Cherry Pop

It sounds like a bad episode of Jeremy Kyle - the bullying bloke fresh out of the nick, the slaggish ex-girlfriend, a new bloke on the scene, a kid called something like Crystal or Chardonnay. Except this bullying bloke - troubled at the core like most bullies are - came out with a shot gun and took out the new man, maimed the ex (viscously, so she’ll never forget) and blinded a policeman. A human tragedy. One we’ve all been watching.
Even so, there are fingers of blame pointing Samantha’s way. Slag, Slapper. Had it coming to her? But did she? Really?

Behind all the headlines no-one seems to have done the maths. Samantha Stobbart, 22. Raoul Moat 37. Together 6 years. Why has no one has commented that the 31 year old bully boy had picked up with a 16 year old girl, at the very start of her foray into adult relationships? On how one-sided and dysfunctional the relationship was in the first place because of this huge age gap? That all poor Samantha ever knew of being a couple would have been with this much older man. And not just any ’older'man, but a volatile man mountain - 6ft 3in, a doorman, prone to ’outbursts of anger’, already with a failed relationship and two kids behind him. It sounds like co-dependency and abuse of the worst kind. Yet no-one seems to have picked this angle up at all.

Poor, poor Samantha. She’s not a slag, just a lost young girl, dominated from the day she was old enough to find love. Her life has never been her own. I wonder whether, as time passed and she grew up during those 6 years, she regretted hooking up with the likes of Moat. Whether she slowly realised she was not so much protected as dominated and controlled by him, and afraid of becoming her own person because of the volcano that might have erupted.
So far from being a rosy, domesticated relationship, the ’together 6 years'reported in the papers, sounds like the worst nightmare for a pretty girl like Sam. To have hooked up with an insecure, jealous man with access to weapons that (quite likely) he and his chums weren’t afraid to administer outside of the law. The day to day power struggles, outbursts, domination. A relationship that wasn’t one of trust, a home that wasn’t a place of safety, and a love that was no longer one of choice - just one big nightmare she dare not leave.
So bully boy goes to prison. 18 weeks. That’s over 4 months. Probably the first time the maturing Samantha (now a mother) had an opportunity to think for herself, decide things for herself, with her bullying partner ’safely'behind bars. Free - at least in the short term - from his terrorising ways. In that 4 months, she chooses to do something for herself - break away from Roaul, meet another man and do some exploring. It’s what young people do up and down the country: end a first relationship to move onto something more fitting their new mature self.
Only for Samantha ’ending'their relationship wasn’t an option. I’m over you, I’m moving on, I have made a choice for a future that doesn’t include you - simply not in Moat’s vocabulary. She did not belong to herself, she belonged to him. The choice wasn’t ever hers. It’s no accident she was a vulnerable 16 year old, not an assertive adult in her own right when they set out. She wasn’t a person, but a possession. In his warped, controlling mind, and in the terms of their relationship contract, he’s always owned her.
And now, through his actions, he’s made sure he always will.