Pistorius and Paddy Power – making a killing at the betting shop.
I have been watching the build up to the trial in the media of Oscar Pistorius who shot and killed his girlfriend through a locked bathroom door and will face trial tomorrow.
That was horrifying me enough and I will write about the media glee at having such a "juicy story" to salivate over later.
Whilst I was doing so a friend pointed out this…. on the betting site Paddy Power they are offering bets on the verdict. They have odds listed.
These unconscionable people have decided that the brutal murder of a young woman is something that it is fair to make money on. In fact as you can see it is "Sport".
I need to point this out to Paddy Power I think, yesterday Chelsea beat Fulham 3-1. That is sport. It looks like this…
On February 14th 2013 Oscar Pistorius walked to a locked bathroom door with a loaded gun and shot Reeva Steenkamp 4 times though it. The bedroom was a covered in her blood. Her family have been grieving for the loss of their beautiful daughter ever since. That looks like this. It is very very different from sport.
In the UK last year 138 women died as a result of male violence.
At the time of Reeva Steenkamp's murder, in the space of a month in South Africa, a man was charged with chopping up and beheading his wife with a machete, a man was charged with raping a 2 year old girl fighting for her life in a hospital, and 15 men were being hunted for raping a 23 year old woman in an ordeal that lasted for hours. Reeva herself was campaigning to bring awareness to the issue of violence against women and girls after a 17 year old was brutally gang raped and mutilated that month by her ex-boyfriend and his associates. She managed to identify them before she sadly died in extreme pain.
I don't consider any of these events "sport". This is the extreme violence women and girls are experiencing globally and daily. It is something you should be ashamed to make money from. It is something that should sicken you. It is something that should sicken every man who comes online to gamble - which is entertainment I'm told. Dead, raped, mutilated women are not entertainment.
If you even had a smidgen of conscience or humanity would you really run an ad of this type in the national media?…
Take it down. Take it down. Take it down.
Women please take to Twitter and urge them to do so.
This is cross-posted with permission from Jean Hatchet.
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Ridiculous. No respect for Reeva Steenkamp whatsoever, or her poor family. And even if he did mean to kill her, Oscar Pistorius’ family will be going through hell as well. It’s sickening that they’re trying to make money out of so much suffering.
Well … we already know that betting firms profit from suffering because they take bets on horse races, which are often lethal for the equine participants. So, they’re already quite callous in terms of ethics.
Having said that, I am still shocked and appalled by this. I have complained to the ASA about PP’s advertisement regarding the bet and tweeted at them.
[…] together with EverydayVictimBlaming (which accused the online betting company of “making a killing at the betting shop“) Hatchet launched an online petition and encouraged supporters to contact the Advertising […]
[…] together with EverydayVictimBlaming (which accused the online betting company of “making a killing at the betting shop“) Hatchet launched an online petition and encouraged supporters to contact the Advertising […]