Again? Like it’s ever stopped. Last night I finished watching “Killer Sally,” which is about Sally McNeil’s killing of her husband, Ray, in self-defense after years of abuse. You’ll be shocked to hear the jury thought otherwise and sent her to prison for 25 years. This was back in 1996, when female rage was getting some notoriety. There was Lorena Bobbitt, who cut off her husband’s penis, and Amy Fisher, the teen who shot her lover’s wife. There was Tonya Harding. And Sally McNeil, who had the misfortune of being a former marine and bodybuilder, and whose physique debunked expectations of the fairer sex. I wrote about this a little bit in my new novel, All Crazy, All the Time, so let’s hope it finds a home somewhere, at some point. But I digress.
We’re told, in the documentary, that McNeil could be aggressive. That McNeil could be violent. We’re also told Ray used to choke her. Break her bones. Beat her up. That Ray was enormous. On a ton of steroids. One night, they had a fight, he started to choke her, so she shot him. Twice. Once when he was down. The prosecutor—who is a sleazebag, it’s clear—decided that because Sally reloaded, because she ran back to her room to reload, because she shot Ray when he was already down, she must have premeditated his death. Planned it. Not because he beat her for years, but because she was a woman scorned. Because Ray had other lovers. Because he was going to leave her.
Cue the disgust!
And the dogma. A Battered Woman should leave her husband. If she was so battered, why didn’t she leave? A Battered Woman only shoots her lover if he’s about to kill her that instant. But if he’s six feet away and she shoots him, she can’t be a Battered Woman. A Battered Woman is petite. Sweet. Cries easily. She is not an ex-marine. She does not have a temper. She never gets angry. A proper Battered Woman is allowed to kill her husband in self-defense only under certain circumstances and only after she’s done the laundry and cooked a nice meal.
Okay, so this is gross. But: Fast forward a quarter of a century. During this time, we have managed to sequence the human genome. Create MP3 players. Hybrid cars. An international space station. Google maps. The iPhone. A Mars rover. VR headsets. 3D printing. Video doorbells. Facial recognition software. Smart everything. Squatty Potty! We’ve come a long way. We’re so evolved! So smart! And yet.
A couple weeks ago, I went to sit in a courtroom as my brother, Ilann, who is a civil rights lawyer, closed out a case on behalf of Haleigh Breest against Paul Haggis, once best known for directing the movie Crash and writing Casino Royale, now best known (the jury found) for raping Haleigh Breest. Before I go on, it’s worth noting that all my thoughts here are my own, based solely on what I saw and heard in court alongside everyone else. Though I can’t imagine anyone feeling differently, given how unsettling and depressing it all was—not so much because of what happened to Breest (which is awful, of course), but because of the defense mounted by Haggis’s team, which was misogynist and Neanderthal.
It begins, or ends, really, with the defense attorney’s attempted dismantling of the small progress we’ve made towards ending rape culture. For three hours, she shamed Breest for not being a good little victim. For not reporting the rape. For being insufficiently graphic when describing the rape to a friend. For being too bubbly. The attorney read out Breest’s text messages to a friend in the days following the rape in a contemptuous singsong. She maligned Breest’s profession as a publicist—this isn’t a direct quote but it was something like, She just poured champagne for rich people, that’s not a career. The attorney suggested that a twenty-six-year-old woman really ought to understand what rape is and be able to report it as such, and that to suggest otherwise is to deny women their power. In sum, according to the defense, there is no trauma associated with rape that could possibly compromise the logic of behaving like a good little rape victim.
The good news is that the jury, unlike the one judging Sally McNeil, bought none of this. They found Haggis guilty. The bad news is twofold (manyfold): 1. That Haggis was able even to find a female lawyer to pursue this kind of defense and 2. that the Sally McNeil documentary is called “Killer Sally,” because sensationalizing “violent” women never gets old, even in a documentary that wants you to know it’s not okay to do this. Likewise all the promotional materials associated with the documentary—all provocative, all salacious, all DEpressing.
As a parent of a young female, it’s hard to feel optimistic about where all this is going. As a woman, and sister to a very excellent civil rights attorney, it’s pretty gratifying to get the wins where you can.
In other, less emotionally fraught, news for the week:
Prehistoric Planet is amazing. I can’t believe it’s all CGI. Or that we actually know this much about dinosaurs. It’s all so intimate. And David Attenborough—he’s 97! So maybe it’s fitting that he’s narrating a show about dinosaurs—yuk-yuk. But really: it’s a must see.
The World Cup is amazing! I’ve always loved European football, especially the joy of the score. It’s unequalled in sport. I once wrote about joy—about expressing your feelings, letting the love in—for Harper’s, in case anyone’s interested.
Lastly, I’m working on a YouTube show. Yep, I am. I’ll share more about it when it shapes up a little more, but in the meantime: if you have a product you really love, let me know.
I saw that documentary and, Fiona, I agree with you 100%. It seems that Sally was her own worst enemy and she had terrible representation. Some good lawyer could have gotten her out after only a few years, but she didn't have the smarts nor - and this is huge - the money. If only someone made this doc while she was still incarcerated. I love that you put this story in with the great outcome (we both know who to thank) in the Paul Haggis case.