Talk:Murdered sex workers in the United Kingdom

Jennie Banner

Jennie Banner was a Chatham sex worker who was murdered in 2011. There was press coverage of the murder and subsequent trial (for example Prostitute 'murdered with belt during sex). Her inclusion in this article was therefore appropriate and verifiable.

Her entry in the article was anonymously removed today from IP 146.90.147.92 with the reason "You have incorrectly entered Jennie Banner as being a 'sex worker' she never was a sex worker the entry was also very defamatory and insulting to the family concerned".

Whilst you could argue that because she was a sex worker and murdered, this is an act of vandalism and should be undone. However the inclusion is obviously causing distress to somebody (presumably friend or family) on top of the grief of the murder. Is it therefore better to accept the removal?

Any opinions appreciated --John B123 (talk) 22:25, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

An interesting case. One of the things that I notice is that the sources available for this story say that Banner "had worked as a prostitute" or was a "former prostitute", or in some cases do not mention it, simply calling her a "drug addict". One source says that she was "not said to be interested in bondage or 'auto-erotic asphyxiation'" in the context of her former sex work. This sounds like the defence may have brought up the subject of her former sex work, and the court does not appear to have attached much importance to it.

For us, this raises the question of whether this article covers people who have been murdered while working as sex workers, or the much larger group of people who have been murdered and who had previously at some point in their lives worked as sex workers. My preference would be for the former, in order to prevent the article becoming too large and unfocussed. If we approach it in this way, Banner would be ruled out. However, I haven't checked to see if any of the article's other entries would be affected, and I am not proposing a radical pruning of the article simply in order to answer this question about the Banner case. - Polly Tunnel (talk) 18:49, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I tend to agree, the article should be about sex-workers murdered during the course of, or because of their work. In other circumstances their occupation is neither here nor there. Off the top of my head, probably only Monica Coghlan would need removing from the list. --John B123 (talk) 20:30, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

R

Hi 27.114.154.14 (talk) 14:00, 13 November 2021 (UTC)