Sussex University: The Education and Justice System are Failing Women

 So many of you will have read about the horrific situation at Sussex University where senior lecturer Dr Lee Salter was allowed to continue teaching until media inquiries began coming in about him. The inquiries were made regarding his relationship with a student and the abuse she faced from him. When I saw this I doubt I was alone in my first reaction containing liberal use of the words 'fuck', 'fuck sake', 'fucking hell' and 'are you fucking serious?'. It made me sick to my stomach. I cried with anger. I screamed in frustration. 

 It's 2016, why was this allowed to happen?

 Salter received a six month sentence, suspended for eight, and given the extent of her injuries it further added to the mind fuck that is this case. He was in a position of power both inside and outside of the classroom, he actively made the choice to abuse this power, he actively made the choice to abuse Allison Smith. A six month sentence that he will most likely not serve doesn't even put a dent in justice for her. 

 Something else that occurred to me though, while reading about similar cases, is how prevalent a trend this is. Campaigns by police encouraging people to come forward and report domestic violence, politicians making promises that there will be help and support for victims and survivors; when cases like this make headlines - they only make up a small fraction of cases of domestic violence - it cuts through this rhetoric and exposes those promises for the steaming piles of horseshit they are. We are angry, really fucking angry, that a) in the 21st century we still have to protest and shout about this shit and b) a higher education institute, a place of learning, somewhere that is meant to be progressive and at the forefront of fighting against these issues is enabling a fucking abuser. They are allowing him to teach in an environment with potentially vulnerable young people, where he has easy access to young people to manipulate and exploit. And the fucking cherry on the top  of this shitcake? They're paying NINE FUCKING GRAND A YEAR for this, and he is being PAID for the pleasure of this.

(Fuck) The Education System

 By keeping him on with a violent criminal conviction they are sending a message to (mostly) women students that higher education is not a place for them. That their fees are being used to keep him there, allowing the university to say "look at what a good lecturer we have, your safety is secondary to us being able to show him off". Myself and others who have been involved with Student Union campaigns against intimate partner violence and domestic violence, through our institutions and nationally through the NUS, are blue in the fucking face and sick to the back teeth of shouting about this as an issue; yet normally we focus on on-campus, student-against-student violence. But violence from a lecturer against a student is a new one for many of us. Where is the statement from the UCU about this? Where is the outrage? It took 3,000 people signing a petition for the university to finally cave and for this bastard to lose his job.

 Think of it this way: if they had been 'just friends', or 'just student and teacher', and he committed the acts he did against here what would the public reaction be? What would the judicial reaction be? Would he be behind bars (where he belongs) for grievous bodily harm? Very probably. Would the university have kept him as a lecturer? Fuck NO! He'd be a risk to students. Oh wait... But because they were in an intimate relationship did that make it less serious? The old approach of 'a private matter', 'a lovers' tiff'? This is by no stretch of  the imagination me placing any blame on Allison because she was in a relationship with a lecturer, this is me being so fucking angry that the charge was likely a lesser one because they were intimately involved.

The (In)Justice System

 This brings me onto part two of my rant, primarily about his sentence. It also goes back to 2014 when I was assaulted by a man on the Metro, along with several others he attacked that day. the case came to court in May 2015 (swift justice, my arse). For a month spent doped up on painkillers for a shoulder injury, what were probably hundreds of calls to the police to see how the case was progressing, and a fear of using the Metro alone which still stands to this day (I'm much better at it now, I need a sticker :) ), myself and the others received.... £50 compensation each. He received that fine and probation. We received trauma and anger. He is free, more so than the lasting effects have left me feeling.It's not fair.

 In my second year of university I took a module called Gender, Crime and Justice; the content covered everything from women as victims of crime to women who commit crimes, the types of crimes, and the punishments they receive. The course was taught by Pam Davies, she's extremely experienced in the field of gender and the criminal justice service, it was one of my favourites of the year. What left me gobsmacked was the types of crimes women tend to be prosecuted and imprisoned for. The most recent statistics reveal that women make up less than 5% of the total UK prison population (at the time of this post this stands at 3,898 out of 85,188 - August 2016). While these figures erase Trans* and Non-Binary offenders it does show the staggering difference in prison population makeup. Fraud, theft and drug charges make up the most common types of offences committed by women in prison, with only 19% of women in prison are there for violent crimes. 

 Could somebody please justify to me how there are over 3,000 women in prison for non-violent crimes, yet men like Lee Salter are allowed - by law - to continue having their freedom. Now some may argue that the media backlash against him, losing his job blah blah blah may indicate that he's lost some of his freedom, despite not being in prison. But really? He is an abuser who is allowed to carry on roaming the streets, having the freewill and agency that he wouldn't behind bars, and not living in fear of, well, people like himself.



 By this point I feel absolutely done, it's times like this I want to just stop the planet and get off. It's further evidence to support switching off 2016, waiting ten seconds, turn it back on and see if that helps. Neither of these solutions will do any good/actually happen unless space travel hurries its arse up and becomes a lot cheaper. It's totally understandable to see these examples, drop out of activism and move to a remote island populated by only flamingos. But I don't think I could take the smell of bird poo for that long, so for now I'm going to clear my head (what most of this post was), take a good few deep breaths and do everything in my power to make sure that cases like this are not overlooked or blindly accepted as the justice and education systems doing their best ever again.



 Now somebody pass the gin!!

The Death of Tugce Albayrak

 So it's been almost three months. And with good reason. The day after my last post my uncle died and I have to say it really broke me. He'd been ill for a few week and happened just as things seemed to be looking up for him. I'm still totally broken by it. I had considered afterwards just letting this run into obscurity, leave my blog and start fresh. But I saw this today and after months of recovering it brought a lot back up.

Image - Reuters, source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30268653

 I saw the news tonight about the death of Tugce Albayrak.

 A woman in Germany was taken off of life support on her 23rd birthday, having sustained brain damage when intervening after hearing cries from two women being harassed in the toilets of a fast food restaurant. There are a lot of elements at fault here but not the actions of Tugce.

 Probably around a month after my last post I was assaulted under similar circumstances, I was on my way to meet somebody at the airport, a woman I had never met before staying with me for the North East Feminist Gathering weekend in October. It was getting late, I had very little phone battery and was by myself on the basis that I'd meet her there and we'd go back to mine together. I had my headphones in and noticed somebody get onto the Metro and sit near me. He tried to engage me in conversation but being wary of travelling alone I kept my head down and ignored him. After a while I saw him get up and move onto another woman but kept a close eye on him, as she was also travelling alone and seemed just as uncomfortable as I did. She also ignored him so he moved onto others, I kept a close eye, up until he sat down with a young woman who looked no older than 16. At that time I decided I needed to intervene, as he touched her face and her legs and she sat saying nothing, visibly terrified.

 There have been many occasions where I have been in the same position as this young woman and to say it is unpleasant is an understatement. Being surrounded be people who don't look up while your personal space and privacy is invaded and feeling totally isolated at the same time. So I got up and though I could be a diversion, even if I just cause a scene rather than making a profound point it will stop him from touching her. I told her not to touch her, who did he think he was? So, in all of his might, he threw a rolled-up newspaper at me. Very tough. I told him I wasn't scared of him. It was a lie, I was terrified. He got up and shoved me down, smirking and swaying while he stood over me and people just looked. 

 "Why aren't you scared of me? You should be scared of me."  

 It sounds very silly to me, still being scared of this, still getting the shakes every time I get on public transport. I came away with damaged tendons and a bit of fear, that's all; but with the size of this man and his behaviour I genuinely thought he could have killed me. That's what a culture of violence against women does to you. 

 My case is still ongoing but seeing this tonight really shook me. The police were really good to me, the Metro workers were too - after I was worried I'd be in trouble for pressing every emergency stop button on my way as I was chased up the carriage. I believe that when Tugce Albayrak intervened in the incident which she did she didn't think she was doing anything remarkable. Neither did I but I was told afterwards how brave I was by friends, by police, by support workers. I didn't feel brave. I felt scared, I felt silly and I felt like I as making a fuss. And seeing the news about a woman dying for doing something similar just makes me all the more scared. If we don't stand up for other women then who will? But if we're assaulted and killed for doing so then who will want to speak up with those threats hanging over them?

 Male privilege is injuring and killing women, the entitlement some men believe they have to women's bodies, space and attention. It wasn't standing up for women that killed Tugce Albayrak, it was male 'entitlement' and violence against women. It wasn't the act of intervention, it was the act of violence against women which killed Tugce. As a good friend of mine says, after the deaths of women in these circumstances people always say there are 'lessons to be learned', but it seems there is a vast library of these so-called lessons out there but nobody is learning from them.

 Tugce Albayrak may not have believed she was a hero but her actions were heroic. Rest in power, sister xx