This Case Is A Harrowing Reminder That Violent Reactions To Romantic Rejection Are All Too Common

Thomas Griffiths' was jailed today for the murder of 17-year-old Ellie Gould. He has been sentenced to a minimum of 12 and a half years at Bristol Crown Court.

The court heard that Griffiths' murdered Gould the day after she ended their relationship, with prosecutor Richard Smith QC stating that 'Griffiths became angry, perhaps by Ellie's continued rejection of him, and he attacked her.'

'Thomas wanted to take the friendship to the next level, but Ellie didn't want a serious boyfriend,' an unnamed source told The Times. 'She was so involved with her [horse-]riding and also worked as a waitress at weekends. She wanted to remain friends but cool their friendship. She had told him that that they would see each other every day at school but obviously it was not enough.'

On May 3rd Wiltshire police were called to Ellie's home in Calne at 3.15pm. She had multiple stab wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene. The incident is troublingly consistent with so many stories we see involving violence against women.

Because, we know that leaving an abusive partner can be the most dangerous time for a woman. There are endless archives of internet stories about women who've faced unprecedented and sometimes extremely frightening reactions from men they've rejected.

Elliot Rodgers shocked the world in 2014 when he committed a mass shooting after making YouTube videos about his hatred of sorority girls who wouldn't date him. 'I'll take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you,' one such video saw him saying. 'You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one. The true alpha male.'

Subsequently, he became the poster-boy for the 'incel' (involuntarily celibate) community, a group of men whose galvanised sexual frustration has turned to a full-blown tidal wave of hatred against all women - often underpinned by violently misogynistic rhetoric.

Then there's the Twitter thread Jameela Jamil started earlier this year, when she revealed she'd been punched in the face after rejecting a man. Hundreds of other users weighed in with their own experiences, ranging from being spat at to having their hair pulled and being followed home or harassed.

It's difficult to estimate how many incidents of violence against women occur as a result of romantic rejection. UN Women found that 35% of women in the world have experienced either physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or sexual violence by a non-partner.

Statistics also show that internationally, a third of women killed in 2017 were murdered by their current or former intimate partner.Research also found that 50 to 75% of domestic violenceor homicides happen at the point of separation, when women are killed after leaving their partners.

We all mitigate violence for rejecting male advances in day to day life: whether it's by ignoring the man who starts hitting on you on the tube rather than telling him you're not interested, or going above and beyond to assure someone that you have any other reason for not wanting to date them, rather than simply not liking them romantically.

I've spent hours biting my nails and composing texts designed to tell someone I don't want to date them anymore without hurting their pride.

Did I expect violence as the outcome in any of those instances? No - and luckily, most of the people I've 'friend-zoned' for various reasons (yes, sometimes you really are just too busy) have taken it on the chin and wished me well. But there's always the odd person who's become angry, blocked my number or felt obligated to insult me (thanks forever to the guy who bombarded me with abuse until I had to block him on Whats App and then Facebook Messenger)

From an early age we're taught that we need to 'let them down gently' when breaking off a relationship or turning a man down - the hidden message being: if they're angry, it's probably your fault. But why is it that somehow, we always end up feeling responsible for a man's unreasonable reaction?

We shouldn't be accepting angry words, actions and verbal or physical abuse as the price tagof 'hurt pride'. We need to teach boys that the right response to being told someone just 'isn't that into you' is to walk away with composure and find somebody who is interested.

Ultimately, violent reactions to rejection aren't about the rejection itself – they're about punishment and control. And we cannot nurture a society that believes a woman should be punished for not wanting to be someone's girlfriend.

Ellie Gould was described as 'fun-loving and a joy to be around'. Her family say 'we would like Ellie to be remembered as a kind, caring young lady with a wonderful, fun personality.' Now, we can only take peace in the fact justice was served in this instance and let this serve as a lesson to teach young men, violence is never an acceptable response to rejection.

Read below for Twitter responses to Jameela Jamil's thread about violence following male rejection...