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.”
Glenn, don’t post in this thread any more. You may post in other threads.
Seconding the banhammer for slimypeewee, and yes, apologies too for letting him derail, especially on this thread.
cloudiah – Bayley is charged with Ms Meagher’s rape and murder. He’s pleaded guilty to rape.
I’ll stop after this:
Uh-huh. What you do is lower than bill collectors hassling cancer patients. But nice reveal with “bug,” because that is all you do to people. Bravo, chump.
Again, I’m guessing that he’s aiming for a manslaughter charge rather than murder.
David: your house and all, but is he adding value in other threads or just shitting on the throw rugs?
Kittehs’, So he has not (yet) been charged with the other rapes you mentioned?
I haven’t read anything about this case other than this post and the link I posted the other day, but I would assume that he’s admitting he killed her, or caused her to die or something, but claiming that it wasn’t technically murder, i.e. premediated. I’m not a lawyer though and I get all my lawyer knowledge from American tv shows so I don’t know what our standard is for when it counts as murder.
I figured we’d get someone defending nice guys (don’t we always?). Glenn P is so much worse.
To go back to the topic:
@MorkaisChosen
I still think you are right about him seeing himself as the good guy and I don’t think it contradicts the “oops and I’m sorry” stance that he (and his lawyers) will take in court. I think that he is the star of his own hero/Nice Guy fantasy story and it doesn’t seem like a “little” thing like raping and killing a woman would change that fucked up entitled worldview.
@The Kittehs’
Do you think that he sees himself as a predator? (I’m sorry, I’m just not sure from your comment.) I agree he is one, but I personally don’t think he sees himself that way. He talks about how “not nice” and “not fair” what happened to* Jill Meagher was. He said he apologized after he killed her and cried for her. It could all be an act, but I really think he sees himself as a good guy in unfortunate circumstances. He isn’t, of course.
*what HE DID to Meagher, but he doesn’t talk about it like that.
uggh. the more I hear about this guy (even if it’s just speculating) the more I hate him.
Australia is a whole fuck-load safer than the USA you know, and no-one who isn’t a criminal or police carries a hand gun. Your logic, it is non-existant.
cloudiah, I’m not sure. They’ve said “facing charges” so I don’t know if he’s been formally charged or not.
O_o Still manage to like him less/ hate him more the more I hear about him.
This brought back a lot of stuff for me…
[Massive Trigger Warning!]
I was approached at a bus stop by a Nice Guy who asked me out, and I said yes because I was put on the spot. I wanted so much to cancel, but… I felt guilty about doing that to a Nice Guy and because I know what it’s like to be lonely.
We went to a bar and had a few drinks, which he insisted on paying for and insisted that I drink, like seriously picking up my drink and putting it back in my hand if I put it down. I know that should have been a huge red flag but I was really naive. Eventually I told him that it wasn’t working out, that I had no interest in dating him, but he guilted me into staying for one last drink (that I found out later had three shots in it that I didn’t know about, even after – or perhaps because – I had told him I don’t really drink), but only after I made him swear on his mother’s immortal soul that he would make sure I got home safely and that he didn’t touch me, try to kiss me, or ANYTHING. At that point it was only pity for a lonely Nice Guy that made me stay.
Unfortunately he lied; I woke up in his house (I’ve never passed out from drinking before, so I was frightened and confused) and he immediately pressed a drink to my face and tried to force it down my throat. I started crying and begging and he started going on and on about some girl in high school that wouldn’t have sex with him. I pretended to pass out, hoping he’d lose interest, but that only encouraged him. Later, when he was, well, raping me, he kept bragging to me about how I was just like “the other girls who tried to say ‘no'” to him and I just did everything I could to stop him hurting and killing me.
Needless to say, the police blamed me and refused to believe a word I said about it – not even about which HIGH SCHOOL I went to, because my rapist told them that I went to high school with him IN A CITY I NEVER LIVED IN and the officer didn’t care enough to even check. Being raped was something I could live with, but I struggle everyday to live with how the police and the university this happened at treated me after the fact. I went from being an A student with a bright future to being that lying whore making trouble for “that nice young man”. They wouldn’t even let me use the counselling services.
This is how people like Adrian Bayley go free and ruin multiple lives.
Some Gal – I can’t see him as having an I’m a Hero fantasy going when he’s actually made up a story about a nonexistent “man following you” to persuade another woman and rape her, and when he said after that rape he wouldn’t take her back to her flat because she’d call the cops. He’s well aware what he’s doing is criminal.
He probably cried because he knew that he wasn’t going to get away with it.
I don’t know, but I’m not super sympathetic to murderers that cry on the stand. The folks who broke into my aunts house robbed her and killed her and her daughter cried. I didn’t feel sympathetic to them either.
*persuade another woman to get into his car
“TL;DR. Even skimming that made me feel like taking a nap.”
You and me both!
As for wtf that mess from Glenn said, does he get that America =/= the world and that plenty of commenters here are in countries with less, or even no, guns? Australia, for example, isn’t about to allow concealed carry on campuses.
Which is ignoring the discussion we had last week-ish about how shooting and killing a would be rapist would just leave he shooter defending against murder charges (assuming ze even shot, considering the percent of rapes that are committed by someone the victim knows)
On topic — what a fucking waste of humanity, y’all do have life sentences right? I hope he gets one, he’s clearly a predator.
We don’t have security escorts on the campus I work. We have a bus service but it won’t take you off campus. I live just off campus but the nearest drop off point is about as far from my apartment as where I work. It isn’t safe on campus. I try not to stay in work after 10pm. My colleagues get angry at me for staying that late, as does my neighbour. They feel I shouldn’t walk after dark.
I think that’s what stuck out to me immediately. Everything he did right up until the attack was textbook Nice Guy behaviour. It was exactly the crap women get called bitches for feeling uncomfortable around and refusing to tolerate. Right up until that “event horizon”, as such, she was horrible and stuck-up and he was just an innocent guy trying to talk to a woman. And you know what? I can almost guarantee that there are people right now saying that because she wasn’t *more* “mean” and *more* “coldhearted” and didn’t mace him on sight, she’s at least partially to blame for what he did to her.
If you don’t tolerate harassment from men, you’re damned. If you do and something terrible happens, even though you had no way of knowing it would happen until the second it did and were just trying to not be damned, you’re damned. And that’s not even -touching- the fact that the behaviour so many supposedly nice, sweet, romantic guys exhibit is indistinguishable from the behaviour of a fucking predator, or what exactly that says about them.
This shit right here? This is why my pan self doesn’t date men anymore. Because I cannot deal with this bullshit. There are not enough kittens in the world to make it worth it to deal with this bullshit.
@Marie
He is truly a horrible human being.
@The Kittehs’
Wouldn’t he have to be formally charged in order to enter a plea? (What is a directions hearing? In the US we have a pretrial hearing after the arraignment where the charges are entered. So, if a directions hearing is like a pretrial hearing, then it seems like he’d already be charged.)
/ignorant on Australian legal terms
Argh, sorry, I hadn’t yet seen he request to ignore Glenn, nor David throwing him off the thread. Sorry!
An anonymous lurker — fuck, that’s horrible…and exactly why I never filed a report myself…I’m so sorry. Hugs, tea and kittens are available if welcome, and if Falconer drops by he might be willing to let you snuggle a baby.
Melody — goddamn, and I thought our OP douche was a waste of humanity! I’m sorry for your loss (losses? How’s grammar work here?)
@An anonymous lurker
I am so sorry.
@The Kittehs’
He definitely knows it is illegal, but I think he believes he deserves to do it anyway because he is a “nice guy”. It is possible that he thinks he deserves to do it anyway just because he can and he wants to.
I just think the narratives we tell don’t only influence the way rapists/predators act (they pick victims who are seen as “deserving” it because it is easier to get away with it) and what they say, I think it also influences the way they see themselves.
Some Gal – he’s been formally charged with Ms Meagher’s rape and murder; it’s the other two charges of rape against other women I’m not sure about. He may have been, given the details are in the papers. On legal details, terminology, etc, I haven’t the foggiest.
Re: shooting an attacker – yeah, not going to happen here even if it were a feasible form of defence. I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to carry mace or anything else that can be construed as weapon, too.
melody – that is so horrible, I am so sorry. Hugs and kitties and cakes if you want them.
@ anonymous lurker
I’m so sorry that all of that happened to you. I send jedi internet hugs if you would like them.
an anonymous lurker – welcome, and I am so, so sorry for what he did (no, what they did) to you. That is beyond foul.