Cho Hired an Escort Before Rampage

[sam]

Cho Hired an Escort Before Rampage

http://abcnews.go.com
/US/VATech/story?id=3071730&page=1

April 24, 2007 — Seung-Hui Cho hired her to dance for him in a motel room one month before the massacre at Virginia Tech's campus, dancer Chastity Frye said in an on camera interview with a TV station in Roanoke, Va.

"He was so quiet. I really couldn't get much from him. He was so distant. He really didn't like to talk a lot," Frye said in the interview. "It seemed like he wasn't all there."

Frye said that a "creepy" Cho, 23, called the escort service she works for and hired her to meet him for one hour at a Roanoke motel, about a 30-minute drive from Virginia Tech's Blacksburg campus.

About 15 minutes into the performance for Cho, Frye said, it appeared that her client had no interest.

"I danced for a little while and I thought we were done because he got up and went to the restroom and began washing," said Frye, a white woman with blond hair.

Frye told WSLS that she told Cho she was going to leave, to which he responded that he had paid for a full hour and she had only performed 15 minutes.

When she resumed dancing, Frye said that Cho touched her and tried "to get on" her before she pushed him away. Cho then apparently respected her wishes.

Frye said she thought Cho looked familiar when she saw his face in the coverage of the Virginia Tech killings. Cho fatally shot 32 people and then himself on April 16.

She got a call from the FBI, which she said tracked her down through Cho's credit card receipts. Frye said that during a weekend interview, investigators asked her to describe Cho using three words. She chose "dorky," "timid" and a "little pushy."

An FBI spokeswoman from the Richmond, Va., field office, which is overseeing the Virginia Tech case, said the FBI would not comment on possible witnesses.

"I'm not able to comment on who we are and are not talking to," spokeswoman Dee Rybiski told ABC News. "I will confirm that I have had agents there since Monday of last week — conducting all sorts of interviews."

Cho's Strange Behavior

Mounting evidence of Cho's behavior toward women has emerged in the week since he was identified as the Virginia Tech gunman.

Twice, Virginia Tech police were called in fall 2005 after women complained of Cho's "annoying behavior" on campus.

And one Virginia Tech English professor asked her department head to have Cho removed from class after some female students began to boycott the class, alleging that Cho was taking photographs of them under their desks with a camera phone.

Cho also had an imaginary girlfriend whom he called Jelly, former roommates told CNN. Cho reportedly described her as a supermodel from outer space whose pet name for Cho was Spanky.

On Monday, investigators seized all e-mail account activity records involving Cho and Emily Hilscher, a 19-year-old Virginia Tech student who was among the first two victims killed on the fourth floor of a campus dormitory.

Authorities have not yet confirmed any connection between Cho and Hilscher.

[elfeminista]

I recall that several of the 9/11 skyjackers went to a "strip joint" the very night before they commmited the terrorist mission at WTC.

It sort of makes sense for freakazoids, I guess....

[sunnysmiles]

While we acknowledge that sexual exploitation is violence in and of itself, outside of such 'extreme' actions by men, I also wonder to what degree such media reports as the one above aren't just sensationalist. I can't make out what the point of these types of reports are:

1) Are they trying to moralize by saying that whackos only go to strip clubs/see escorts? In which case, where are they when women ask to be listened to?
2) If they are saying whackos only go to this, then it also masks the reality that everyone's uncle/brother/father and spouse are also doing the same. These kinds of things aren't the exception anymore - they are the norm.

It makes sense when they brought up that ted bundy watched 'hard-core' porn back in the day, but the newer reports just seem so off-base and so sensationalist it makes no sense to me. I say this taking into consideration that the same kind of attention isn't warranted when women like the duke stripper actually do complain of sexual violence. I.e. women who critique the industry themselves and say rape is deviant behaviour aren't listened to, yet 'sensationalist reports' hold public facination.

I mean, are they trying to tell me that his going to an escort (which I am sure more than 1million other men go to visit a day) has any bearing on his killing over 30 ppl that day? Or that the terrorists going to the strip clubs the night before (which I am sure a billion other men did that night too) had any bearing on their desire to blow up the twin towers?

I mean if they are trying to tell me that men who do this kind of stuff are assholes, hurrah - I'm good with this. But I doubt that is the case, I just think this stuff is sensationalist tripe that's actually meant to titilate. I mean - look at how they frame this:

Authorities have not yet confirmed any connection between Cho and Hilscher.

I don't care if they were fuck-buddies or whatever, I don't see how any of this is helping me, as a 'consumer' to better understand this senseless violence. I just find it's so damn hard to differentiate between journalism and tabloid trash increasingly. I wasn't in Toronto - and when this happened and was in a place that was bombarded by American media - between massacre victims flashing on the screen, they gave me snippets of Alec baldwin's message to his daughter over and over again. Now - tell me again, how many ppl in Iraq died that day again?

And since when did they care about the harassment that these girls faced by him in class? They didn't write about it before, and since when are women believed in such incidences anyways that the media suddenly cares?

just my two cents...

[gerry]

And why all this investigation of a dead man (poor and asian) when almost no investigation of living rapists?

As I said in another post, I don't think there is anything particularly sexist about this man or the murders he committed. (which is not to say this was not a male act)

And this kind of coverage just distracts from those things sunny mentions and perhaps much more---like this country's deep racism and classism which had more to do with these deaths than did the singular guy who absorbed them.

STOP FUNDING THE WAR!!

[sunnysmiles]

And why all this investigation of a dead man (poor and asian) when almost no investigation of living rapists?

As I said in another post, I don't think there is anything particularly sexist about this man or the murders he committed. (which is not to say this was not a male act)

And this kind of coverage just distracts from those things sunny mentions and perhaps much more---like this country's deep racism and classism which had more to do with these deaths than did the singular guy who absorbed them.

STOP FUNDING THE WAR!!

I wanted to say that it is interesting that when the media reported on this stuff that both times it was men of colour (the terrorists and cho) who's sexuality was called into question. So I'm glad you were more explicit about that gerry. The framing of this article is racist/classist (the terrorists did use American planes for chrissakes) and hence sexist too, because big media will only ever focus on women's issues when they can 'frame it correctly'. Women's issues are secondary to other big media's agendas - in this case sensationalism.

[delphyne]

It highlights how closely intertwined female sexual degradation is in acts of extreme male violence - like the atomic bomb dropped on Bikini having a picture of Rita Hayworth in a bikini on it, or aircraft crews in the Gulf war watching porn videos before going out on raids, or soldiers in WW1 all being obsessed that the enemy in the opposite trench had women in with them.

Obviously the journalists who reported the story aren't explicitly aware of the connection, but at some level they seem to be making it.

[sunnysmiles]

I wish that was the case delphyne, but I disagree - I don't think Abc news had that in mind.

[elfeminista]

It highlights how closely intertwined female sexual degradation is in acts of extreme male violence - like the atomic bomb dropped on Bikini having a picture of Rita Hayworth in a bikini on it, or aircraft crews in the Gulf war watching porn videos before going out on raids, or soldiers in WW1 all being obsessed that the enemy in the opposite trench had women in with them.

I agree with Delphyne and would like to add....

I am sorry. African men were raping and killing African women before a white man ever set foot there. Confucius built his philosophy on MALE SUPREMACY when China was the greatest power in the world. I am a man of color, ok. We must not veer from the central cause, while we can examine racism and media manipulation, as we must, there is class man and class Woman. Class man terrorizes rapes and kills class Woman. Is this 'victim politics? No, because feminism will change society until male violence ends. Women will be empowered. but that wont happen if we divert focus.Men need to work on *ourselves*.
black men, white men, orange men. All men.
That is our issue. I have to say Gerry that do not agree with you here.

[Lyrex]

Cho was probably on Prozac. There is plenty of evidence that these psychiatric drugs destroy your brain and make quiet people violent. Yet, you support the drug industries and oppose me.

Lyrex

[gerry]

I agree about the drugs and the dry cleaner fumes---as part of the picture.

But as to the sexism lingering both in the background and foreground, here is a piece i think we can all agree upon. (not sure it's legal to quote whole piece, so cut it, if not)


Mass Murderers and Women: What We're Still Not Getting About Virginia Tech

James Ridgeway
April 20 , 2007

Of all the lessons contained in the horror at Virginia Tech, the one least likely to be learned has to do with the deadly danger posed by the dismissive way we still view violence against women.

The first person killed by Cho Seung-Ho, a freshman named Emily Hilscher, was initially rumored to be Cho's current or former girlfriend – the subject of his obsession or jealous rage. It now appears that she never had a relationship with Cho, but the rumors were spread quickly, especially by blogs and by the international tabloid press. The UK's Daily Mail headlined the "Massacre Gunman's Deadly Infatuation with Emily," while Australia's Daily Telegraph published a photo of a smiling Hilscher with the line "THIS is the face of the girl who may have sparked the worst school shooting in US history." (The page is still up.) Some accounts stooped to suggesting, with zero evidence, that the victim had jilted Cho, cheated on him, or led him on.

More significantly, local police and university administrators appear to have initially bought this motive, and acted accordingly. In the two hours between the murders of Hilscher and her dorm neighbor Ryan Clark, and Cho's mass killings at another university building, they chose not to cancel classes or lock down the campus. (They did choose to do so, however, in August 2006, when a man shot a security guard and a sheriff's deputy and escaped from a hospital two miles away.) Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said authorities believed the first shooting was a "domestic dispute" and thought the gunman had fled the campus, so "We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur." The assumption, apparently, is that men who kill their cheating girlfriends are criminals, but they are not crazy, not psychopaths, and not a danger to anyone other than the woman in question. (Or, as one reader commented at Feministe sarcastically, "Like killing your girlfriend is no big deal.")

In fact, these attitudes ignore past evidence of both "domestic disputes" and a more generalized misogyny as motives in mass killings. Multiple murders in homes and workplaces often begin with a man killing his wife or girlfriend. Mark Barton, who in 1999 shot nine people in an Atlanta office building, began the day by bludgeoning to death his children and his wife; six years earlier he had been a suspect in the death of his first wife and her mother, who were also beaten to death. In another high-profile case, the December 1989 mass shooting at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique, Marc Lepine was after women, whom he hated, and had a list of feminists he wanted to kill. He murdered four men and 14 women, and wounded 10 more women. In September 2006, Duane Roger Morrison walked into Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo., and took six female students hostage, killing one. And last October, Charles Carl Roberts IV took over an Amish schoolhouse, let the boys go, and killed five girls.

One warning sign in such cases is a history of stalking and harassment of women. At Virginia Tech, in September 2005, poet Nikki Giovanni had Cho removed from her class at Virginia Tech after female students complained that he was using his cell phone to take pictures of their legs underneath the desks; some refused to come to class while Cho was there. In November and December of that year, two female students reported receiving threatening messages from Cho, and one said he was stalking her. But charges were never filed, and police and university officials didn't seem especially worried about the women. Yet, as Arlen Specter pointed out in comments on the VT shooting made during the Gonzalez hearings Thursday, Cho had been accused of a "crime against the state as well as against the students," and the local DA could have taken up the case.

According to the Stalking Resource Center, one million women are stalked in the U.S. every year. In two-thirds of the cases where a female victim asks for a police protective order, that order is violated. Earlier this month, Rebecca Griego, a researcher at the University of Washington, was murdered in her office by her ex-boyfriend after she had reported his threats to the university police and Seattle police, changed her phone number, moved out of her apartment, distributed photos and descriptions of her stalker, and sought an order for protection.

One third of female murder victims are killed by an intimate partner (as opposed to about 3 percent of male victims). Of these, 76 percent had been stalked by the partner in the year prior to their murder. Murder ranks second (after accidents) as the leading cause of death among young women. And if the Supreme Court and abortion opponents really want to protect the lives of fetuses, they might consider this: Murder is the number one cause of death of pregnant women in the United States.

At least there is some recognition of such statistics in legislation called the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, sponsored by Senators Kennedy and Gordon Smith. If passed (unlike earlier versions, which were blocked by House Republican leadership), this law would finally classify as hate crimes certain violent, criminal acts that are motivated by the victim's gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or disability.

"Whatever helped bring on the Virginia Tech shootings, it certainly wasn't guns." That's the point gun advocates are scrambling to make; if anything, they argue, the shootings prove that we need more gun access. And President Bush fell in behind them after visiting the memorial service at Virginia (a state that is historically Republican turf, lost in the last two years to a Democratic governor, Tim Kaine, and a Democratic senator, James Webb). Bush didn't get into the gun control issue, saying it wasn't the time or place, but an aide made his position clear to reporters afterward. And Senator John McCain, whose imploding campaign has been seeking to recast him as a Bush lookalike, offered, "We have to look at what happened here, but it doesn't change my views on the second amendment except to make sure that these kinds of weapons don't fall into the hands of bad people."

Having been committed to a mental health facility for being a danger to himself and others presented no obstacle for Cho Seung-Hui, who bought one gun at a Blacksburg pawnshop and another—a Glock 9—at a Roanoke gun store. Here's a bare-bones list of state gun rules.

- No limits on assault weapons
- State and federal criminal background checks
- No restrictions on concealed weapons-even snub nosed handguns
- Gun owners are held responsible for leaving weapons around children, but no safety lock requirements exist.
- Cities can't hold gun makers liable for gun violence.
- Can't give kids under 18 handguns or assault weapons, but kids can possess rifles and shotguns.
- Can't sell handguns to kids under 18, but any kid over 12 can buy shotguns, older rifles, and assault weapons, all without parental consent.
- You don't need a license to buy a handgun.
- There are no requirements that gun buyers register. The cops have no idea how many guns there are in the state.

Lax gun laws like these combined with precious little awareness of the role violence against women plays in psychopathic behavior have led to tragic results. Will they again?

James Ridgeway is the Washington Correspondent for Mother Jones.

[delphyne]

sunny, I don't want to deny the racism in the coverage of this case even right down to the investigation of Cho's sex life. I am sure you are absolutely right about that. I think that racism and sexism could both be at work plus, like I said, also an unconscious acknowledgement of the close connection between male violence and female sexual degradation.

It also appears that Cho was a victim of child sexual abuse (rape).

[sunnysmiles]

I won't comment further on this - but I just wanted to clarify elfeminista, that critiquing big media and the way they frame gender/race issues in the best interests of white male capitalist patriarchy is not the same as saying that ALL men AREN'T culpable for violence.

At most, it's possible that this reporter had women's interest in mind (as delphyne mentioned) - but I don't really trust the source (abc).

Thanks for the article gerry. I think this highlights what both delphyne was elluding (i.e. that VAW leads to more violence) to and what I was trying to say as well that the media needs to focus on violence against women as an issue outside of how 'women's issues' are usually used currently as 'sensationalist/titilation'.

cross posted with delphyne - sorry, and I agree.

[elfeminista]

"I won't comment further on this - but I just wanted to clarify elfeminista, that critiquing big media and the way they frame gender/race issues in the best interests of white male capitalist patriarchy is not the same as saying that ALL men AREN'T culpable for violence."

sunny, if you would like we could pm about this. My critique was not aimed at you, and I while agree with your statement, there only one thing that I wish to say further on this....

(warning long run on sentence ahead).
The patriarchy is not only the white-male-patriarchy For me,when In Iran Women are arrested in mass numbers for not wearing veils,often beaten for asking for rights, when in Afghanistan hundreds of Women have set themselves on fire because of abuse by their "husbands" and male in-laws, when in China millions of females were never born because of gender prejudice, it isn't the white male patriarchy. When in "Socialist" Cuba Women are openly harassed by soldiers with impunity, or as in the Congo, boys attack a girls school, raping dozens, wounding several, and the local priest says 'The boys did not mean any harm, they just wanted to rape", no, its not just the white male patriarchy.It's the World wide patriarchy.

I think I left out India, Japan, the Philipines, Sudan, Burma, Nigeria, and a couple of others.

I will start caring about men when men start caring about Women.

[Andrew]

Our society has a unique structure, but it also shares many elements with societies around the world.
Individuals also are unique configurations who nevertheless share a common humanity. All the theorizing is fine, I do it myself, but I hate to see the individual lost sight of. This man was not a symbol of anything, though we can make him be one for us. He was an individual. How was he lost? Could he have been stopped or better yet rescued? THe answers are not to be found in social analysis, though he doubtless absorbed much from us, but in the heart of this troubled man, which is now lost to us.
Still, social analysis itself is fine and needful.

[sunnysmiles]

why has the topic changed into 'all patriarchies' from Cho hiring an escort? The critique raised was about ABC news framing this as a racist/sexist issue - not that 'patriarchies don't exist around the world'...

big american media vs. all patriarchies was not the issue. big american media and sensationalism was the critique, and anways gerrys already covered a pretty good analysis of the intersections of media coverage and women's issues.

Crappy, 'sexually sensationalist,' irrelevant, big media article vs. contextualized and gendered small-media article - thank you, it's been done.

Again, critiquing big media's tactics of sensationalism and tabloidism does not erradicate nasty evil patriarchal shittiness of any color - no one said that. Pls. don't conflate the two - it's irritating.

[elfeminista]

sunny I have a had a chance to reflect and I see your point. I just found this article:Too bad the news did not really get her ... gee, must be because maybe She is African American? .All in all it was a positive article, but why include something negative? and why compare a Woman and an African American Woman at that, with sick people?
This article struck me in that where it could have been a wonderful uplifting article, and left it at that, yet the writer chose to include negative elements.

Cancer survivor, 75, skis to North Pole

By MEGHAN BARR, Associated Press WriterSun May 6, 2:15 PM ET

The bone-numbing trek to the North Pole is riddled with enough perils to make a seasoned explorer quake: Frostbite threatens, polar bears loom and the ice is constantly shifting beneath frozen feet.

But Barbara Hillary took it all in stride, completing the trek to the world's northernmost point last month at the age of 75. She is one of the oldest people to reach the North Pole, and is believed to be the first black woman on record to accomplish the feat.

Hillary, of Averne, N.Y., grew up in Harlem and devoted herself to a nursing career and community activism. At 67 and during retirement, she battled lung cancer. Five years later, she went dog sledding in Quebec and photographed polar bears in Manitoba.

Then she heard that a black woman had never made it to the North Pole.

"I said, `What's wrong with this picture?'" she said. "So I sort of rolled into this, shall we say."

In 1909, Matthew Henson made history as the first black man to reach the Pole, though his accomplishment was not officially recognized for decades — it was overshadowed by the presence of his white colleague, Robert Peary.

Ann Bancroft, a physical education teacher from Minnesota, was the North Pole's first female visitor in 1986 as a member of the Steger Polar Expedition, which arrived unassisted in a re-creation of the 1909 trip. Various scientific organizations said no record exists of a black woman matching Bancroft's feat, although such record-keeping is not perfect.

"It's not like there's a guest book when you get up there and you sign it," said Robert Russell, founder of Eagles Cry Adventures, Inc., the travel company that leads thrill-seekers like Hillary to the farthest corners of the globe. Russell conducted six months' worth of research, interviewing fellow polar expedition contractors and digging through history books, but failed to find a black woman who had completed the trek.

Russell's paying customers can travel to the North Pole in various ways, from 18-day cross-country ski trips to simply being dropped off at the Pole via helicopter. The trip costs about $21,000 per person.

Hillary insisted on skiing. Only trouble was, she had never been on the slopes before.

"It wasn't a popular sport in Harlem," she quipped.

So she enrolled in cross-country skiing lessons and hired a personal trainer, who finally determined she was physically fit for the voyage.

"She's a headstrong woman. You don't tell her 'no' about too many things," Russell said.

Her lack of funds didn't stop her, either. Hillary scraped together thousands of dollars and solicited private donors. On April 18, she arrived in Longyearben, Norway, where it is common for people to carry guns to ward off hungry polar bears.

"Before I arrived, the word was out that soul food was coming," she joked.

The travelers were then flown to the base camp — which is rebuilt each year due to melting ice — and pitched their tents. On April 23 Hillary set off on skis with two trained guides. Russell, fearing for her health, had convinced her to take the daylong ski route to the Pole in lieu of the longer trips.

As the sunlight glinted off the ice, distorting her gaze, Hillary struggled beneath a load of gear and pressed on. In her euphoria at reaching the Pole, she forgot the cold and removed her gloves, causing her fingers to become frostbitten.

Standing at the top of the world, she could have cared less. The enormous expanse of ice and sky left Hillary, for once in her long life, speechless.

While such expeditions serve as major accomplishments, some historians and Arctic experts criticize what they call an over-hyping of being the "first" to do something.

"The same issue is in effect for the climbing of Mount Everest," said Michael Robinson, a University of Hartford professor who wrote "The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture." "You see the first diabetic, the first blind person to climb Everest. I'd hate for there to be a constant emphasis on nationality and race and gender, or disability."

But for Hillary, the achievement extends beyond race. She hopes her journey will inspire hope in other cancer survivors. With her feet back on dry land in New York, she is already plotting a new adventure: that of a global-warming activist.

"What if?" she said. "I'd like to go and lecture to different groups on what they can do on a grass-roots level (to fight global warming)."
```````````````````````````````````````````
This woman rocks period.

[sunnysmiles]

thanks for that article - el, so much just screamed out at me. Sometimes it's hard to believe that this is the state of writing. Ah, who am I kidding. I think the article you linked here is a perfect example of gender/class/race and media presentation of the issues. along with the things you mentioned already in your analysis - I think a few more things stuck out at me.

- Like how they make mention of 'her private donor funding' VS. 'paying customers' (i.e. as though she isn't REALLY a paying customer - you know, HOW DID THE POOR BLACK WOMAN climb the mountain?).

- they never mention how many GOVT dollars help fund 'expeditions/tours' of different countries/climbs. Of course when such expeditions are undertaken by neo-colonial WHITE MEN - it's in the name of the benefit for all of 'us little ppl' - i.e. they are re-colonizing/discovering lands for OUR benefit.

- the quote at the end especially helps to undermine the accomplishment of this woman too - let's get a 'credible' source (a degreed white dude) to make an 'intelligent' remark about how futile it is for a black woman to do something 'first' (didn't u know monied white men have already done that?). it's interesting because they try to seem 'liberal' when writing this article (the mention of how the original climber was a black man who's accomplishment was overlooked because of his white colleague).

But what 'liberal' means nowadays - is fair and balanced. I.e. the article works to 'acknowledge' the 'bad things' blacks faced BEFORE - only to highlight how their 'so-called' accomplishments now are trivial because anyone with 21K sitting around can do it anyways.

Next time, it will be interesting to see how the white dude geography/physicists team 'braves the cold artic northern frontier in nothing but their loin clothes as they fight the 'untamed' wilderness, the lack of elecrticity to fall down into a bleak nomadic existence while fighting to find the next cure for the world wide spread of foot fungus'..... bah...