Cases Like Sarah Everard's Are Not 'Incredibly Rare' and The Police Must Admit It - UK News - The Guardian

2023/4/9 16:08 Cases like Sarah Everard's are not 'incredibly rare' and the police must admit
; and the police must admit it | UK news | The Guardian
End femicide
Analysis
Cases like Sarah Everard's are not 'incredibly rare' and

the police must admit it
Clarrie O’Callaghan and Karen Ingala Smith
Cressida Dick’s statement minimised the risk women face from men –
and fits with years of police and government failure to treat the issue
seriously
Sun 14 Mar 2021 08.50 GMT
Events this week have been a touch paper igniting women’s anger about men’s
violence against women and girls and our frustration at the state’s failure to take this
issue seriously.
Stranger killing accounts for 8%, or one in 12, of all killings of women by men.
Between 2009 and 2018, 119 women were killed by men who were not known to
them. Yes, a woman is more likely to be killed by someone she knows – every three
days in the UK by a man and every four days by a partner or former partner – but
following the killing of Sarah Everard, we are being fed a narrative by Metropolitan
Police chief Cressida Dick that it is “incredibly rare for a woman to be abducted from
our streets”.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/mar/14/cases-like-everards-not-incredibly-rare-police-must-admit-it 1/9
2023/4/9 16:08 Cases like Sarah Everard's are not 'incredibly rare' and the police must admit it | UK news | The Guardian
By that simple statement the Met minimised the risk women face from men, and
intentionally diminished femicide. ‘“Incredibly rare” should mean much more than
very unusual. “Abducted from our streets” is a curious deflection. Strangers do
abduct women, but they also kill women on the street, or follow them, or enter their
homes. And friends, acquaintances, partners and colleagues also abduct women
they know and kill them. It is also far more common to be abducted from the street
and raped, attacked or sexually assaulted with impunity.
A living victim of It is estimated that approximately 85,000 women a year

rape or physical are raped: 90% of women know the man who raped
assault has little them, so that means 8,500 women a year, 23 a day, are
chance of securing raped by a man they don’t know. This isn’t rare either,
an investigation let then. Only one in 25 reported rapes ends up in court. A
alone a conviction tiny minority end up with a rapist behind bars. Most, but
not all, of the men who kill women are given lengthy jail
sentences, the majority for murder and around 20% for
manslaughter. Others kill themselves at the time they kill or just after.
With a dead body, the weight of the criminal justice system gears up. A living victim
of rape or physical assault with first-hand evidence of the attack has little chance of
securing an investigation let alone a conviction: only in death does a woman gain a
criminal justice advantage.
In 2018, two women raped by John Worboys successfully sued the Met over its
failure to investigate previous rape allegations against the taxi driver. The women
argued that their human rights had not been protected because if Worboys had been
dealt with appropriately – if earlier rape allegations had been taken seriously – he
would not have been at liberty to rape them at a later date. It is estimated that
Worboys raped more than 100 women.
We now hear that the Met is to be investigated by the Independent Office for Police
Conduct over its handling of issues relating to the disappearance of Everard,
including alleged failures in responses to a report of a man exposing himself at a
fast-food restaurant in south London three days before Everard’s disappearance.
Policing problems are not restricted to the Met. A super complaint led by the Centre
for Women’s Justice, filed in March 2020, documents 666 reports over three years of
domestic abuse incidents and offences perpetrated by police officers, community
support officers and other staff from 30 of England and Wales’s 43 police forces. How
can women trust the police and a criminal justice system when our complaints of
men’s violence are so inadequately responded to and when the police themselves
are implicated in that abuse?
Last week, the Observer launched its End Femicide campaign, to push for change. It
uses data from our Femicide Census, started eight years ago because our
government was not properly counting the extent of men’s fatal violence towards
women. It still doesn’t. Every year we ask each police force in the UK for their data
on women who are killed. The Met is the only UK police force that has never
responded to our freedom of information requests. After many years (and,
eventually, Dick’s intervention) they pushed back with their own data sharing
agreement – though we have yet to agree on it. Our London data is based on the
Counting Dead Women project and media searches.
The problem of the state response goes much deeper than incomplete data,
however. In reports on government strategy on violence against women and girls for
2010-2015 and 2016-2020, homicide was barely addressed and femicide was not
named. In 2010 there was one mention of supporting the introduction of Domestic
Homicide Reviews. In 2016 the killing of women and girls is confined to 2 lines,
again only focusing on domestic homicide, ignoring the 35% of women, like Sarah,
killed by men outside of the family. Has this contributed to the fact there was no
change to the rates of femicide in the UK over the past 10 years? In the meantime,
the state is failing women and minimising violence by men against women, be it at
the extreme end or the countless microaggressions that women live with and never
report. In ways that have become second nature to us, women modify their
behaviour and choices because of the fear and threat of men’s violence. Not all men
are violent but all men benefit from sex inequality and all women’s lives are either
directly or indirectly restricted or altered by the actions of men.
Until men stop attacking and killing women, the least we should expect from the
police and our government is that they don’t mask the true nature of the problem.
The State ignoring femicide should make us all angry for every woman whose life
has been ended or diminished by men’s violence and its spectre. We know about
Sarah because the media, and social media, picked up on her disappearance, why
don’t the killings of all women warrant this attention? The killing of around 50
women we included in the Femicide Census 10-year report, barely warranted a
mention, even in their local press. There is a pattern in who is unremarked and who
gets national, significant media and state attention. Inequalities of class, race, age,
lifestyle and disadvantage even make a difference in death. There should be no
hierarchy of dead women.
This article was amended on 16 March 2021. An earlier version suggested that the
super complaint by the Centre for Women’s Justice had been filed in early March
2021, when in fact it was submitted the previous March.
Article count on
You've read 25 articles in the last year
... as 2023 gathers pace, we have a small favour to ask. A new year means new
opportunities, and we're hoping this year gives rise to some much-needed stability
and progress. Whatever happens, the Guardian will be there, providing clarity and
fearless, independent reporting from around the world, 24/7.
Times are tough, and we know not everyone is in a position to pay for news. But as
we’re reader-funded, we rely on the ongoing generosity of those who can afford it.
This vital support means millions can continue to read reliable reporting on the
events shaping our world. Will you invest in the Guardian this year?
Unlike many others, we have no billionaire owner, meaning we can fearlessly

chase the truth and report it with integrity. 2023 will be no different; we will work
with trademark determination and passion to bring you journalism that’s always
free from commercial or political interference. No one edits our editor or diverts
our attention from what’s most important.
With your support, we’ll continue to keep Guardian journalism open and free for
everyone to read. When access to information is made equal, greater numbers of
people can understand global events and their impact on people and
communities. Together, we can demand better from the powerful and fight for
democracy.
Whether you give a little or a lot, your funding will power our reporting for the
years to come. If you can, please support us on a monthly basis. It takes less than
a minute to set up, and you can rest assured that you’re making a big impact
every single month in support of open, independent journalism. Thank you.
Single Monthly Annual
£5 per month £10 per month
Continue Remind me in May
Most viewed

Cases Like Sarah Everard's Are Not 'Incredibly Rare' and The Police Must Admit It - UK News - The Guardian

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Cases Like Sarah Everard's Are Not 'Incredibly Rare' and The Police Must Admit It - UK News - The Guardian

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

2023/4/9 16:08 Cases like Sarah Everard's are not 'incredibly rare' and the police must admit

; and the police must admit it | UK news | The Guardian

Cases like Sarah Everard's are not 'incredibly rare' and

Sun 14 Mar 2021 08.50 GMT

A living victim of It is estimated that approximately 85,000 women a year

You've read 25 articles in the last year

Unlike many others, we have no billionaire owner, meaning we can fearlessly

Single Monthly Annual

£5 per month £10 per month

Continue Remind me in May

You might also like