Women’s voices must be heard in wake of the Sarah Everard case

Men, as well as women, will have been horrified by the events surrounding the murder of Sarah Everard, the details of which were revealed this week in the High Court as her killer was sentenced.

But it is women who continue to feel unsafe in the wake of this crime – and the more recent murder of young teacher Sabina Nessa near Greenwich – and who have a vested interest in seeking greater protection against male violence.

As it happens, it will be a woman (Priti Patel) who decides the fate of the female police boss (Cressida Dick) who was ultimately responsible for failings in her force that let Everard’s slayer slip through the net. And it is another woman, MP Harriet Harman, who has led calls for Dick to resign.

Women’s voices are going to be heard, whether they hold powerful positions or not, and they must be listened to.

This may sound like a cry from a distant age when early feminists had to burn their bras and organise around “reclaim the night” marches to make their case. But women are being silenced again, although we represent more than half the population and are mostly not afraid to speak out. 

Even using the word “women”, let alone “feminist”, can land us in trouble with those who would prefer to define us by our body parts or bodily functions. 

The incendiary debate over transgender rights may appear to have little to do with a lone wolf monster who preys on women, but it chips away at female autonomy. 

Women are castigated if they demand the right to single-sex spaces (including in prisons, rape crisis centres and women’s refuges).

During last week’s Labour Party conference, a women’s meeting had to be staged in a secret venue amid tight security. Such women, daring to hold grievances, are “dinosaurs” who “hoard rights,” said none other than the shadow justice secretary, David Lammy.

Even the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, is reluctant to describe women as adult human females (the dictionary definition) lest he fall foul of fashionable mores, which decree that a woman is a lesser form of victim and should shut up.

But the fact remains that it is the female sex which is most likely to be killed (one every three days in the UK, according to Femicide Census), by the male sex. While preventing all crimes against us is impossible, much can be done to make horrors such as Everard’s death less likely. 

One of the most tragic aspects of the case is that it possibly could have been avoided had the culture inside the police force been different. Although the Metropolitan Police, his final employer, has expressed contrition, they missed several opportunities to stop Wayne Couzens.

Three days before he killed Everard, he was accused of two incidents of indecent exposure at a McDonald’s, allegations the Met refused to take seriously. He was accused of a similar crime while working for the Civil and Nuclear Constabulary in 2015.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct has served 12 notices for allegations of officer misconduct, suggesting other episodes were covered up. Behaviour that would have raised alarm bells, at the very least, in most organisations seems to have been considered acceptable for a policeman.

In a further blow to police trust, five serving officers, three in the Met, were sharing misogynistic, racist and homophobic material on a WhatsApp group with Couzens before his arrest, The Times reported yesterday. They are now under criminal investigation.

We also now know that Couzens was nicknamed “the rapist” by former colleagues, reportedly for giving women the creeps. In what other workplace is such banter tolerated? 

Sarah Everard might be alive today if suspicions about his character had been raised through the proper channels. But it seems these channels do not exist. Sue Fish, the former chief constable of Nottinghamshire Police Force, told the BBC on Thursday that there is no framework in the police to address a “toxic culture of sexism”.

In schools, teachers have a legal duty to report low-level concerns; a policeman being called a rapist is surely a concern that needed actioning?

Fish, who claims she was sexually assaulted by fellow officers herself when she was younger, said there is a “compliant silence” about “institutional misogyny” in policing and that the costs to whistleblowers were “significant”. 

Another senior policewoman, Former Scotland Yard chief inspector Parm Sandhu, said male officers close rank against female colleagues who complain about their behaviour.

Couzens may be in an evil league of his own. Still, it would be wrong to dismiss the case as a completely isolated occurrence, said Zoe Billingham, a senior inspector with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary.

She said she would have reservations about approaching a lone male policeman at night following Couzens’ “arrest” of Everard: “I think this is a watershed moment for policing,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour. 

“I think we cannot abide by the narrative that this was a one-off, that he was a bad’un, and I think every force now in the country must look to re-establish trust and legitimacy.”

Attitudes won’t be transformed overnight, but a significant review, of the scope of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry into racism, would be a start, as a legacy for Everard and all the other women who die at the hands of men.