Months after graduating from university, 21-year-old Grace Millane set off to travel around the world, arriving in New Zealand in November 2018. Like many other young single girls travelling and meeting new people, she went on a date with a man whom she had met on Tinder the night before her 22nd birthday.
After her family didn’t hear anything from her in the days following the date, they grew increasingly worried and reported her as missing. On the 9th of December her body was found stuffed in a suitcase in the Waitakere Ranges, and her Tinder date was charged with her murder. In the following three week trial the man pleaded not guilty of murder, saying that her death was a consequence of rough sex that she had consented to. This is extremely problematic and raises huge questions. Should consenting to rough sex mean consenting to potential death? Should the victim’s sexual history be relevant in a murder trial?
Throughout the trial, intimate details of Grace’s sex life were described for the world to hear, including her grieving parents. Details of her membership to multiple BDSM online platforms and her preference for asphyxiation were used to attack her reputation, and create doubt in the minds of the jury so that they may be more sympathetic towards the accused, who maintained he was inexperienced in this area. He cited that she had Fifty Shades of Grey fantasies and that she had requested that he choke her, placing the blame on her.
The accused was protected under a suppression order, which granted him privacy and his identity protected under the law, whilst Grace was subjected to the public display of her private life. This seems incredibly unfair, as he could temporarily carry on with his life without facing any backlash from the consequences of his actions.
This is not a new phenomenon or something that is unique to the Millane trial. The ‘rough sex defence’ has been cited in 59 murder defence cases in the UK, where the accused men claim injuries or death of the victim were consequences of consensual rough sex or BDSM ‘gone wrong’ in an attempt to get a lesser charge of manslaughter, or even be relieved of all criminal consideration. A staggering 45% of these cases have actually lead to a lesser sentence.
In 2014, Mark Pickford was cleared of all charges for the murder of Dawn Warburton as he claimed it was a ‘sex game gone wrong’, despite the fact that she was found with thirty injuries to her face and neck. In 2016, 16 year old Hannah Pearson’s killer was cleared of murder charges and instead was charged with manslaughter, stating that she was ‘heavily intoxicated’ when she died and did not object to him strangling her, so her death was accidental. This type of defence can be difficult for the jury to get around as it suggests the intent to murder was not present due to the victim ‘consenting’ to the sexual act.
The use of the rough sex defence in the Millane case suggests that consenting to rough sex is consenting to the fact that death may be an ‘accidental’ consequence. This is victim blaming at its most harrowing, and it is not a far cry from the ‘she was asking for it’ defence that is often cited in cases of sexual assault, such as the renowned rape case where a young girl’s underwear was held up in court as evidence against her, which lead to her taking her own life.
Fortunately, the still anonymous man who murdered Grace has been officially convicted and charged with murder, with the jury overruling his defence after only 5 hours. However, not every case has had this outcome.
Men are using this defence to get away with murder, stealing the narrative of female sexual empowerment and using it against victims who can’t defend themselves. When people consent to BDSM they are not consenting to their death. It is just an excuse for the accused to get off lightly for their own sake.
There are currently organiations such as We Can’t Consent to This that are campaigning for a change in law to rule the use of the ‘rough sex defence’ as illegal. We owe it to all the women whose murderers were never brought to justice to bring about this change.
Women don’t die because of their preference towards BDSM, their ‘naive’ use of dating apps, or travelling the world on their own, their deaths are a result of inexcusable violence against women. And it needs to stop.
