The Ipswich Murders
Dec. 18th, 2006 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloThey've just arrested a man on suspicion of murdering the five women in Ipswich.
I sense a change in the public mood. Normally there's a kind of collective shrug at the murder of a prostitute. If it makes the news at all it's a case of "well, what can you expect.?" This case started out that way, but as it's progressed and the number of victims has mounted there's been a rethink. The dead girls have aquired faces and characters, we've heard from parents and siblings and friends and now we're thinking of them as young women first and prostitutes second and the shrug has turned into an awareness that anyone could take that wrong turning and end up where they did.
At the same time we seem to have opened a proper, national debate about prostitution. We've learned that the government was thinking of licensing properly regulated red-light areas but backed away for fear of the right-wing press. Typical New Labour, that! But maybe now they'll carry through. We seem to have joined the dots and realised that by not wanting to deal with the issue we have created conditions that make murder easy.
I sense a change in the public mood. Normally there's a kind of collective shrug at the murder of a prostitute. If it makes the news at all it's a case of "well, what can you expect.?" This case started out that way, but as it's progressed and the number of victims has mounted there's been a rethink. The dead girls have aquired faces and characters, we've heard from parents and siblings and friends and now we're thinking of them as young women first and prostitutes second and the shrug has turned into an awareness that anyone could take that wrong turning and end up where they did.
At the same time we seem to have opened a proper, national debate about prostitution. We've learned that the government was thinking of licensing properly regulated red-light areas but backed away for fear of the right-wing press. Typical New Labour, that! But maybe now they'll carry through. We seem to have joined the dots and realised that by not wanting to deal with the issue we have created conditions that make murder easy.
