UKC

An article in today’s Guardian sports section reports Dennis was driving the vehicle that killed his wife Melissa Hoskins. How tragic.

Tragic. Bizarre circumstances. Wonder what happened?

E

There are more detailed reports. Seems to have been an altercation between them. Not pleasant.

Please God it wasn’t murder.

Apparently charged with causing death by dangerous driving, driving without due care and endangering life. 

Reports or rumors? 

I was very shocked to hear he had been charged relating to the incident and my mind initially jumped to the worst kind of charge.  But reports say he has been charged with death by dangerous driving, which is tragic but nowhere near as sinister as the alternative that you are suggesting.

Just google his name and read the newspaper reports. I can't say if they are reports or mere rumours.

I looked into it, because I didn't understand how he could run his wife over; killed in a crash in the same car, maybe, but running his wife over? This is the report I found:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/other-sports/cycling/rohan-dennis-melissa-ho...

"According to Adelaide newspaper the Advertiser, police are set to allege that Hoskins jumped onto the car's bonnet and attempted to grab a door handle but Dennis allegedly did not stop driving until she fell off."

That to me suggested an 'altercation'; it is not normal behaviour.

Yeah, not good. I initially thought some sort of accident like motor-pacing or passing a bottle up.

I really hope it's not sinister.

E

Those were my first thoughts too. Sounds like some crazy heat of the moment events that spiralled into tragedy. Pretty sad.

It is tragic, and it's also a very serious crime.  If it looked like the intention was to kill the charge would be murder.  This charge is more like manslaughter - the 'causing death' part may not have been intentional but nevertheless no mere accident.

Anyhow, he's still innocent until proven guilty.  It's probably best not to speculate.  No doubt there will be lots of press coverage during the trial.  (Assuming there is going to be one.)

On the one hand I agree.  But on the other, without wishing to accuse you of anything, we are frequently much too willing to say this kind of thing when men kill their wives and it begins to look like we're collectively making excuses for them.

We're also much too willing to make excuses for motorists who kill cyclists through momentary flashes of anger or mere carelessness imo, but that's one for another thread.  (One that's already been more than adequately argued about at length on here on dozens of them already!)

Have you got any evidence that men (I'm assuming it's men you are referring to) are making these excuses you refer to?

I don't think it would undermine deepsoup's point if some of the people were women. Women are brought up surrounded by sexism just like the rest of us, they're not immune from it having an impact on their attitudes. Deepsoup said nothing about it being an attitude that's confined to men.

Women are quite capable of using cars to kill as well. Gender does not come into it.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/02/cheshire-woman-found-guilty...

No doubt we'll be hearing plenty when it comes to trial, but for now I'd prefer not to make assumptions as to how relevant this may be to this specific case.

Also I'm not interested in getting into a lengthy debate just now (which shouldn't be on this thread anyway), but I'll do you the courtesy of assuming you're asking a genuine question with an open mind and posting a few links.

On second thoughts maybe you should just google it yourself, but sometimes it would be better to read a book - specifically I'd suggest this one: https://www.jesshill.net/home/see-what-you-made-me-do/
(It's quite a scholarly work - loads of evidence, references and citations to back up everything she says in there.)

Elsewhere the author writes:

"After decades of ignoring domestic violence, Australians have learnt to condemn it. The statistics are now well known: a woman is murdered at least every week, another hospitalised every three hours. We say we’re horrified, and wonder what could possibly make a man hurt a woman he claims to love. Does he drink? Take drugs? Was he stressed, unemployed, frustrated? Did she provoke him? What could make a man lose control like that? There must be some reason for it.

The woman looks for reasons too, which is why it can take her so long to realise she’s being abused. He’s jealous because he loves me. He doesn’t like me going out because he’s overprotective. He’s got a temper, but everyone’s got their demons – he just needs a strong woman to help him overcome them. On average, a woman will endure 35 assaults before she makes her first complaint. In the meantime, she’ll make as many excuses for his behaviour as we do.

We reach for these excuses because the alternative – that hundreds of thousands of Australian men have chosen to inflict diabolical cruelty on their partners – is almost inconceivable. Men’s behaviour change programs don’t treat perpetrators for anger problems, because anger management doesn’t work. The violence isn’t an overreaction, it’s a tool – one of many that abusers can use to exert control over their wives and girlfriends. Drugs and alcohol may aggravate the violence, but they don’t cause it."

https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/march/1425128400/jess-hill/home-tr...

Meanwhile, here are a couple of reports of recent attempts to improve the reporting of such things in the press:
https://theconversation.com/how-australian-media-are-changing-the-way-they-...
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/domestic-abuse-reporting-gui...

I don't think the possibility that women are capable of using a car as a weapon was ever in question. The fact that the woman in your example was charged with murder, rather than dangerous driving, perhaps even backs up deepsoup's point. Though there are probably many differences between the cases and it wouldn't be fair to generalise from two examples.

N = 1

It goes without saying that domestic violence is a despicable crime but I don't accept your assertion that men are making excuses for it. How the media choose to report these incidents is not a reflection on the public perception of these crimes. 

Is N the number of memory locations reserved for storing cases like this?  Very "volatile" memory too!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-66686382

And yet it wasn't always so.  It used to be ignored much more than it still is, and when it wasn't being brushed under the carpet it was even considered to be a joking matter.  (And still is among idiots like erm... James Cleverly: the actual Home Secretary ffs, speaking in front of journalists in Downing Street.) 

It's only through talking about it that 'public perception' of these crimes has changed and we (most of us) don't think it's funny any more, so perhaps it does still need saying.

Two things there:

You asked for evidence, I presented some and pointed you in the right direction to find plenty more if so inclined in my previous post; it was slightly more than just my own assertion. 
(I don't have my copy of that book handy, I've loaned it to a friend, or I might have wasted more of my time responding to your sea-lioning by listing a bunch of academic papers cited in the references bit at the back.)

I have not at any point said it's only men who are making excuses for it, Luke90 as much as told you so upthread, and in my previous post I quoted a large chunk of an article by Jess Hill that very explicitly says otherwise. 

In a slightly different context I feel strangely sure you'd be saying "not all men" - nobody* thinks it is all men ok?  This is not about you.

Of course it is!  Here's one of the links from my previous post again; it explicitly addresses this very point:
https://theconversation.com/how-australian-media-are-changing-the-way-they-...

The media both reflects and shapes the public perception of, well, just about everything.  So it's heartening that, here at least, the media is changing. 

It's something that's mostly been happening really quite recently, mainly since the #metoo movement, and they've come quite a long way in a short time so it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that not everybody has been keeping up:
https://janegilmore.com/fixedit-putrid-headline-shows-how-much-weve-changed...

--

*(This isn't strictly true.  There is one group of people that does believe it's "all men" and one group only - abusive men who are rationalising their behaviour by telling themselves it's normal.)

PaulW said:

Yes, women sometimes murder their partners/ex-partners too.  Sometimes using a car as a weapon.  Can't speak for Wide_Mouth_Frog but I'd missed that one somehow, so I'm surprised to learn that n=2 just lately. 
(Jeez what a grim story!  And a particularly grisly example of the counter intuitive clustering of extreme events.)

With regards to his second sentence there though: in cases of men murdering their female partners/ex-partners n≈1/week. (In Australia, and also in the UK.)

When you're exemplifying that something is possible N=1 is sufficient

Why was it necessary to exemplify the staggeringly obvious in the first place?  Where on this thread (or anywhere else) has anyone made even the slightest suggestion it's not possible?

Those bloody female journalists, skewing the narrative in favour of men!

Oi!  Journalists are <ahem> not all men you know!  Heh.
(Not even the very worst of the worst!)

I'd never heard of Jane Gilmore's "Fixed It" project before googling up a couple of the links above - but I bet if you went through it checking the bylines you would find a few female journalists' names next to offending headlines.  Not that individual journalists are necessarily to blame anyway. 

Her blog post about why she doesn't 'name and shame' is interesting, perhaps even a tiny bit relevant dunno.
https://janegilmore.com/why-i-dont-name-and-shame-journalists-in-fixed-it/

I took it as implying that there was an equivalence between men and women. Also, it was meant slightly tongue in cheek. Don't be so uptight

Well, I was replying to this

Which I thought implied that the poster felt the single example was in some way deficient.  Maybe I misunderstood.

You were quite right of course that one example of something happening is plenty to disprove the hypothesis that it never can, can't fault the logic there.  Nobody having said that though, or even hinted at it, the single example was deficient in the sense that it was entirely unnecessary and irrelevant.

I was being extra pedantic earlier on and really didn't need to jump on that with both feet though, sorry.

If PaulW's post was intended to imply that women killing men is anything like as common as men killing women, that would have been so obviously rubbish that it was barely worth replying to at all. 

I didn't really read it that way either though personally - with the verdict coming in and that other story being in the headlines at exact same time, I thought it was just slightly clumsily remarking on a certain grisly similarity between them.

Well, maybe - there's really nothing but a bit of tabloid speculation out there about this one so far, and none of us have any idea what actually happened yet.