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The “Nice Guy” Who Raped and Strangled a Young Irish Woman

Adrian Ernest Bayley: Rapist, Strangler, Self-proclaimed Nice Guy
Adrian Ernest Bayley: Rapist, Strangler, Self-proclaimed Nice Guy

One reason so-called Nice Guys ™ seem so creepy to so many people is that it’s easy to see the rage and the bitterness and the weird sort of self-hating entitlement that is so often lurking underneath – and sometimes not that far underneath – the “nice guy” exterior.

Consider the gutwrenching case of Jill Meagher, an Irish woman who was raped and murdered in a suburb of Melbourne Australia last September by a man who accosted her on the street as she was walking home from a bar. A man who later told police that he had only approached her in the first place because he was “trying to be nice.”

In a lengthy interview with police, in which he confessed to raping and strangling Meagher, Adrian Ernest Bayley explained that he had only approached Meagher because she “looked distraught” and he thought he could “help.” And he only became angry at her when she rebuffed his kind offers.

“It wasn’t really my intention to hurt her, you know that?” he told police.

I spoke to her, you know and said, look, I’ll just – I’ll – I’ll help you, you know. … She flipped me off and that made me angry, because I was trying to do a nice thing. You know that? …

I was just – I was trying to be nice and – she kept going from being nice to nasty, to nice, to – you know what I mean?

Earlier in the evening, Bayley had reportedly argued with his girlfriend about his “jealousy and possessiveness issues.” The girlfriend returned home, where she reportedly told her landlady that she was “hiding from Adrian.”

The newspaper The Australian paints a picture of a man with rage issues and very little self-awareness.

Mr Bayley was working for a drainage company until his arrest six days after Meagher went missing. The workmate he had been drinking with that night told police Mr Bayley would become “angry and aggressive” after fighting with his girlfriend.

“He had a very short fuse and didn’t like to be told he was in the wrong,” he said. “In the times that I worked with Adrian, he was often talking about women. He would say he couldn’t understand how men could hurt women or be abusive towards women.”

None of this is to say that all Nice Guys ™ are harboring killers inside of them, or anything even remotely like that. But those who most loudly proclaim their “niceness” often turn out to be pretty awful, in part because they think that women owe them something for being so insistently “nice.”

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Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

Aww, obvious thing is not obvious?

Here, let me make it simple.

You said: “1. You certainly could find a correlation between the introduction of the registry and decrease in sex crimes. Proving a causal relationship might be difficult, though.”

I went and found the statistics, from the US, on rates of rape, and other violent crimes, charted them, put in a marker for when Megan’s law was introduced, and presented said chart. With me still?

Now, if you’ll load that chart, you’ll quite plainly see that all violent crime has been on the decrease since before Megan’s law was introduced. Obvious thing is obvious.

As for sentencing, you said:

“In the UK in >80% of the cases prison sentence is >5 years, average sentence is ~8 years (the 17% of cases with “indeterminate sentences” for public protection excluded). So while these sentences may be low, I don’t think they are laughable.”

“US sentencing statistics are problematic because most don’t break down sexual offenses. Maybe you give me some evidence? (remember, I certainly agree that there are lot of cases where light sentences have been given, but we’re talking about the average sentence, which we can expect to be somewhere between 8 and 9 years, 50% of the time served).”

The first quote includes nothing about how much of that ~8 years is actually served, but does directly say that this is the case in over 80% of cases (of convictions I presume?). Note that this leaves 20% of cases with lesser sentences, versus 30~40% of US rapists not going to jail at all. That aside, first quote says more than 5 years, which either means more than 5 years served, or you have serious issues in making yourself clear. Second quote implies that US sentences “can [be] expect[ed] to be” half of 8~9 years. Two seconds of math says that that’s 4~4.5 years.

“While the average sentence of convicted rapists released from State prisons has remained stable at about 10 years, the average time served has increased from about 3 years to about 5 years; for those released after serving time for sexual assault, the sentence has been a stable 6 years, and the average time served grew about 6 months to just under 3 years.”

As in, the time served for rape has recently reached (and slightly exceeded) your guess, but the average for sexual assault remains laughably low. (Well, unless you’re the victim, in which case it’s appalling, not laughable)

As in, “now we’ve got an average of 5 years”? The “now” in there implies “we have recently started to have” correct? Because if you meant “we here in this thread”, well, nope, see previous sentence.

And it’s Argenti Aertheri, it’s at the top of all my posts, copy and paste it if you must. Or just use Argenti. Whatever.

Some Gal Not Bored at All

@Jaro

I’ll give you a hint…the only options aren’t prison and probation. 🙁

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

Oh and Jaro? Just because Owly assumed me to be female doesn’t mean I am, gender neutral pronouns please — ze/zir.

And pro-tip, you should assume that if Owly thinks something, the opposite is true. If he said the sky was blue I’d have to go look, he’s that incapable of not being made of shit. (He’s also horrendous at math, but that’s neither here nor there)

Some Gal Not Bored at All

Also, finding someone else’s error when they don’t show their work is way harder than just getting the right fucking answer in the first place. I want a fucking medal.

(Argenti, this hopefully obviously applies to Jaro’s math problem – hey look! a pun – not your hard work, which was way more than a weighted average.)

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

I’ll find you a nice shiny medal if you explain where your reference to probation came from. I’m not finding it, but I’m rather cranky at present (just wrote the not-an-ex a novella about my psych, cuz ze’s make a better one but went pharmacy instead…we met in a psych class, and there’s someone who can rival my math!)

And yes, I show my work except when it seems so obvious that that’s pointless. Nice pun, it’s almost like it wrote itself 🙂

The Kittehs' Unpaid Help
The Kittehs' Unpaid Help
11 years ago

*holds up hand proudly as one who knows I can’t do maths* 😛

Some Gal Not Bored at All

@Argenti

He declared himself right by taking a weighted average with the wrong nunbers.
If 36% of convicted rapists get probabtion (0 years in jail or prison), then 64% get sentenced to something. He used the average of rapists sentenced to prison and got

.64*14 + .36*0 ≈ 9

Which would be okay if there weren’t other options in the not probation category that come in with way less than 14 years in prison. Like, for one example, jail.

.

Some Gal Not Bored at All

Probabtion, autocorrect. WTF? Probabtion. Sheesh.

*Probation

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

Ah ok. And he completely ignored sexual assault stats. Which are, um, interesting, the definitions are all over the place, even in my citation. I mean, ranging from “carnal knowledge of a female” to the FBI definition – leaving everything else as sexual assault.

Idk if it’s important here, but some states don’t actually have a crime called rape, they use degrees of sexual assault to get around, well, NY having to change their rape law to include anal rape, Steubenville bullshit about how that’s “fondling” or whatever the naïf said, etc.

Some Gal Not Bored at All

@The Kittehs’

By excluding rapists sentenced to time jail (this is an US-only thing, I think? Apologies if I am explaining something you know), Jaro excluded any sentence of less than a year*. In addition, he left out rapists like the Steubenville rapists who were sentenced to a juvenile facility and are also likely to get shorter sentences.

So, his number came out higher than reality.

*I think it a year, but basically jails are short-term and prisons are long-term. Where you go depends on exactly what you did and your sentence.

Some Gal Not Bored at All

@Argenti

Yeah, I’m not sure there isn’t another mistake, but I managed to recreate his thought process *holds out hand for medal* and yeah, if I thought he were smart enough, I’d assume that he rigged it on purpose to get the highest number possible. But no, he’s honest (although not showing your work looks like cheating, Jaro *teacher glare*), just dumb.

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

Hmm, I think this medal, because it’s different and stylish — http://allstarawards.net/catalog/images/FM209.jpg

And yes, show your work, or at least have it handy if requested.

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

A few things (on US law):

Felony conviction more or less means prison.
Minors can only be sent to adult prisons (or jail for that matter) if being tried, or sentenced, as an adult (or probably if someone screws up or is an asshole, but it isn’t supposed to happen)
Rape sentences can, in theory, be limited to a fine. Unlike drug charges there’s rarely (if ever) a mandatory minimum. And registry related things are always state specific, and often at judicial discretion.
Rape rates in the 60s had to be higher than my chart because husbands where still entitled to sex, I probably should’ve attempted to account for that, but marital rape laws were implemented state by state, and it isn’t really relevant.

Some Gal Not Bored at All

@Argenti

All of which makes the average prison sentence much harder to calculate unless we want to limit it to only adult offenders or only in one state or only cases where the average makes Jaro’s guesses right.

Some Gal Not Bored at All

*average sentence

Prison just snuck in there…

Some Gal Not Bored at All

And I love my medal! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! *jumps around with glee in my head, but in reality is getting tired*

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

Some Gal — re: sentences — I’m bored, so I tracked down better numbers. PDF — http://bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/PSATSFV.PDF

Forcible rape = 10 year sentence, 5.5~ served. So yep, longer than the 4~4.5 years I think he was implying for the UK.
All other sexual assault? 6 year sentence, just under 3 years served.

So yes, people do generally serve about half their sentence, but the difference between “forcible rape” and “sexual assault” is dramatic. And in this context, I’d bet money that forcible rape means “carnal knowledge of a woman forcibly and against her will”. Which makes statutory rape, abuse of power cases, rape of anyone not a woman, intoxicated/unconscious victim, victim otherwise unable to consent…all sexual assault.

And no one here wants to know how withdrawal of consent is treated (let’s just say that most states haven’t addressed it)

Some Gal Not Bored at All

@Argenti

But we are talking about the average of forcible rape and all other sexual assault, right? The original exchange:

Marie:

however, the punishments for rape are laughable, or would be if they weren’t happening in reality. For some crimes, I might agree. But rape, especially in america, where I live? No, just no.

I think it is safe to assume Marie meant both categories.

Jaro:

In the UK in >80% of the cases prison sentence is >5 years, average sentence is ~8 years (the 17% of cases with “indeterminate sentences” for public protection excluded). So while these sentences may be low, I don’t think they are laughable.

In the US, I would say, reg all sex offenses, prison sentences are rather inconsistent than light (e. g. state/federal disparity, effective life sentences given for non-contact sex offenses vs. sometimes light sentences for rapes).

Jaro seemed to think Marie meant both and he makes the claim for “all sex offenses.”

So wouldn’t we be talking about the average of all of them?

Some Gal Not Bored at All

It isn’t clear what he means with the UK numbers, though. I think only looking at “forcible rape” in the US, though, would be borderline (at best) goalpost moving. But then I’m not sure if the UK numbers are relevant at all. (They very likely might not be.)

See, Jaro, SHOW YOUR WORK.

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

Yeah I’d assume both, hence why I pointed out that his math is only correct for forcible rape (and even then we had to decipher it!)

Marie probably meant all rape, some of which (most of which) is classified as sexual assault, and thus she probably intended to include both categories.

Ah, side note. Marie and Jaro, please correct me if my guesses at your pronouns are incorrect (and my apologies if they are).

Let me see if I can track down, um…idk how you’d weigh that actually…oh this is going to be fun. When I get back to my mac I’ll track down rates on violent crime that have both forcible rape and sexual assault (the data for the chart lumps them), figure out what percent of violent crime they both are (if needed), and figure out a ratio of forcible rape versus sexual assault that can be used for a weighed average of sentences.

Until then I’ll try to refrain from ripping my ears off while sitting between two out of sync ticking clocks.

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

Dandy, my chart doesn’t lump them, it includes only forcible rape. I am beginning to hate this data.

Some Gal Not Bored at All

@Argenti

🙁 Good luck? (On managing the clocks and the bad data.)

I think I should probably get to bed. *Yawn* Good night!

The Kittehs' Unpaid Help
The Kittehs' Unpaid Help
11 years ago

Niters! I should make lunch and head off too.

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

I take it back, I just needed to look harder. http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/soo.pdf

Rough guess here, but that chart of offenders serving rape versus sexual assault sentences looks like 3:5 — 37.5% serving rape sentences, 62.5% serving sexual assault sentences.

Let’s assume the prison versus not in prison rates are the same for both crimes, as that’s dreadfully important in this math being valid. Assuming the ratio of prison:not-prison is the same for both crimes, we need to do a weighted average of actual time served given the frequency of the crime (based on number of people in prison for it…see why the prison:not-prison ratio is crucial?)

So!

(.375*5) + (.625*3) = 1.875 + 1.875 …ok that’s just weird… = 3.75

Weird, but mathematically sound. Ratio of people in prison for rape to people in prison for sexual assault — 3:5. Average sentence served for the former, 5 years, for the latter, 3 years.

For the sake of that being wid, and my having done a rough guess for the percents, let me round, we’ll call it 60% sexual assault.

(.4*5) + (.6*3) = 2 + 1.8 = 3.8

50/50 ratio, just to cover all our bases here?

(.5*5) + (.5*3) = 2.5 + 1.5 = 4 (and if you seriously couldn’t guess the average between 5 and 3, I can’t bloody help you)

So no, not an average of five years, more like an average of less than four years. And given the sheer number of rape and sexual assault convicts, this isn’t a fluke (go google law of large numbers)

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

Some Gal — g’night!