Banksy's mural, a tribute to abused women and the right to defend themselves.
Banksy's mural, a tribute to abused women and the right to defend themselves.
The graffiti artist's latest mural portrays an abused housewife, but even before it's removal by the council the depiction of pushing her husband into a freezer has left some feeling uncomfortable.
Banksy's mural, a tribute to abused women and the right to defend themselves.
The latest artwork by world-renowned graffiti artist, Banksy, was confirmed yesterday as an mural of a 1950s housewife, smiling with a swollen eye, missing tooth and pushing her husband into a freezer.
Photographs of the artwork in Margate, Kent, were posted to Banksy’s website and captioned, ‘Valentine’s day mascara’, only for Thanet district council to remove the broken freezer that formed part of work a few hours later. The mural was seen to be highlighting violence against women on Valentine’s Day and at a time of increased media coverage amidst the murders of Emma and Letti Pattison and Met Police abuse against women. However, it’s depiction of her husband being pushed into freezer has left some feeling uncomfortable.
Is Banksy’s artwork just more of his dark humor on display, or is it a reflection of the reality that abused women live under?
For women like Martyna Ogonowska, the reality of escaping sexual violence that she endured earlier in life from men created significant psychological trauma and a hypervigilance to triggers of sexual assault.
Aged 18, Martyna was sexually assaulted by Filip Jaskiewicz, who she stabbed once in the chest and killed. Convicted of murder in 2019, Martyna’s defence alleged in her original trial that she was raped and sexually assaulted by an adult male who groomed her on Facebook aged 14. They argued the incident had caused Martyna significant post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which made her hypervigilant in response to triggers, such as the sexual assault by Jaskiewicz. Martyna had reported the incident to the police, but no one was charged.
During the murder trial the prosecutor used evidence from Martyna’s earlier rape investigation, including Facebook conversations between Martyna and the rape suspect over a three day period back in 2015 to imply she had wanted sex and imply she had fabricated the earlier allegation. The prosecutor also cited a psychiatrist that went beyond his report and referred to Martyna’s account of rape and sexual assault at 14 years old as a false complaint.
The failure to prosecute rape in England and Wales remains a long and continued issue within the criminal justice system that has been widely reported. The conviction rate for sexual violence in the UK is so low that it amounts to an effective decriminalisation of the offence.
In Martyna’s case she was arguably not only denied any protections as a victim of sexual violence in defending herself from Jaskiewicz, she was denied the recognition of her rape aged 14 and even had her Facebook messages at the time undermined as ‘consensual’.
Groundbreaking research conducted by the Centre for Women’s Justice in 2021 explored in a four-year investigation the extent to which women who kill are victims and why, despite this, so many are convicted of murder. The ‘Women Who Kill’ report found that nearly 80% of woman who kill had experienced violence or abuse from the deceased and that lawyers reported that women are, on average, serving longer sentences than they were a decade ago.
Recommendations made by the CWJ from the report called for further law reform and changes to practice at every stage of the criminal justice process – as well as change beyond the criminal justice system – in order to overcome the barriers to justice that women experience in these cases.
A failure to account for previous violence has led to dozens of unsafe murder convictions. My mother’s case is no different. Sally Challen’s landmark appeal in 2019 quashed her murder conviction for the killing of my father in 2010 which she said she suffered 40-years of accumulative psychological abuse in the form of coercive control from my father, Richard. After winning her freedom having served eight-years in prison, the Criminal Cases Review Commission began the painstaking work of sifting through 3,000 cold cases to investigate possible unsafe convictions where coercive and controlling behaviour may not have been available as a defence.
At the time in 2021 the commission said they had identified at least five cases which were undergoing further investigation and could be returned for appeal.
Linda Lee, one of the CCRC commissioners said at the time:
“This is not a static number. Investigations are continuing, and hopefully it will go up as more cases are identified,”
“We are looking at murder cases where coercive control may have had a serious impact on events but wasn’t raised because nobody recognised it or thought of it at the time.”
Stacey Hyde is another such woman who was not afforded the protections as a victim of abuse in society and subsequently suffered immeasurable injustice when she fought to survive. A troubled teenager who had suffered neglect and abuse as a child, Stacey was wrongly convicted of murdering Vincent Francis in 2010. She stabbed him after he attacked her friend, who the prosecution acknowledged had been subjected to violence by Francis on 27 previous occasions.
"A person tried to kill me so it's either you die or you save your life"
Stacey Hyde
Hyde appealed on the basis of fresh psychiatric evidence and offered a plea of manslaughter, which the evidence supported, according to her lawyers. “However the CPS was determined to pursue murder at retrial and opposed bail,” explained lawyer Harriet Wistrich. The jury later acquitted Hyde on the grounds of self-defence and she walked free having served six years imprisonment from age 17.
Wistrich acknowledged that “In my experience the Crown will pursue murder convictions even following a successful appeal and regardless of compelling evidence of mitigation.”
This CPS practice is something I bear witness to in 2019. Following our win to overturn my mother’s murder conviction, the appeal court directed our case to retrial at the time. Given my mother had served eight-years of a 18-year sentence, we felt there was not enough evidence to support recharging her for murder and that accepting a manslaughter plea was in the best interest of the courts, the public purse and the long suffering trauma of my brother and I, who were victims of the crime, given our father had been killed. The CPS still re-charged her for murder but eventually found there wasn’t enough evidence to support a successful reconviction, dropped their case an accepted her manslaughter plea. The process added undue harm and stress on my brother and I at the time and ultimately our mother, a victim of a society that did not afford her, nor my family, the protections to recognise the coercive and controlling behaviour she experienced over 40-years from my father.
Farieissia Martin is another woman who was pursued for murder after defending herself from her abuse. When Farieissia was 22 when she was convicted of the murder of Kyle Farrell in 2015, and sentenced to 13 years in prison. Farieissia, who at the time had two small children with Farrell, grabbed a knife when he tried to strangle her. Farrell’s violence often left Farieissia in fear of her life, but she was too frightened to call the police in case social services became involved and removed her children. Farrell’s history of violence was not adequately explored during the trial. Justice for Women campaigned for the case to go to appeal, on the grounds that the evidence of domestic violence was not afforded enough significance during the trial and subsequently her conviction was quashed with a retrial ordered. New evidence was later discovered in the form of photographs taken at the time of Farieissia’s arrest which clearly showed the bruising to her neck, supporting her account of strangulation. Rather than a retrial, Farieissia was allowed to plea guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. Farieissia was released in December 2021.
These are just a handful of cases where abused women have been wrongly convicted of murder. These cases take years of incredible amounts of work from lawyers to get to permission to appeal, let alone appeal and win. It is not just a fight with the justice system it is a fight to project this understanding to the media and public also, something I struggled immensely with in the campaign to win my mother’s freedom.
With a criminal justice system already on it’s knees amidst court backlogs and a failure to fundamentally understand domestic abuse and sexual assault, I fear greatly for the future. Many abused women will pass through an criminal justice system ill-equipped to handle these cases. For women in prison already convicted of murder, the way back is longer and tougher. We can only hope to raise awareness for the need to review more cold cases for evidence of domestic abuse missed so to give victims back the freedom they were fighting for.
Each year in the UK some 1.3 million women will suffer domestic abuse, for many of those women day-in-day-out will be a fight for survival. From the constant fear and walking on egg shells around their abusers, to days and weeks of heightened escalation and learning to walk on glass, fearing the very moment they will lose their life. Each day is a fight for survival. To be demonised by police and a criminal justice system that should should of been their to protect them in the first instance, when they were suffering abuse, should be a reminder that we are still in the dark ages and failing to recognise and support victims of domestic abuse.
Women who kill their abusers make an uncomfortable reality for society, but it’s a reality we must face together. To stop abuse and to recognise victim’s lived suffering at the hands of their male abuser and their fight for survival.
Do you agree/disagree? Let me know why in the comments!
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Society forces women to defend themselves by not holding perpetrators responsible.
Convicting & jailing criminals would stop abuse of women & children.
Instead it is ingrained that women are disposable, over reactive, manipulative & those that could support & protect victims shed responsibility hiding behind the false narrative that the perpetrator had to have been provoked & the abuse is somehow deserved.
This thinking enables & contributes to escalating abuse of women & children.
Especially the idea that IPV abuse (often proven yet ignored) happens in a vacuum, & children are not victims in their own right. Evidence of actual physical or sexual child abuse is denied & usually results in worse treatment of the mother in court.
The courts push this false narrative that leads to an escalation in abuse of the child victims once the criminal loses access to his adult victim, but is granted court-ordered contact with child victims.
The judges, lawyers, & ancillary “professionals” are as responsible as the original perpetrator for years of post-separation abuses & too often subsequent murders.
Not because they are protecting the children’s best interest, but because society makes women targets by preemptively disbelieving them to avoid the discomfort of the reality that they are contributing to abuse & murder.
And the driving factor of this system is money (& control). Women & children are being terrorized & murdered so that the lawyers can make easy money aiding & abetting criminals & w/o accountability it’s only going to get worse.
Many women & children get trapped in a perpetual limbo of vexatious litigation abuse & court-imposed poverty makes fighting back virtually impossible.
Many perpetrators still are not satisfied w/ the abuse by proxy & continue to stalk, harass, & intimidate victims.
The patterns are clear in decades of research that perpetrators will not stop until they are stopped. Murder should not be the measure. What good is recognizing the danger AFTER the victims are dead.
Courts refuse to act in the best interest of women & children, & frankly society-look at how many mass shooters have histories of DV.
Even though women serve longer jail sentences for killing in self defense than men do for murder, it is an end to the abuse & the only permanent protection for their children & for themselves.
So what’s a girl to do?
Another excellent blog David. Do you know whether Martyna appeal in 2022 was successful?
I'm releasing my next blog today. A little different today David. A bit more reflective! Look forward to your thoughts. X