Arthur Collins, 25, has been convicted of an acid attack at a Hackney nightclub earlier this year. The baby-father of TOWIE star Fern McCann, he was found guilty of five counts of grievous bodily harm and nine of actual bodily harm at Wood Green crown court, reports The Guardian.
But have you heard why he did it? Or at least, his version of events. In court, he attested that he never turned up to Mangle E8 - to celebrate Ferne McCann’s baby news - with a vial of acid, but that once there, he overheard a group of men talking about how they were going to spike a woman’s drink: ‘I overheard someone saying 'no, you spike her, you do it.’
He then swore at these men, he told the court, because he had been ‘brought up to respect women’.
Explaining CCTV footage of him chucking a liquid on revellers out for a fun Easter weekend, he continued: ’I wanted to show them the drug was gone; show them there was nothing left in the bottle.’
However, the liquid was a pH1 substance, as strong as household bleach, reports the BBC. And by throwing it, not only were three men - Kwami Licorish, Makai Brown and Ruam Mota - burned on their faces and elsewhere, but a total of 20 people were injured, including many young women.
If Collins really respected women? Well, he wouldn’t have taken acid into a club with him to throw ‘indscriminately’, as a police officer testified, around. And secondly, he wouldn’t use his supposed defence of women to defend such a horrible act. Fear of having a drink spiked, or having a drink spiked is a serious thing that many women experience, many of them would love a shining white knight to come to their rescue, and to exploit that desire to defend criminal action while painting himself as some saviour is pretty gross. Thirdly, he wouldn’t have risked not being present for the upbringing of his child with Ferne. And fourthly? He probably wouldn’t have been seen in CCTV footage at the club, up to an hour after the incident, giggling with friends.
Another odd explanation given during this trial include his explanation of a text he’d sent his sister saying: ’Mind that little hand wash in my car ACID’. Collins claimed was in reference to a special shampoo with amino acids in, which he applied to his hair to prevent balding. He claimed it was kept in the car so that Ferne wouldn’t find out about it.
Acid attacks have long been a problem. Most recently, acid attacks have been used by gangs on delivery drivers so as to steal their mopeds, from which they can commit drive-by mobile phone thefts. However, they’re also used during hate crimes and, in a neat reverse of Collins’ claims about redressing some sort of gender violence, first started out as ways of hurting women. Acid attacks might have gone up in the UK recently, but historically, they’ve nearly always been committed against women who have been seen to upset a family’s ‘honour’.
The most high-profile acid attack survivor is Katie Piper, who had acid thrown in her face by a man on instruction of the man who had raped her because he feared that she had reported the crime to the police. She did eventually report, and Stefan Sylvestre, the acid attacker, was sentenced to indefinite imprisonment in 2009, while rapist Daniel Lynch was sentenced to life with a minimum of 16 years.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.