Kent Messenger promoting domestic violence myths

May 22, 2015, HerbsandHags, Media Complaints,

The Kent Messenger has written the most extraordinarily sympathetic article about a man who fractured his girlfriend’s cheek.

Apparently because this guy Adam Chandler can sing and was about to hit the big time on Britain’s got Talent, we’re all supposed to feel sorry for him, even though he hit his girlfriend so hard in the face that he fractured her cheek. The Kent Messenger describes his “awful experience”, his “nightmare” and reports his classic minimising of the event which resulted in his girlfriend’s injury (he “reached out”. Some reach).

Not content with plucking the world’s tiniest violin for this guy, it reports the improbable expert claim that she had particularly “gaunt” features which was why her injury was so bad (do thin people get injured worse than fat people when they get hit? I never knew that) and they report that it wasn’t until five months later that she reported it as if that has any relevance. Anyone who knows anything about domestic violence knows that women often do not report an attack immediately and indeed, on average a woman is attacked by her partner over 30 times before she reports to the police.

The KM don’t ever actually accuse the unfortunately gaunt Amy Evans of lying, but the article is so heavily slanted to elicit our sympathy for this creep and disapprobation of the girlfriend he injured, that the reader is left in no doubt as to what we are supposed to think.

We are disgusted that instead of behaving like a responsible newspaper and using this case to promote more accurate information about domestic violence, the KM has chosen instead to promote myths about it. 1 in 4 women in this country are the victims of domestic violence and 2 women a week are murdered by their partners. The level of false allegations is miniscule - Keir Starmer wrote an article for the Guardian discussing this. and the rate of conviction is extremely low because as with rape, women are not believed and the bar to be convicted is - very properly - extremely high.

So when newspapers like the Kent Messenger write articles so sympathetic to a man who used so much force that he fractured his girlfriend’s cheek, they are part of the problem.

Adam Chandler, Domestic Abuse, domestic violence, Keir Starmer, male violence

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