Grace Millane: we have work to do

EDITORIAL: Brutishness turned to barbarity as Grace Millane’s killer went about a day of base gratifications and one or two complications.

So bad were the details that as his trial slithered on, the public had reasons to question whether it was better, or less ignoble, to keep reading and watching the name of empathy, or to turn away in sheer, shuddering revulsion.

Her tormented family had no real choice in the matter, as details of their daughter and sister’s death sped from the courtroom where they wept to her community in Essex.

At the end, was there anything quite as awful as the palpable accuracy of Justice Simon Moore’s summary that the convicted man’s behaviour was neither premeditated, nor driven by any loss of self-control, particularly.

Instead the judge spoke of a killer’s sense of self-entitlement, and the objectification of Grace’s body. To the extent, we might add, that her body became a body.

The defence argued that this was consensual rough sex gone wrong; that the monstrosity of the man’s behaviour afterwards was within the range of innocent people’s coping mechanisms, and that, come on, burying and concealing a victim’s body isn’t that uncommon in New Zealand.

He got that last bit right. How chastening is it that we have a spectrum of standards of normality for victim disposal?

What is abnormal, surely, is to go on a second Tinder date while the body of your strangled first date is still in your room.

From what is now public record, a dark portrait emerges of a man adrift from his own humanity, and indifferent to that of others.

The Millane family has through its anguish been gracious about the extent of support offered by New

Zealanders and is trying to raise awareness of violence against women. This is not a cause to be wished well from a distance. It’s an imperative to be pursued here, as much as anywhere.

Dagmar Pytlickova, Karen Elizabeth Aim, Birgit Brauer, Kayo Matsuzewa, their names far less vivid in the national memory, also met their deaths backpacking in our country. Heidi Paakkonen, travelling with fellow victim Urban Hoglin, stands perhaps more memorable.

Several issues need to draw our attention now. The ‘‘rough sex’’ defence needs to come under scrutiny, alongside what White Ribbon New Zealand manager Rob McCann identifies as victimblaming. Examination of these matters is necessary, though not necessarily straightforward.

It doesn’t enhance the cause of a fair trial if, for instance, the accused’s past patterns of behaviour are open to scrutiny to a far greater extent than the victim’s. Nevertheless, there remains a troubling sense that we haven’t calibrated the tolerances for what is acceptable and what isn’t very well.

McCann is unassailably correct to highlight unhealthy attitudes towards women, nurtured by porn and cliched-to-toxic views of masculinity. It cannot have escaped notice that a great deal of social effort already goes into teaching that respect and empathy are key components of being a good man. It is plain, and pleasing, to see where this is working. Painful to see where it isn’t.

The convicted man faces a minimum 17 years in jail. The family accepts this. But really it’s a footnote in the Grace Millane story, which now must continue as part of an honest, diligent, simply more ardent search for ways to be a healthier society. One that grows fewer predators in our midst.

How chastening is it that we have a spectrum of standards of normality for victim disposal?