Latest news with #Women'sAid
Metro
7 hours ago
- Metro
Man who tried to bomb ex's house dies after explosive bounced back and hit him
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video A man who plotted to kill his ex-girlfriend died when a bomb he threw in her home recoiled and exploded in his face. Surapong Thongnak, 36, hatched his plan when Kanonraphat Saowakhon, 28, said she didn't want to reconcile with him in Surat Thani, southern Thailand. Witnesses were drinking coffee when they said Surapong drove up to the property, before barging into the house and waking up Saowakhon, pleading for her to take him back. After the chaos, he allegedly tried to stab her with a pair of scissors before running to his car to grab a grenade. Once he threw it, the explosive hit a concrete pillar on the property and bounced back. Surapong leaned down to pick up the grenade, when it exploded in his hands, instantly killing him and injuring four others on May 25. Police arrived at the scene and found Surapong lying face down in a pool of blood, with debris and shrapnel scattered across the yard. Four people, including his ex-girlfriend, Saowakhon, were wounded and rushed to a hospital where they were treated for minor injuries before being released. Police Major Chinnakrit Sawatdiwong said: 'The injured individuals were taken to the Tha Chana Hospital. All of them have been discharged except for Samart Janyang, 68, who suffered more serious injuries. He has been transferred to the Surat Thani Hospital for further treatment.' Surapong's mother, Ranjuan Timdee, 58, said the couple had only been dating for two months before breaking up. She said: 'I was shocked to receive the news this morning that he had died. I couldn't believe he could be so violent.' Police said they also seized half a kilo (1.1 lbs) of meth from Surapong's car. Recent statistics found that the most dangerous time for a victim who has left a relationship to face violence is shortly after a breakup. More Trending 77% of domestic violence-related homicides happen after a separation, and for two years after, there is a 75% increase of violence in these situations, according to Battered Women. Women's Aid exclusively shared that 72% of people underestimate the prevalence of domestic abuse, revealing a critical gap in public awareness around this urgent issue. Nearly a quarter of us know a woman or girl who has been a victim of domestic abuse over the past year, an exclusive survey for Metro found previously. A shocking 20% also confirmed they had seen or heard it happen in the same period. And 39% confirmed that they know a woman or girl victim of sexual harassment. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Thousands of men are spitting on women runners — it's happened to me MORE: My husband shoved and spat on me on our wedding night MORE: Police make stark warning over British 'drugs mule' found with record cannabis haul
Daily Record
11 hours ago
- Business
- Daily Record
Stirling chippy hands over proceeds from special menu sale to good causes
The chippy in Cowane Street served more than 600 customers with the two-day special menu, all for the aim of raising money for a pair of local charities. Two local charities have each been given a boost of more than £1,000 thanks to a Stirling fish and chip shop. Vincenzo's chippy in Cowane Street served more than 600 customers in a two-day event to raise funds for Stirling and District Women's Aid and Strathcarron Hospice. Hungry supporters queued up to enjoy a special menu, which saw prices charged include a haddock supper for £4.50 and a regular chips for just £1.50, steak pie supper for £4 or a single steak pie for £1.60 and a quarter chicken supper for £2.50, with more special prices available on other items. Children joining the queues were also treated to a meet and greet with some Disney princesses, face painting, glitter tattoos and hair tinsel. Thanks to the chippie's efforts, both charities were presented with cheques for £1041.50. Women's Aid was also given an additional £360 gathered in a charity tin, while Strathcarron was given £282 also collected through a tin in the shop. Owner Vincenzo di Carlo said he and his staff were 'delighted' to have raised so much in support of the charities, adding: 'A heartfelt thank you to everyone who contributed and helped us to make a difference in our community.' A Stirling and District Women's Aid spokesperson said: 'Another fantastic fundraiser by Vincenzo, Giuliana and the rest of their team. 'We are truly grateful for all the support we have received from Vincenzo's and their lovely customers. Every penny is vital to our service as the cost of living crisis has hit charities hard. 'But equally important is the awareness raising that comes from events like this. 'Violence against women and girls is a global epidemic, therefore these conversations need to be happening in all places. 'Events like these encourage discussion at a community level and shine a spotlight on these issues. Tackling violence against women and girls is everyone's responsibility.' Vincenzo, who dedicated the event to the memory of SDWA's CEO Lisa McGloin, who sadly died earlier this year, has already pledged to raised funds next year, again in Lisa's honour. Katy Whitelaw of Strathcarron Hospice's fundraising team, meanwhile, added her thanks. She said: 'We would like to thank Vincenzo, his staff and the local community for their fantastic support in fundraising for the hospice. We need £19,452 daily to provide our specialist end of life and palliative care services to individuals and their communities, so every penny is vital.' Earlier this year Vincenzo's scooped the gong for the region's top takeaway at the Scottish Fish & Chip Awards 2024. The shop picked up two prizes - Best Fish Supper and Best Chip Shop, both for the central region.
Scroll.in
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
Emily Brontë's ‘Wuthering Heights' is a dark parable about coercive control
Coercive or controlling behaviour in an intimate or family relationship became a criminal offence in the UK in December 2015. The legislation was the result of a long campaign by the charity Women's Aid to extend understanding of domestic abuse beyond physical violence. But, over 150 years earlier, Emily Brontë placed coercive control at the heart of her celebrated gothic romance, Wuthering Heights. The novel is often read as a great love story. It has inspired a Kate Bush song and many stage, film and TV adaptations. But Heathcliff is an abused child who becomes an abuser – and teaches his son to copy, continue and refine his abuse. In the novel, Cathy declares that 'My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff!' Coercive control, like Cathy's love, may not be fully visible, but it nonetheless underpins the emotional logic of Brontë's plot. Wuthering Heights is a novel of two halves. The first focuses on spirited, passionate Cathy, caught between her tamely domestic husband Edgar Linton and the thrilling wildness of Heathcliff, her soulmate from childhood. To revenge himself on Cathy for marrying Edgar, Heathcliff elopes with Edgar's infatuated sister Isabella. Isabella initially sees Heathcliff as a brooding romantic hero, but she soon repents, fleeing with their baby son Linton. Heathcliff and Isabella Heathcliff's abuse of Isabella is sometimes physical, but more often psychological. He takes care, as he tells the family servant Nelly Dean, to 'keep strictly within the limits of the law' to avoid giving Isabella 'the slightest right to claim a separation'. The law grants him ownership of his wife's money and property, but subtler refinements of abuse include humiliation, isolation from family and friends, and deprivation of food, privacy and personal care. At Wuthering Heights, Nelly is shocked to see Isabella unwashed, shabbily dressed. She's 'wan and listless; her hair uncurled: some locks hanging lankly down'. Isabella has already reported that she is forced to sleep in a chair because Heathcliff keeps 'the key of our room in his pocket'. Heathcliff delights in humbling her before Nelly and his own servants, calling her 'an abject thing', 'shamefully cringing', 'pitiful, slavish, and mean-minded'. Isabella escapes Heathcliff clad only in 'a girlish dress' and 'thin slippers', and goes into hiding with her brother's financial help. After her death, Heathcliff recovers their son Linton and uses him to engineer a second coercive marriage to his cousin, Cathy and Edgar's daughter Catherine. A sickly, peevish adolescent, Linton Heathcliff is perhaps the most unappealing character in Victorian fiction, lacking altogether the strength and charisma of his father. But his puny physicality casts the coercive nature of his abuse into relief. Catherine is imprisoned at Wuthering Heights and blackmailed into consenting to marry Linton, who becomes the legal owner of all her property. Incapable of dominating her physically, Linton delights in psychological torment, conspiring in his father's surveillance and depriving her of beloved possessions: All her nice books are mine; she offered to give me them, and her pretty birds, and her pony Minny, if I would get the key of our room, and let her out; but I told her she had nothing to give, they were all, all mine. And then she cried, and took a little picture from her neck, and said I should have that; two pictures in a gold case, on one side her mother, and on the other uncle [Catherine's father], when they were young. That was yesterday – I said they were mine, too. After Linton's death, Heathcliff inherits everything, leaving the widowed and orphaned Catherine his penniless dependant. Wuthering Heights is a dark parable about the absolute power that marriage can grant to abusive men. Real-life inspiration Brontë's plot was rooted in a real-life local case of domestic torment. In 1840, a Mrs Collins came to Haworth Parsonage to ask Emily's father Patrick's advice about her alcoholic, abusive husband. He was Patrick's colleague and fellow clergyman, Rev. John Collins, assistant curate of Keighley. Unusually for the time, Patrick advised her to leave him and take her two children with her. In April 1847, just seven months before Wuthering Heights' publication, Mrs Collins returned to Haworth to thank him. She told the Brontë family how she had settled in Manchester with her children, supporting them all by running a lodging house. Mrs Collins' experience of abuse did not only shape the chilling psychodrama of Wuthering Heights. There are echoes of Patrick's advice in Emily's sister Charlotte's novel Jane Eyre (1847), and her eponymous heroine's famous declaration of autonomy: 'I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.' Mrs Collins' strength and resilience also inspires the bravery of Helen Huntingdon in Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). Like Emily's 'eternal rocks,' coercive control lurks beneath the Brontës' best-loved fictions, warning Victorian readers of the terrifyingly real dangers of psychological abuse long before the law caught up. Katy Mullin, Professor of Modern Literature and Culture, University of Leeds. Hannah Roche, Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture, University of York. This article first appeared on The Conversation.
Irish Examiner
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Pornography 'in children's pockets and in their bedrooms' and 'finding them when they go online'
Pornography is 'in children's pockets and in their bedrooms', and is presenting itself to children online without them having to go looking for it, according to the chief executive of Women's Aid. Sarah Benson was speaking ahead of a two-day strategic convention on the issue, beginning on Thursday in Athlone. The event, organised by Women's Aid and the Community Foundation of Ireland, will examine how society can reduce and prevent the harms of pornography 'on gender equality, healthy sexual development and online safety'. Ms Benson said Women's Aid commissioned a Red C survey in 2022 on public attitudes around pornography. 'We further commissioned a piece of research which was undertaken by the Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy Institute which was published in November of last year.' That research found much of what features in mainstream pornography constitutes sexual violence, including the strangling of women during sex. Ms Benson said pornography could 'no longer remain the elephant in the room', adding it is a multi-billion euro 'broadly unregulated industry' which 'is on every smartphone, is on every social media app, in children's pockets and in their bedrooms, it is in the bedrooms of young people and adults alike, coming between positive sexual intimacy'. She warned: 'We now have the rise of AI and deep fake, so online safety, gender equality, sexual violence, healthy sexuality, children's exposure — it [pornography] is in too many spaces and places. "This is us convening, in a closed session, a wide group of experts who work on many different things but have that one thread of shared concern. Together, what we hope to be able to arrive at is some sort of strategy for action, whereby we can bring that to the general public, perhaps bring it to legislation. We are not talking about children accessing Pornhub — we are talking about porn finding them when they go online. We have to assume that they will be exposed to it, and not hope that they won't. She said a platform for action was what was now needed to tackle the harmful impact. Current gender adviser to the G7 and former tánaiste and MEP Frances Fitzgerald will chair the event. More than 50 delegates will include representatives from a range of areas including domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, men's leadership and development, children's rights and children's safety, education, online safety, consent programmes, youth organisations, migrant rights agencies and researchers.
Irish Independent
10-05-2025
- Irish Independent
Man who allegedly bit, strangled and headbutt his ex-partner is refused bail over 'grave concerns' for alleged victim's safety
The 35-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the injured party, is charged with two counts of assault causing harm. He appeared before Tallaght District Court on Tuesday, where Garda Sarah Cullinane objected to bail on grounds of the nature and seriousness of the alleged offences, including the potential for witness interference. The court heard that the man is alleged to have bitten the woman on the forehead, strangled her, pulled her hair and smashed his forehead against her nose in separate incidents in April and July 2024. The woman sustained a broken nose and hospital records and photographs of her injuries were submitted as evidence. Appearing in court, the injured party said a friend believed she had been 'kidnapped' due to her sudden disappearance, and that she had returned to the relationship out of fear. She told the court she delayed reporting the assaults because she was in a 'controlling relationship' and only felt able to come forward after receiving support from counselling services and Women's Aid. Gardaí expressed serious concerns that, if released, the accused man would commit further offences, particularly given that he and his alleged victim share a child and have a volatile history. Defence solicitor Michael Hennessey said his client denies the allegations. He submitted that the accused man has no history of bench warrants, is now in a new relationship with a woman who is pregnant and was willing to abide by strict bail conditions, including a curfew and stay-away order. Judge Catherine Ghent said the facts of the case were of an extremely serious nature and that she had 'grave concerns' for the safety of the alleged injured party. She refused bail under Section 2 of the Bail Act and also cited O'Callaghan principles, noting the risk of further serious offences being committed. The accused was remanded in custody to appear before Cloverhill District Court on Tuesday, May 13, at 10am.
