MFM Hometown Emails

If any of you are a Murderino, you'll understand the email roulette of sending in your hometown story to My Favourite Murder and hoping it might get read on the podcast... Since it takes a genuine amount of actual time and research to write these I thought I'd stick them in a blog post as well, then at least they are out there...

Hometown: Suffolk Strangler & Sex Worker Rights (CW dehumanising language)

Hiya loves!

Greetings from Yorkshire! Since England is so small compared to the US pretty much every hometown is our hometown, right? (Despite the glorious variety of accents you get about every 200 miles....) I wanted to write to you about the Suffolk Strangler, as this case has parallels with the Yorkshire Ripper, but few people seem to have heard of it or even remember it.

Between October and December 2006, Tania Nicol, aged 19, Gemma Adams, aged 25, Anneli Alderton, aged 24, Annette Nicholls, aged 29, and Paula Clennell, aged 24, were all murdered by Steve Wright, most likely by asphyxiation. They were all sex workers at the time of their deaths, and all suffered from serious drug addictions, which is thought to have been one of the reasons they were sex workers. The last victim, Paula Clennell, had been interviewed by Anglia News about the murders, and why she was still soliciting on the street, and she said 'I have to work. I need the money.' 

In the beautifully written (and excellently titled) book 'Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers Rights, by sex workers and activists Juno Mac and Molly Smith, this is put into further context. Paula had been a sex worker for some time, but after having her three children taken from her and put into care, she became depressed and began using heroin. By the time of her murder, she needed £500 per day to support herself, and the only way to earn this was through sex work. At the time, and even today, the media in particular are cruel and dehumanising to drug users and sex workers, and especially women who are both. R Littlejohn, professional cunt at The Daily Mail 'newspaper' called the five women (CW dehumanising language) 'disgusting, drug addled street whores' and said 'We do not share in the responsibility for either their grubby little existences or their murders. Society isn't to blame ... death by strangulation is an occupational hazard'. (p90) And, in 2018, affront to human decency and Chief of the Wiltshire Police Mike Vale said 'If you have a six year old girl who has trauma in her vagina or anus you would expect me to believe her. If you have a drunken prostitute, making allegations about a bad debt, you have to make more of a judgement.' (p 89)

Fucking hell. 

Firstly, it's not a 'bad debt' you insufferable cockwomble, it's RAPE. 

Additionally, what these twatfests of epic proportions failed to understand, is that the loss of any human being is a profound loss, and that it would have been so fucking easy to protect them. As the authors write 'Women like ... Paula need so little - some basic safety and resources - that it is easy to imagine society meeting those needs. Yet, at the same time, they needed so much - in that to imagine a society that takes their safety seriously is to imagine a society profoundly transformed.' (pg90)

 A three-part dramatisation of the murders was made by the BBC, centred on the victims stories and not the police or the murderer. The writer, Stephen Butchard, said 'Our hope is that this drama provides a glimpse of the real girls their families knew, and also leads to further debate on the impact of drugs and sex industries upon every town, every city in this country,... and what action is or isn't being taken.' (Wikipedia) It was called... Five Daughters. *facepalm* Oh, Steve, you were so close! It was a sort of response to a more traditional police procedural drama about the case, called Five Days, so I guess I see what you did there, Steve. 

Ok so now we're all throughly depressed and angry about the state of the world, please do support sex workers by donating to sex worker lead organisations, de-criminalising sex work, and reading Revolting Prostitutes, which also has chapters on sex work in the US, South Africa, Kenya, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand and New South Wales! (I swear I don't work for them it's just a really excellent book!)

Stay sexy and remember sex workers rights are human rights!

Love from Amy in Old York, and Pusscat, Ruler of the Realm.