Sasha Marsden: Sister of Blackpool murder victim warns that Andrew Tate is 'grooming boys' to become sexual predators ten years after sexually motivated attack

Gemma Aitchison set up campaign group YES Matters in response to her sister’s murder in 2013. Now a decade on, Gemma continues to fight for victims of sexual violence and said Sasha is never far from her thoughts.

‘I think about [Sasha] every day’

Gemma said: “I think about [Sasha] every day, I think about her and all the other women like the 400 women last year that were killed. I get angry because all of them mattered.”

On January 31, 2013, Sasha was stabbed 58 times after rejecting the sexual advances of David Minto - a ‘calculated’ killer who lured the 16 year old to a hotel thinking she was going to an interview for a part-time cleaning job.

Sasha had lived with her parents in Staining. She was a child care student at Blackpool and The Fylde College and had hoped she could earn some money when she was targeted by Minto in a way that police described as ‘premeditated and evil’.

‘Andrew Tate and men like him are grooming boys’

Gemma successfully lobbied to have compulsory sex education added to the national curriculum in 2020.

Now, after 10 years of campaigning Gemma fears that attitudes towards women and girls has taken a backward step and influencers are a big part of the problem.

Gemma added: “Andrew Tate and men like him are grooming boys. They reinforce the idea that the man is dominant and entitled, and that the woman is a submissive sexual object and schools don’t seem to be addressing the issues properly.”

Tate is currently detained in Romania, alongside his brother Tristan, as part of an investigation into allegations of human trafficking and rape - which they both deny.

Child on child abuse is skyrocketing

But so many boys and young men are influence by Tate’s misogynistic beliefs, that schools are having to make a concerted attempt to tackle his influence.

“I think we've already seen throughout schools across the UK just how effective [Tate] is, and we've seen child on child abuse crimes skyrocketing in primary and secondary schools. Every school that we went to last year, the boys mentioned that Andrew Tate.”

Pop culture stereotypes

She points out that the gender stereotypes are largely what is responsible for creating adult men who attack women further down the line. But it’s embedded in society and pop culture - she explains.

“If you look at what Beyonce has to do for her job and compare it to Ed Sheeran. Technically they have the same job and the same skills, but then you compare what she has to do versus what he has to do. He walks on stage in jeans and a jumper and he might not have brushed his hair that day, but that's not important. Beyonce has to starve herself, be completely hairless, have fillers and all sorts of things just to do the same job.”

‘The guy that killed my sister thought that she was disposable’

And cases like Sarah Everard make her feel that things are getting worse.

33-year-old Sarah Everard was kidnapped and murdered by Met Police officer Wayne Couzens on March 03, 2021. Colleagues raised the alarm about his interest in extreme pornography, and he’d even been nicknamed “The Rapist” at work, but had been able to carry on unchallenged.

She added: “The guy that killed my sister thought that she was disposable. If you see someone as a sexual object rather than as a person then it's the first step in justifying doing something to them, because it ‘others’ them and makes it okay.”

Minto had been working as a caretaker and barman at the Grafton House hotel, on Kirby Road. He would trawl social media sites looking for women to lure back to the B&B while it was empty – Sasha was not his first victim.

Nicknamed ‘The Demon’, Minto had previously assaulted other women., including Kimberley Fazackerly. The 22 year old told the Daily Mail the she was 'frightened and scared' when Minto forced himself on her in 2012.

Victims are ignored ‘until there is a dead body’

But the culture of misogyny enables perpetrators to get away with assaulting women, who may be ‘victim-blamed’ or disbelieved.

Gemma said: “The guy who killed my sister, and others who kill in this way, always have multiple offences in their history.

They are often serial and escalating offences so if you ignore the first victim, the second, the third, then that perpetrator has been condoned and enabled until there is a dead body and destroyed lives at the end. That really frustrates me because if we listened to our girls we would have less dead women.”

But rather than listening, rape victims are fed the message that they are somehow to blame – which Gemma has observed is very different to when the victims are male.

“There was a rapist in Manchester just before Covid [targeting men]. Nobody asked what those men were wearing. They didn’t tell men not to go out drinking. None of those victims were asked for the phones to be taken off them, so it's not that we don't know how to respond to this.

‘I can't save the girl I want to’

Gemma continues to develop training programmes to help educate about issues including gender stereotypes, consent, rape culture and pornography.

Her charity also provides victim support for children and young people who have been abused or exploited. And Sasha’s legacy continues through this work.

“I can't save the girl I want to obviously but I can save these other boys and girls. At least I know within 12 weeks that they know whatever happened to them isn't their fault.”

For more information about the issues in this article, to access support or get involved in campaigning, visit https://www.yes-matters.co.uk/