[user104658]

Originally Posted by Jake.

Absolutely ridiculous sentencing and I can’t believe the amount of people I’ve seen jumping to the defence of the man on social media.

It's a fairly commonly held belief that if someone is murdered or harmed by their partner, they "must have" done something to provoke or deserve it, even if that's just "failure to leave". But if friends and family of the perpetrator are saying they're shocked - then it has to be the former. Provocation.

The reason is pretty obvious - if people don't believe that it was provoked, then they have to believe that the victim didn't see it coming, and thus, it could happen to them without them seeing it coming. "That could never happen to ME, because..." ... they must be able to tell themselves.

So if friends and family of someone who chokes their wife to death say he's always been a nice man and a good person who would never just randomly do this, then he must indeed be that (they think), and yet he did it, so there must be "other reasons".