Article: Laura van Niekerk from women24

The life story of Aileen Wuornos is one of indescribable sadness and misfortune. It's virtually impossible to think that one innocent little girl could have had absolutely all the odds in life thrown at her - and then people still expect her to grow up, push the crap aside and be an upstanding member of society. Trash. No can do. But the worst is there are other girls/women out there who suffer a similar lot. OK, so they don't all start to kill, but there are certainly also reasons for that (like they don't have a gun at that moment they're being raped, slapped and kicked about). If I had been used, abused, and betrayed as Aileen was as a child and as a grown woman, I would most likely also have lost the plot and started killing. Possibly even at a younger age, too. And I think Charlize Theron (who's mom shot and killed her abusive husband in self defense all those years ago) could see the method in that too. But that's just what I think. Here's why:

Aileen Wuornos was born on February 29, 1956 to a fifteen-year-old girl called Diane Pittman. She was Diane's second child, the first a boy called Keith. Within six months of being born, Diane left her kids with her own parents. She later returned, but abandoned the children again before Aileen was two (that is, twice during the crucial bonding years between mother and child). The children were eventually adopted by their grandparents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos, and grew up with their mother's siblings. Aileen was unaware that her grandparents weren't her real parents until the age of 12.

Aileen's "father", teenager Leo Pittman, left his family even before Aileen was born. Described as a child molester and sociopath, he was later in life found guilty of kidnapping and sodomising an eight-year-old girl. He finally put an end to his own miserable existence by hanging himself in his prison cell.

Aileen's grandfather (who, some believe was her real father), drank heavily and beat her regularly and brutally. During her murder trail 35 years later, a childhood friend, Michelle Chavin, testified that the minute Aileen's grandfather stepped into the house he made her bend over a chair and then he'd 'hit the hell out of her' for at least five minutes. A former boyfriend, Jerry Moss, testified that he would call her an ugly bitch, and that, when she turned around, he'd throw stones at her and shout at her to go home. He also said that Wuornos and her brother Keith had an incestuous relationship.

The family was not only horrendously dysfunctional, they were dirt poor and at the age of nine Aileen would offer men and boys sexual favours in return for cigarette money (the kids at her school called her the Cigarette Pig).

At thirteen she fell pregnant, some say by the local paedophile, and was sent to a home for unwed mothers. The staff found her hostile and unable to get along with her peers. She delivered a baby boy, who was put up for adoption, in January 1971. Her grandmother died that year, and without further ado her grandfather kicked her out of the house. With nowhere to go, Aileen lived in the icy woods, sleeping in abandoned cars with only a blanket for protection. After two years of rough, transient living, massive alcohol consumption and harrowing prostitution in the backwaters of Troy, Michigan, Aileen traveled south to warmer Florida where she became a full-time highway prostitute.

Monster picks up where a 30-something Aileen enters a relationship with lesbian Selby Wall (played by Christina Ricci). Unable to find a legitimate job but desperate to sustain her shaky relationship with Selby, Wuornos continues working as a prostitute. When one of her johns turns violent and tries to sodomise her, Wuornos shoots the man in self-defense; the first in her tragic string of killings.

Over the next couple of years, with breaks in between, Aileen kills up to 7 more clients, robbing them of money and valuables after the deed is done. Finally, the FBI catch up with her, and she's incarcerated.

The trial and Aileen's almost 12 years on death row make for a film on its own, but Monster doesn't go there. For the first ten years Wuornos maintained she killed in self defense, but in order to accelerate the time to her execution, she later changed her story and said she deliberately chose to kill each and every one of them. She then fired her legal team and requested that all appeals be stopped - even an attempt to prove that her first victim Richard Mallory (who's murder was the only one Aileen was charged with) had a previous conviction for attempted rape.

She volunteered to be executed - a request which Florida Governor Jed Bush (brother of that man) viewed sensible and authorised. As she wrote in a letter to promote her execution: "I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again. So what's the point! Let's move on."

Nick Broomfield, a British documentary filmmaker who made two movies about Aileen Wuornos (The Selling of a Serial Killer - about the commercialising of serial killer industry - and The Life and Death Of a Serial Killer - about her inhumane childhood) said in an interview with Harpers & Queen (reproduced in the March 2004 edition of Sarie magazine) that her background gave strong clues as to why she couldn't control her temper and why she killed later in life.

To top it, during her trial Aileen was diagnosed by a prison neuropsychologist as being a perfect case of Borderline Personality Disorder. And one of the strongest characteristics of BPD is frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment (remember her mother?). Aileen's weatherbeaten, life-weary looks didn't exactly make her the most desired of prostitutes, so robbing her victims once she'd killed them was the only way she could get enough cash to keep Selby.

Before she was executed she was psychologically evaluated by three shrinks, who, after a 30-minute chat with her, found her to be sane. Broomfield, who knew her particularly well and was one of the last people to interview her days ahead of her execution, said he'd never been in the presence of someone more deranged, and by her own account Aileen told Broomfield her mind was being controlled by radio waves and that she was so crazy she couldn't see straight. Broomfield maintains that the conditions on death row - which he calls legalised torture - made her want to die. The question this raises is whether the mentally incompetent should be able to choose whether they can die or not.

And while I'm at it - the Seattle serial killer Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty on November 5 2003 to the murders of 48 women (all prostitutes) from 1982 to 1998. To avoid the death penalty, he said: "I wanted to kill as many women I thought were prostitutes as I possibly could." How that could help him escape the death penalty is beyond me, but it worked for the judges and the US community at large and the Green River serial killer escaped the execution gurney.

That's enough said. Monster opens countrywide on Friday 27 February. And the Academy Awards - Charlize Theron has of course been nominated for a the Leading Actress award - will be broadcast live on DStv Movie Magic channel from 3am on Monday morning, and be rebroadcast on MNet Monday eve at 8pm.

This is a great big WELL DONE to our Charlize. From insider reports the role was emotionally extremely difficult for Charlize, especially considering her own experienc as a child, and she was often reduced to tears after a long day of shooting, sitting in a dark room on the edge of her bed holding her head in her hands.

Without condoning the killings, we salute Charlize and director Patty Jenkins for believing that Aileen Wuornos' story had to be told. And we send a prayer to all women and young girls across the world who are used, abused and betrayed not only by those who should love and protect them, but the greater society as a whole. As Robert Egbert said in the Chicago Tribune: "No one should have to endure the life that Aileen Wuornos led, and we leave the movie believing that if someone, somehow, had been able to help that little girl, her seven victims would never have died."

Send the author your feedback at editor@women24.com or post your thoughts on this issue here

Picture credit: www.monsterfilm.com

This article was originally referenced in the women24 newsletter of the 25 February 2004. The women24 newsletter sends out weekly information about the hot topic of the day, new competitions, new articles and other exciting happenings on women24. Click here if you would like to subscribe and become part of the hippest women's website on the web.