This City Journal piece is one of the most powerful I have recently read from the good doctor, a review of the book Out of the Darkness, the first-hand account by a woman named Tina Nash of her boyfriend’s gouging out of her eyes, a case Dalrymple calls “a crime that eclipsed all others in Britain that year (2011) in sheer malignity.”

He issues all the usual caveats:

It is impossible not to sympathize with someone who suffered as Nash did…Her conduct might have been foolish and irresponsible, but nothing she did could possibly have deserved a minimal fraction of so awful a consequence. As for the perpetrator, no punishment could have been too condign to be just; and the severity of his punishment was limited only by our need to remain civilized ourselves.

There follows an explication of her boyfriend’s repeatedly vicious behavior, always followed by Nash’s almost incomprehensibly stupid response: returning to this “great big teddy bear” with “puppy-dog eyes.”

Suffer as a child growing up fatherless and unhappy? Have children out of wedlock yourself.

A man just spent four years in prison for violence? Go out with him.

He tries to rape you on your first date? Go out with him again.

He’s covered in tattoos depicting violence? She “chuckled at the thought that Shane fancied himself as a bit of an outlaw.”

He assaults you? Stay with him. (And repeat this cycle four or five more times.)

He eventually tries to gouge out your eyes (unsuccessfully)? Perjure yourself in court by saying it was you who assaulted him.

Etc.

Dalrymple has written before of this behavior on the part of some underclass women, but never with such power and precision. This is a must-read.