Moat’s ex to blame for everything – the two deaths, her own injuries and all the suffering
It had to happen, didn't it? Someone had to come out with the argument that Raoul Moat wasn't to blame for seriously injuring his ex and shooting and killing her current boyfriend and a policeman. No, it was all the fault of – yep, his ex, Samantha Stobbart.
According to Moat's uncle, Charles Alexander, Stobbart had to take the rap for the "untold suffering and anguish to two families" because she rang her ex telling him that her new boyfriend was a policeman with a black belt in karate and if he wanted to come to her house, he would "do" Moat.
She also allegedly went on to describe what "her boyfriend was about to do to her when they went upstairs. She told him this knowing he was a powder keg waiting to explode after she had previously told him that he wouldn't see his daughter again".
So – an open and shut case really.
Read the full story in the Mirror.
Hmmm – if the girlfriend did say this, then that makes her the kind of woman I wouldn’t want to know – because taunting an ex-lover in this way is spiteful. However, Moat had a choice about how he reacted to her words, so it is not right to blame her for his actions. We all have to take responsibility for our own actions in this world, something that the tabloids willfully disregard in the pursuit of a story that confirms the misogynistic opinions of male editorial teams; namely that women are bitches and deserve everything they get.
Thanks for your comment. Who knows what either Moat or his girlfriend ever said to each other? As you point out, Moat (or in this case his extended family) need to accept that Moat was responsible for his actions – not his ex, the policeman nor the new boyfriend. It is just extraordinary the lengths to which people will go to avoid taking responsibility for their actions, albeit in this instance by proxy. Alison
It doesn’t matter what she said to him. It might if the issue at hand were judging her on her own, or deciding whether or not you want to know her. Yes, it’s despicable IF someone (and I wouldn’t assume) intentionally antagonised someone already in a fragile state, but we do not know what prompted her to do that, or what he had said to her earlier. But it’s purely tangential, when it comes down to the fact that a guy took a gun, tried to kill his ex, and did kill her partner. There is no real excuse except self-defence, and that obviously wasn’t the case here. This happens too often–sometimes the spark was something the woman said, sometimes there was nothing. It’s still a horribly violent phenomenon that some men feel compelled, and rightfully, to kill their partner/ex-partner.
Yes, the fact is that Moat killed her boyfriend and tried to kill her. And it’s not an uncommon phenomenon. It’s very much based on a proprietorial attitude – if I can’t have you, then no one will.
Seriously. Raoul Moat was to blame for his actions. As some of the comments point out (and most of the comments give me faith in humanity): If she said these things (and it’s a big if) then yes, they were nasty, but they would never had justified murder.
Yes, absolutely. It’s just depressing that the uncle should try to condone what Moat did by blaming it on someone else – inevitably the woman.