and campaigning against human (especially male) depravity. Though I have resented her relentless anti-male stance, this piece shows that she clearly deserves sympathy. Perhaps it is good thing that “Investigating yet another atrocity” has not resulted in deadening desensitisation.
That being said, this piece could be usefully juxtaposed with the topic discussed by Matthew Crawford yesterday in The sexual holy war is coming for you.

Will the author do a follow-up article on the suffering of falsely accused George Heron?

Justice was served?! Public execution may approach justice, perhaps.

Julie, I am truly sorry for the abuse you have received at the hands of men. I trust you might feel the same for me, a man. Born of a rape, adopted into an abusive family, regular beatings, hours locked in a coal cellar, raped at the age of 11 by a maths teacher and more, I have lived a life damaged beyond repair by those early life experiences. There is no competition in suffering or in pain, yet not all victims of male aggression are female.

Most trauma victims suffer from others’ volition or accidents, warfare, natural disasters etc. Bindel is a rare case of seeking others trauma for herself, on top of her own trauma, in the noble cause of highlighting violence against women. I disagree with her “genderised” characterisation of violence because most violence is man on man and there is no moral league table of beatings, rapes, murders etc based on who the victim is. That said i hope she gets the necessaryt reatment – see Van Der Kolk, RP Kluft, Van Der Hart, Nijenhuis & Steele amongst others. Its a long hard road and recovering trauma patients learn a lot about themselves along the way. Hopefully Julie will heal and learn more about herself in the process. Perhaps she will also learn that extractive and parasitic States will always turn a blind eye to and/or feed off violence, and they don’t care what age, gender or ethnicity the victims are

/

One might characterize this as a ‘classic’ man hating feminist whine. Tragic what happened to the little girl of course but you get the feeling that Julie is actually happy that it gives her another chance to insinuate that all men are really the same — all are rapists in waiting if not already rapists. For some feminists what matters is hating men, not actually helping women.

If they did want to help women they would not say things like this:

” … the idea that the victims were “common prostitutes” and were therefore somehow complicit in their fate”
and:

“I see rape and domestic abuse routinely dismissed and minimised. Victims are dismissed, disbelieved, or blamed for their own predicaments.”

That’s because when you trivialize the charge of ‘rape’ and ‘sexual assault’ to include a bad date or a punter taking what he paid for even after the w***e decided she was upping her price, it is unavoidable that the charge of rape becomes diluted to the point of triviality. Yes, what you want is to criminalize more men, but in the end you hurt more women.

If feminists really want to help women they will understand that real men are as opposed to sexual violence as any feminist. They will also teach girls to ‘behave properly’. Yes. Imagine that! Your little black dress might very well get you in trouble notwithstanding that you ‘didn’t say yes’. We patriarchs would say it’s better if the rape doesn’t happen in the first place rather than the feminist notion that whatever bags another man for jail must be good.

I trust Julie Bindel will be donating the proceeds from this article and the podcast to the living person who has suffered the most, the mother. Otherwise it would seem like exploitation. To me it seems highly inappropriate attaching her personal experiences to such a horrendous crime.