Who killed Leigh Leigh? Is a non-fiction text written by criminologist Kerry Carrington. The text explore many unanswered question regarding the rape and murder of 14 year old Leigh Leigh, that occurred on the third of November 1989, at a beach party in the small Industrial suburb of Stockton in Newcastle. At the beginning of the text Carrington states her purpose for which she wrote the book as that her ‘mission was to underscored by a passion that a system which had failed not only her (Robyn Leigh) daughter, but so many others, be exposed and brought to account’ pg xiii, by do this, she does not only disputed the legal system, but also raises other issues of gender, mateship, social standards, underage drinking, parental responsibilities, and even questioned the societies attitudes toward rape. Carrington positioned us to view these issues and feel morally out raged, shocked, and appalled through the functions of non-fiction that include persuasive techniques, use of language, the structure of the text and sel

So, who killed Leigh Leigh? Who raped her? Carrington emphasis that nobody in town would reveal that. The text shows Australian 'mateship' at its very worse, men 'loyally' protecting their fellow men, even if they committed a horrific act of evil. Although 18-year-old Matthew Webster confessed to killing Leigh many questions remain unanswered. Was he protecting others because you don't dob in your mates? Who was responsible for raping Leigh prior to the murder? This are the questions Carrington positions us to ask ourselves, as she again and again keeps coming back to the issue ‘of what can happen when shame and mateship mix with a small-town mentality.’ By expressing this issue of mateship she comes back to how the societies influence on young teens perhaps resulted in the murder of Leigh, ‘The boys at this party were acting out their place in a gender order where the degradation of girls was in some sense natural to them. When expressing her views she uses emotional language and strong argument to get the reader to respond to what she implying. She emphasis the fact that people thought that Leigh ‘asked for it’ and that Matt Webster ‘was just being rough or just a boy or acting-out as a bloke with his mates and that was it.’ pg 133 By emphasing this you are positioned to ask yourself how could someone ask to be raped and how could they excuses a murderer.

This Text is a carefully and thoughtfully researched study, not merely of a horrific crime, but of the culture and sub-cultures that lay behind it. Carrington writes of Stockton as being working class and economical and socially unstable she describes it from the beginning as ‘a small-town of rumour and innuendo’ pg xvi, which immediately position us to distrust the evidence given by the people in the town through out the book. The first chapter of part one titled ‘The Community’ portrays Newcastle as a hardcore, patriarchal society in which women are only there for men, this personally I found very disturbing as even when I read on there was nothing to suggest to me that the women here wanted to change this, and the formal language of the text, which described ‘home-making being women’s primary

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