JOHN LEECH, the MP for Manchester Withington, sent a surprisingly indifferent letter to the Students’ Union Women’s Officer, Elizabeth Somerville, in response to the rape of a 21-year-old student that occurred in Withington a few weeks ago.
Somerville was shocked at how the letter, leaked to Student Direct, seemed to blame the general student population and their inclination to scream and shout in the late hours of the night as a directly contributing factor to why the screams of the young woman being accosted were not assumed to be out of the ordinary and not investigated by local residents.
Maybe John Leech did not mean to come off as being so insensitive. Perhaps he was simply implying that students having a good time should scream less, or perhaps students being assaulted should have a special recognisable kind of scream, or perhaps a rape alarm.
Perhaps pointing the finger at students isn’t the way to go, Mr. Leech, as if Manchester was the Utopia we all want it to be, it would be the criminals and not the students that would have packed their bags.
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