Yesterday’s post on Genesis 3:16 was about God’s curse on Eve and all women following her transgression in the Garden of Eden: eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge (of Good and Evil).

God’s dual curse involved womankind’s difficulty with childbearing and with husbands (men in general), their two primary relationship groups.

Throughout history, women have suffered with both. There is no real relief in sight, although the effects may be partially mitigated through faith and godly living.

Below are examples of how the curse of Eve has played out in recent times.

Childbirth

On October 19, 2023, the House of Commons held a debate on Baby Awareness Week concerning the alarming levels of infant mortality in NHS trusts.

MPs discussed the findings of Donna Ockenden’s eponymous report on this topic and personal experiences. I hadn’t intended to watch it, but I happened to be preparing dinner at the time. It was shocking.

Most moving was the testimony from Patricia Gibson, the SNP MP for North Ayrshire and Arran, excerpted below (emphases mine):

… I always want to participate in this debate every year because I think it is an important moment—a very difficult moment, but an important one—in the parliamentary calendar. It is significant that the theme this year is the implementation of the findings of the Ockenden report in Britain, because that report was very important. We all remember concerns raised in the past about neonatal services in East Kent and Morecambe Bay, and the focus today on the work undertaken by Donna Ockenden in her maternity review into the care provided by Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust really matters.

Donna Ockenden is currently conducting an investigation into maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. That comes in the wake of the fact that in the past, concerns have been raised about a further 21 NHS trusts in England with a mortality rate that is over 10% more than the average for that type of organisation, with higher than expected rates of stillbirth and neonatal death.

To be clear, I do not for one minute suggest that this is not a UK-wide problem, as I know to my personal cost. As the Minister will know, concerns remain that, despite a reduction in stillbirths across the UK, their number is still too high compared with many similar European countries, and there remain significant variations across the UK. Those variations are a concern. We know that they could be, and probably are, exacerbated by the socioeconomic wellbeing of communities. We know that inequality is linked to higher stillbirth rates and poorer outcomes for babies. Of course, the quality of local services is also a huge factor, and this must continue to command our attention.

When the Ockenden report was published earlier this year, it catalogued mistakes and failings compounded by cover-ups. At that time, I remember listening to parents on the news and hearing about what they had been through—the stillbirths they had borne, the destruction it had caused to their lives, the debilitating grief, the lack of answers and the dismissive attitude of those they had trusted to deliver their baby safely after the event. I do not want to again rehearse the nightmare experience I had of stillbirth, but when that report hit the media, every single word that those parents said brought it back to me. I had exactly the same experience when my son, baby Kenneth, was stillborn on 15 October 2009—ironically, Baby Loss Awareness Day.

That stillbirth happened for the same reasons that the parents described in the wake of the Ockenden report. Why are we still repeating the same mistakes again and again? I have a theory about that, which I will move on to in a moment. It was entirely down to poor care and failings and the dismissive attitude I experienced when I presented in clear distress and pain at my due date, suffering from a very extreme form of pre-eclampsia called HELLP syndrome. I remember all of it—particularly when I hear other parents speaking of very similar stories—as though it were yesterday, even though it is now 14 years later. I heard parents describing the same things that happened to me, and I am in despair that this continues to be the case. I hope it is not the case, but I fear that I will hear this again from other parents, because it is not improving. I alluded to that in my intervention on the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham [Tim Loughton, Conservative], and I will come back to it.

While I am on the issue of maternal health, expectant mothers are not being told that when they develop pre-eclampsia, which is often linked to stillbirths, that means they are automatically at greater risk of heart attacks and strokes. Nobody is telling them that they are exposed to this risk. I did not find out until about five years after I came out of hospital. Where is the support? Where is the long-term monitoring of these women? This is another issue I have started raising every year in the baby loss awareness debate. We are talking about maternal care. We should be talking about long-term maternal care and monitoring the health of women who develop pre-eclampsia …

… We are seeing too many maternity failings, and now deep concerns are being raised about Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. I understand that the trust faces a criminal investigation into its maternity failings, so I will not say any more about it. The problem is that when failures happen—and this, for me, is the nub of the matter—as they did in my case at the Southern General in Glasgow, now renamed the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, lessons continue to be not just unlearned but actively shunned. I feel confident that I am speaking on behalf of so many parents who have gone through similar things when I say that there is active hostility towards questions raised about why the baby died. In my case, I was dismissed, then upon discharge attempts were made to ignore me. Then I was blamed; it was my fault, apparently, because I had missed the viewing of a video about a baby being born—so, obviously, it was my fault that my baby died.

It was then suggested that I had gone mad and what I said could not be relied upon because my memory was not clear. To be absolutely clear, I had not gone mad. I could not afford that luxury, because I was forced to recover and find out what happened to my son. I have witnessed so many other parents being put in that position. It is true that the mother is not always conscious after a stillbirth. Certainly in my case, there was a whole range of medical staff at all levels gathered around me, scratching their heads while my liver ruptured and I almost died alongside my baby. Indeed, my husband was told to say his goodbyes to me, because I was not expected to live. This level of denial, this evasion, this complete inability to admit and recognise that serious mistakes had been made that directly led to the death of my son and almost cost my own life—I know that is the case, because I had to commission two independent reports when nobody in the NHS would help me—is not unusual. That is the problem. That kind of evasion and tactics are straight out of the NHS playbook wherever it happens in the UK, and it is truly awful.

I understand that health boards and health trusts want to cover their backs when things go wrong, but if that is the primary focus—sadly, it appears to be—where is the learning? Perhaps that is why the stillbirth of so many babies could be prevented. If mistakes cannot be admitted when they are made, how can anyone learn from them? I have heard people say in this Chamber today that we do not want to play a blame game. Nobody wants to play a blame game, but everybody is entitled to accountability, and that is what is lacking. We should not need independent reviews. Health boards should be able to look at their practices and procedures, and themselves admit what went wrong. It should not require a third party. Mothers deserve better, fathers deserve better, and our babies certainly deserve better.

Every time I hear of a maternity provision scandal that has led to stillbirths—sadly, I hear it too often—my heart breaks all over again. I know exactly what those parents are facing, continue to face, and must live with for the rest of their lives—a baby stillborn, a much-longed-for child lost, whose stillbirth was entirely preventable.

… Some people talk about workforce pressure, and it has been mentioned today. However, to go back to the point made by the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory [Conservative]), for me and, I think, many of the parents who have gone through this, the fundamental problem is the wilful refusal to admit when mistakes have happened and to identify what lessons can be learned in order to prevent something similar happening again. To seek to evade responsibility, to make parents feel that the stillbirth of their child is somehow their own fault or, even worse, that everyone should just move on and get on with their lives after the event because these things happen—that is how I was treated, and I know from the testimony I have heard from other parents that that is how parents are often treated—compounds grief that already threatens to overwhelm those affected by such a tragedy. I do not want to hear of another health board or NHS trust that has been found following an independent investigation to have failed parents and babies promising to learn lessons. Those are just words.

When expectant mums present at hospitals, they should be listened to, not made to feel that they are in the way or do not matter. How hospitals engage with parents during pregnancy and after tragedy really matters. I have been banging on about this since I secured my first debate about stillbirth in 2016, and I will not stop banging on about it. I am fearful that things will never truly change in the way that they need to, and that simply piles agony on top of tragedy. I thank Donna Ockenden for her important work, and I know she will continue to be assiduous in these matters in relation to other work that she is currently undertaking, but the health boards and health trusts need to be much more transparent and open with parents when mistakes happen. For all the recommendations of the Ockenden report—there are many, and they are all important—we will continue to see preventable stillbirths unless the culture of cover-ups is ended. When the tragedy of stillbirth strikes, parents need to know why it happened and how it can be prevented from happening again. That is all; a baby cannot be brought back to life, but parents can be given those kinds of reassurances and answers. That is really important to moving on and looking to some kind of future.

It upsets me to say this, but I have absolutely no confidence that lessons were learned in my case, and I know that many parents feel exactly the same. However, I am very pleased to participate again in this annual debate, because these things need to be said, and they need to keep being said until health boards and NHS trusts stop covering up mistakes and have honest conversations when tragedies happen, as sometimes they will. Parents who are bereaved do not want to litigate; they want answers. It is time that NHS trusts and health boards were big enough, smart enough and sensitive enough to understand that. Until mistakes stop being covered up, babies will continue to die, because failures that lead to tragedies will not be remedied or addressed. That is the true scandal of stillbirth, and it is one of the many reasons why Baby Loss Awareness Week is so very important, to shine a light on these awful, preventable deaths for which no one seems to want to be held accountable.

I will just add a postscript here about a cousin of mine who gave birth five times in the 1990s in the United States with the best of private health care.

John MacArthur and Matthew Henry both suggest that godly living will prevent bad experiences in pregnancy and childbirth, but one of my cousins is a devout Catholic and was at the time when she was pregnant. She is middle class and her husband is financially self-sufficient, better off than most men in his social cohort.

Nevertheless, my cousin had horrific third trimesters with each pregnancy resulting in pre-eclampsia. Therefore, I object to men, especially ordained men, intimating that a woman’s godly living will alleviate suffering when she is carrying a child. All I can say about my cousin and other godly women living through those life-threatening situations is that their plight might be a form of sanctification: imposed suffering from on high for greater spiritual refinement. I don’t have an answer.

Fortunately, my cousin recovered and has five healthy adult sons who bring her much happiness.

Men

What more needs to be said about the role of men in women’s lives that hasn’t already been said?

Below are a few recent news items exploring the ongoing war between the sexes.

Divorce

In the Philippines, which is still predominantly Roman Catholic, women want the law changed to allow for Divorce. On December 28, 2023, The Telegraph carried the story, ‘Divorce in the Philippines: “My husband beat me over and over — I still can’t legally divorce him”‘:

Ana takes out her phone and scrolls through the grim set of photos. In them, her face is purple and swollen, her lip cut – it wasn’t the first time her husband struck her, but the 48-year-old hopes it will be the last.

“He followed me with a wooden stick and hit me over and over,” says Ana, whose name has been changed. “I remember thinking, this time he’s going to kill me … I shouted for help but I don’t think anyone heard. So I ran.”

As she sat in hospital later that night in August, Ana came to a stark realisation: after 19 years, two daughters, and plenty of violence, she wanted a divorce.

There’s only one problem: in the Philippines, it’s illegal.

“I don’t want him in my life anymore,” Ana says. “Separation isn’t enough, I cannot say that is freedom. It would be like a bird in a cage – you cannot fly wherever you go, because you are married so you are linked … But in the Philippines, the law doesn’t stand with me.”

The southeast Asian country is the only place outside the Vatican which prohibits divorce, trapping thousands of people in marriages that are loveless at best, abusive and exploitative at worst.

But now, as new legislation creeps through Congress, there are mounting hopes that change may finally be on the horizon in this conservative, Catholic country …

“I’m a Catholic, I go to church, but I also believe it’s my human right to become divorced. I want to try to convince others of that too,” says Ana, between bites of a homemade custard tart.

“In the meantime, I’m not giving up on love. Where there’s life, there’s love.”

There was a time when divorce was allowed for everyone in the Philippines, but that all changed with independence:

Though banned during the Spanish colonial era, divorce on the grounds of adultery or concubinage was legalised in 1917 under American occupation, and further expanded by the Japanese when they took control during World War Two.

But in 1950, when the newly independent country’s Civil Code came into effect, these changes were repealed.

Today, only Muslims can obtain a divorce in the Philippines:

Today, most couples – bar Muslims, who are covered by Sharia laws which allow for divorce – have two options: legal separation, which doesn’t end a marriage but allows people to split their assets; or annulment, which voids the nuptials and enables individuals to remarry, as the union never existed in the eyes of the law.

Every other couple has to jump through highly challenging legal and financial hoops to obtain some sort of separation:

… the grounds are narrow, the process bureaucratic, the courts stretched and the costs extortionate.

Gaining an annulment, for instance, involves proving someone was forced into a marriage or mentally unsound on their wedding day. Brookman, a solicitors firm specialising in divorce, warns a “large amount of evidence” is required – and the costs often spiral to “roughly the average salary” in the Philippines.

“Some say it’s an anti-poor, pro-rich process because it takes quite a bit of effort, resources and money to gain an annulment,” says Carlos Conde, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “People who have access to lawyers can go through the process, but for the majority of poor Filipinos that’s just not an option. And so they stay in toxic relationships.”

Even where people do have the funds, the outcome is far from guaranteed. Take Stella Sibonga. The 46-year-old filed for an annulment in 2013, keen to give marriage a second chance with her long-term boyfriend. Five years prior, she left a decade-long union she described as “traumatic and miserable”.

Yet, 300,000 pesos (roughly £4,300) and 10 years later, Ms Sibonga remains married to the “wrong man”.

“I have no idea when I’ll get a final verdict,” she says. “In the meantime, people say I’m living in sin with my boyfriend, they judge me for it… Really, it’s a nightmare.”

Catholic clergy are firmly opposed to a divorce law in the Philippines, and legislators tread carefully:

“We remain steadfast in our position that divorce will never be pro-family, pro-children, and pro-marriage,” Father Jerome Secillano, the executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, said in September. He has previously criticised “legislators who rather focus on breaking marriages and the family rather than fixing them”.

The church has huge influence in the Philippines, where nearly 80 per cent of the population is Catholic.

“The main difficulty is the opposition to the divorce bill by this powerful block led by the Catholic church and religious fundamental groups,” says Mr Conde. “Many legislators are not keen to butt heads with or offend the church … it is tough to do battle against them.”

I understand the clergy’s point, but some things just cannot be fixed.

The country’s 2012 reproductive health bill still hadn’t been implemented in 2022. The Church had blocked it with religious threats against legislators:

The fight to ensure access to contraception was a case in point. After more than a decade of gruelling debate, negotiations and lobbying, the Reproductive Health (RH) law finally passed in 2012 – only for full implementation to be blocked for years amid legal challenges from the church.

In 2022, government figures suggested 42 per cent of women still had an unmet need for family planning, meaning they wanted to use contraception but were not able to access it. Over half of pregnancies in the Philippines are “unintended”.

“The Catholic hierarchy in the country was vociferously against the RH bill, so much so that it threatened the authors of the measure with excommunication and defeat at the polls,” says Mr Lagman [Edcel Lagman, congressman and author of the divorce bill in the House of Representatives]. But he thinks the fight for divorce could be easier.

“Although representatives of the church have stated that as an institution, it is strongly against the measure, I think that this time around it is not as vehement in its opposition,” he adds. “All Catholic countries worldwide, except for the Philippines, have already legalised absolute divorce. This is a recognition that divorce does not violate Catholic dogma.”

This is the state of play with the proposed divorce bill:

“Now, for the first time, both the House and the Senate have approved their respective measures at the committee level,” Edcel Lagman, congressman and author of the divorce bill in the House of Representatives, told the Telegraph.

“I am still very optimistic that the present Congress will pass the divorce bill and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who has said before that he is pro-divorce, will sign the measure into law… The Philippines needs a divorce law, and we need it now – it is not some dangerous spectre that we must fight against.”

More and more people here agree. In 2005, a survey by the polling company Social Weather Stations found 43 per cent of Filipinos supported legalising divorce “for irreconcilably separated couples,” while 45 per cent disagreed. This had shifted to 53 per cent in favour and 32 per cent against in the same survey in 2017.

We shall see what happens in 2024.

Virtual reality

However, a woman does not need to have to come into actual physical contact with a man in order to feel abused. Over the Christmas period, allegations of rape came to light from a girl experiencing Virtual reality in the gaming world.

The story was all over media outlets. On January 2, 2024, The Times reported, ‘Police investigate “virtual rape” of girl in metaverse game’:

The police are investigating an alleged rape in the metaverse for the first time after a child was “attacked” while playing a virtual reality video game, it emerged last night.

The girl, who is under the age of 16, was not injured as there was no physical assault but is said to have suffered significant psychological and emotional trauma. She had been wearing an immersive headset while in a virtual “room” when she was attacked by several adult men, according to the Daily Mail …

Details of the virtual reality case are said to have been kept secret to protect the child involved, amid fears that a prosecution would not be possible. A senior officer familiar with the case said: “This child experienced psychological trauma similar to that of someone who has been physically raped. There is an emotional and psychological impact on the victim that is longer term than any physical injuries. It poses a number of challenges for law enforcement, given [that] current legislation is not set up for this.”

Donna Jones, the chairwoman of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, told the newspaper that women and children deserved greater protection. She said: “We need to update our laws because they have not kept pace with the risks of harm that are developing from artificial intelligence and offending on platforms like the metaverse. The government needs to look at changing the law to protect women and children from harm in these virtual environments.”

The police believe that developments in gaming have opened up new avenues for cybercrime, including virtual robbery, ransomware, fraud and identity theft, but existing legislation is unlikely to cover rape in the metaverse. This is because sexual assault is defined in the Sexual Offences Act as the physical touching of another person sexually without their consent.

The nature of the metaverse also blurs geographical boundaries, making it difficult to determine which law enforcement agency has jurisdiction over an incident when users and perpetrators are in different countries.

This, in my opinion, was entirely preventable. A parent or two should have been guiding this girl from the get-go.

I am no gamer, but even I can see that the metaverse presents potential dangers, as The Times‘s Helen Rumbelow reported on January 3, ‘Young, female and vulnerable: a “rape” in the virtual world’:

I was exploring Horizon Worlds, using the Oculus headset, both brands owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta. This is where a British schoolgirl under the age of 16 was allegedly “gang-raped” by a group of online strangers.

The police are investigating whether, under the legislation, there is any crime here to prosecute. I used inverted commas around “gang-rape”, since the crime of rape is narrowly defined as someone being penetrated against their consent. That didn’t happen here: the child was alone with her VR headset, possibly thousands of miles from her antagonists, and was physically unharmed.

Instead, in a virtual space inside Horizon Worlds, her avatar was surrounded by male avatars. In 2022 Horizon Worlds introduced a “personal boundary” default setting that prevents other avatars coming within four feet of you, but if that was disabled then touch from other users can activate a buzz through your own Oculus controllers that you hold in each hand.

You can also see fairly crude — in every way — gestures of other avatars interacting with yours, and hear the voices of the people online who are conducting the attack, and maybe describing it. I heard legal experts talking about this case drift away from the vocabulary of sexual assault. Instead, they preferred “a distressing incident” that caused the girl psychological harm …

Many women have reported that they feel unsafe from attacks in these spaces. In 2018 an American mother provided screen evidence of how her seven-year-old daughter was being “gang-raped” by two boys in a playground in Roblox, the child-focused online game.

Sorry, but the mother never should have allowed that to happen. A seven-year-old should only be gaming even on children’s games with adult supervision.

Rumbelow went on to describe her 1990s time at Stanford University in Silicon Valley when virtual reality was being developed. Even then, online assaults were taking place, every bit as shocking. The perpetrator from the game then being tested was a student thousands of miles away at New York University.

Thirty years later, this was Rumbelow’s experience on Horizon Worlds:

When I go on Horizon Worlds the first danger I encounter is my family. Being blinded by a massive headset as you flail around the living room not only looks absurd but makes your rump vulnerable to smacking — once our human bodies are all suspended in their own vats, à la The Matrix, while our minds go virtual, this problem will be designed out.

I first give myself a female avatar called Nicky, with blonde hair and a red dress, and play a few different games in groups of virtual strangers. The vibe is quite “cruisey”: I can follow and message anyone I am hanging out with and I keep having to interrupt play to dismiss requests to privately connect. It’s like trying to play tennis with a bunch of men rushing on court to get my number …

I have the same height and power as males, and at one point in a haunted house game called Bonnie’s Revenge I am briefly surrounded by a bunch of unknown guys in a dark corridor. In real life this would be a heart-rate moment; instead I blast straight past them. I am repeatedly reminded that I have the mute button to turn off any characters that offend me …

When I re-enter Horizon Worlds with the avatar of a man called Nick, I play a game called Super Rumble (attracted by the name) that I had played before as a woman. As Nicky, I was ignored; as Nick I am called to “pack” with a team of boys against the only female avatar called “Rad Rachel”. “Let’s team on her,” says one British male teenager to our group (I have to remain silent or betray myself) …

At the end of the game we all troop down to the results area to see our scores. Rad Rachel did well but is still getting barracked, with guys up close sticking their guns to her head …

The Times‘s Sean Russell, an experienced gamer, also shared his virtual experiences, ‘I enjoyed playing in the metaverse, then I went in as a woman’:

I was in Meta’s Horizon Worlds metaverse and was standing outside a virtual comedy club for 30 seconds before a man said: “Want to see my balls?” That’s funny, I thought, no one had said that when my avatar was a man. In fact, when I was a man no one said a thing to me at all.

… In the 19 years I’ve been playing games online little has changed — women are treated the same as they always have been. The news that police are investigating the “virtual rape” of a young woman in a metaverse game is totally unsurprising.

Russell asks the question many of us might have posed to the 16-year-old about her virtual rape: Why not turn off the game?

Russell says there could be a deeper question to answer:

I would say it is a matter of requiring a new vocabulary to talk about these things. If a young woman cannot sit down in what is probably the safest place she has, her home, to play a game she enjoys, perhaps it’s not as easy as turning the game off. Perhaps the invasive psychological damage is done before any “act” has taken place.

Many minors are playing in the virtual universe:

The NSPCC estimates that 15 per cent of children aged five to ten have used a virtual reality headset and 6 per cent use one daily. Meanwhile, a game such as Fortnite (age rating 13+) has 23 million players a day, many of whom are children.

This is not the route a child, especially a girl, should be following. Play in the real world: sports, board games, bridge.

Bad girls

Returning to the real world, two stories caught my eye recently.

One is about the trend for kept women. They are not mistresses as no wife or marriage is involved, ergo they are concubines. However, they bill themselves as ‘stay-at-home girlfriends’, ‘trad wives’ or ‘hot housewives’, as a November 2023 article in UnHerd reveals. This is immorality posing as morality:

On a summer’s day, TikTok influencer Gwen The Milkmaid can be found frying up all-American comfort food dressed in a floral prairie dress. “I don’t want to be a boss babe. I want to be a frolicking mama. I want to spend my days baking bread, cuddling chickens, and drinking raw milk straight from the udder,” she writes in her TikTok caption. In another video, she smiles beatifically at her nearly 50,000 followers, giving the camera a view of her ample breasts as she bakes a fresh sourdough loaf.

Gwen is a self-proclaimed “trad-wife”, one of a number of women across TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit forums extolling a return to ultra-traditional gender roles and financial dependence on a male partner. Like the swinging dicks of WallStreetBets and crypto bros, the online trad-wife is an expression of 21st-century financial nihilism. Disillusioned by the girl-boss feminist fantasy, these young women are turning to men to pay off their loans and fund their lifestyles. And, why not? The good life isn’t coming any other way …

… the girlfriend’s main project is to keep herself: thin, young, and desirable. She is her main project and her job is, as Jia Tolentino has written, to “always be optimising” …

When having it all means doing it all, there’s an allure to doing almost nothing. “People used to ask me what’s your dream job,” Kay writes in one video caption. “I don’t dream of labour. I dream of living a soft, feminine life as a hot housewife. It’s as simple as that” …

As much as these women preach an easier, calmer life away from the grind, the #Tradwife or #SAHG is just the latest niche in the long trail of “girl online” content. This work is its own hustle and produces its own income. Gwen the Milkmaid, for example, has recently cast off an online presence as an adult content creator on Only Fans. And surely few people could be fooled by Kendel Kay’s half-hearted TikTok screed against girl-bossing as she shills for a green juice brand? It’s as if the response to financial nihilism is yet more nihilism.

The comments section to the article is one of UnHerd‘s most populated: 204 comments, most of them thought-provoking in opposing this trend.

And, finally, there is the case of the young middle-class woman who ran over her boyfriend in England.

On January 3, The Telegraph gave us the background and photos in ‘Alice Wood: From promising postgraduate to life in prison’:

With her own home, a loving fiancé and the chance to study for a postgraduate degree at Cambridge University, Alice Wood had a glittering future in store.

But following a moment of madness borne out of drunken jealousy last May, the 23-year-old now faces the prospect of spending the rest of her life in prison.

After accusing her boyfriend, Ryan Watson of flirting with another woman at a party, Wood lost her temper and used her Ford Fiesta as a weapon to mow him down and kill him.

Following a three week trial at Chester Crown Court, Wood showed no emotion when she was found guilty of murder.

She will be sentenced on Jan 29, but the judge told her that she may never be released from prison.

Wood grew up in Cheadle, Staffordshire with her two brothers. Her parents were divorced and she would live alternatively with her mother, a doctor’s receptionist and father, a furniture maker.

Bright and academically able, she excelled at school and dreamed of becoming a vet.

Following her A-levels she took a different path, winning a place at Manchester University to study for a degree in philosophy, ethics and theology …

She was preparing for her finals on the fateful night when she killed her boyfriend.

Despite being unable to take her exams, Wood has since been awarded her degree based on the work she had already completed.

She had also been offered a scholarship to study part time for a master’s degree at Cambridge University – an offer she will now be unable to take up.

Wood and Mr Watson met at the beginning of lockdown in March 2020 and despite the restrictions on social mixing were soon in a serious relationship.

Within six months they were engaged and the following year, with the help of Mr Watson’s parents, had bought their first home together in the village of Rode Heath in Cheshire.

Mr Watson, had started a job as a support worker at the brain injury charity Headway, where he was proving to be a popular member of the team.

Last May, he and some of his colleagues were invited to a birthday party for a member of staff in the Victoria Lounge Bar in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent.

During the party, guests noticed how Mr Watson was circulating with ease, chatting with other attendees.

They also noted that Wood was less comfortable and appeared unhappy with the fact her fiance was paying other women any attention.

The trial heard how Mr Watson had “clicked” with fellow guest Tiffany Ferriday, leaving Wood feeling as if she was being snubbed by her boyfriend …

The couple then rowed on the nine-mile drive home, with prosecutors claiming Wood lost her temper.

Despite being three times over the drink drive limit, she got out of her boyfriend’s car and got into her own Ford Fiesta.

CCTV footage shown in court captured the moment Wood swerved onto the pavement and careered into Mr Watson, sending him flying over the bonnet.

He was able to get to his feet, but Wood then smashed into him again this time trapping underneath the vehicle.

Wood then drove for more than 500 feet with him trapped under the car causing fatal injuries.

Following the collision, she knocked on the door of a neighbour, telling them: “Please telephone an ambulance, I think I have run over my boyfriend.”

The Times has more detail of Mr Watson’s final moments of life, beginning with an overview of the party:

During the trial at Chester crown court, Andrew Ford KC for the prosecution said: “Ryan Watson was caught on camera having a good time, being a gregarious and outgoing party guest, having fun and dancing” …

Ford said Wood got into the Fiesta and reversed towards Watson, almost hitting him, before driving it backwards and forwards in what one witness compared to a “game of chicken”.

Watson walked away and stood in front of parked cars but Wood drove into him, turning off the road to hit him, the court was told. He was knocked on to the bonnet of her car but was able to stand afterwards.

Ford said: “She drove straight into Ryan Watson for the second time, head on. This time he did not go over the bonnet — she knocked him clean over, under the vehicle’s front end.”

She told her trial that she did not realise he was trapped beneath her car when she drove 158 metres before stopping. The court was told that Wood had 61 micrograms of alcohol per 100ml of breath. The legal limit is 35.

Wood showed no emotion as the jury returned its unanimous verdict after less than eight hours of deliberation. The judge, Michael Leeming, further remanded her in custody and told her she “may never be released”.

Dear, oh dear.

Conclusion

I hadn’t expected that Eve’s curse would have got me started on reading about sin more closely, but it has and here we have it.

I better understand why God detests sin so much and why Original Sin caused Him to pass the ultimate penalty on all of us: certain death with much unhappiness thrown into the mix for those who do not obey His commandments.

There is something to be said for living a godly life where those miseries are mitigated.