"Prostitutes deserve as much sympathy as any murder victim"

...say the title of an article in the G2 supplement of yesterday's Guardian (p. 3 Joan Smith). It's a horrible truth that this notion has to even be pointed out isn't it?

I don't want to make a long post about this in my words as StormCloud and Sparkle*Matrix have both done very good jobs of detailing the awful killings of 5 women known to be prostitutes in Ipswich. But I've bought the Guardian the last few days (i'm a bit naive about newspapers but I generally think if there are no puns or semi-naked people on the front i can't go far wrong) and there are some notable thing in it that I wanted to post and comment on here.

From yesterday's front page story continuing onto page 2 by Paul Lewis:
'...Details of the missing women emerged as senior officers warned all women in the town not to go out at night alone. "We are coming up to the party season and up to Christmas," said assistant chief constable Jacqui Cheer. "There will be groups of women going out and I would say you have really got to look after each other, plan how you are going to get there and please, please come home together. Whatever happens on your night out, make sure you do not leave your friends alone." '

- I understand that it's really important for women to watch out for themselves and their friends as it as always been but where is the onus on men to watch out? No one's asking men to volunteer to walk girls home, if anything that would be inappropriate - but what's so wrong with asking men to keep an eye out? They don't need to watch women in bars etc (as if they don't anyway), they need to watch out for other men - potential attackers.

Also this killer is targeting prostitutes in the red-light district, and while it's important to be vigilant, stressing this to women in this way is more likely to create fear and hysteria than vigilance.

'Detectives are also urging women working as prostitutes not to tout for business while the killer is at large.'

- very easy for them to say isn't it? Are they going to be compensating prostitutes during the amnesty that they're proposing in order to help co-operation with the police? Of course not! People who work as prostitutes do just that - they work, it's their source of income, and income which is often used to fund a drug habit, feed children, or protect them from their pimps (I don't pretend to know a lot about the subject so please forgive my generalisations, they are fueled by print in the Guardian) - the news is on right now on Ch4 - both of the women most recently found dead were both heroin addicts and both had children.

Page 6-7 yesterday's Guardian - Karen McVeigh's account of the Psychologist's (Michael Berry) theories:
'The murderer is likely to be white because killers tend to select targets within their own racial group, he said'

- the killer IS likely to be white if he is from Ipswich because of the 117, 069 population of the city, 109,381 people are white. Also it is less likely that women of ethnic minorities would be working as prostitutes (as there are less ethnic minority people IN Ipswich) so the fact that the killer is targeting white prostitutes isn't really of any consequence. They're likely to be white because Ipswich is not an ethnically diverse community.

' "The chances are he won't have a big criminal history of sex offences, because he is comfortable with prostitutes and sex is unlikely to be a motivation..." '

- I know i'm not a criminal psychologist but what does not having any sex offences have to do with being comfortable with prostitutes? Does someone being convicted of a sex offence suddenly give them an aversion to sex-workers? The media and police haven't talked about exactly HOW these women have been killed but it is believed from what they've said that sex wasn't involved.

' "It may be that the police are keeping quiet about this, but you would expect the bodies to be battered or degraded. The fact that they were naked could be to degrade them or potentially not to leave DNA on them."

- that bit makes more sense and brings me to my next point:

back to the G2 article by Joan Smith:
'...it is an inflexible rule of popular journalism that men who kill sex workers are "Rippers" and their victims "vice girls", as yesterdays [11.12.06] headlines confirmed.
"Ripper cops find body of 3rd vice girl," declared the Sun, describing the earlier victims are "blonde Gemma" and "brunette Tanya" [sic].... The Daily Mirror lead with "Ripper:Body No 3 is found", while the Daily Express devoted an inside page to the hunt for the "Ipswich Ripper" ...'

Surprise surprise it's the Sun among others that starts this Ripper label. Way to feed the ego, and way to be erroneous - Oxford American Dictionaries define a 'ripper' as:''a murderer who mutilates victims' bodies'' - so unless the Sun knows something we don't, the label is wrong. These women have been found naked and dead, not mutilated. Peter Sutcliffe WAS a 'ripper'. He mutilated his victims in various ways and when he was found and finally arrested (the second time...? After being spotted in the red light district 60 times and being interviewed NINE times) for the crimes (after police caught him on the fact that he had fake license plates on his car) he was in his car with a prostitute and there were tools/weapons including a hammer in his boot. This killer has not been said to have done anything related to mutilation so it is not correct to refer to him in that way at this stage.

[I keep saying 'him' and I know it's not right to assume it's a man but it's most likely and the media keep saying 'him']

Another thing that really bugs me is that they keep just referring to these women by their first names (AND their hair colour THANK you Sun!) - a sense of decorum at least should mean that they call them by the full names or refer to them as Ms... they don't know these women, they never met them before. And now because they are dead and the authorities are working on their cases they can be so familiar.

There was an update about the further 2 murders today but it was more of the same and everything that has already been on the news this evening so I won't go on anymore.

I was in Nacton, Ipswich recently. It's terrifying to think that I was near there around that time.