Voices: The police have learned nothing from Sarah Everard’s murder – they’re still letting women down

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1. Voices

Women still feel unsafe on British streets, an inquiry has found – and is it any wonder when nobody takes us seriously, asks Victoria Richards

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I still remember where I was when I heard the awful news about the rape and murder of Sarah Everard. Women up and down the country were left mourning and frightened; we exchanged horrified WhatsApps, checked on each other every time we went out and came home, especially at night.

We shared stories familiar to every one of us, swapped tips about how we carry our keys threaded through our fingers like weapons; about getting our phones out early to pre-dial 999; how we felt unable to go running after dark. We nodded with recognition when we talked of that instinctive need to “de-escalate” when we are approached by a man in a bar, of being calm and polite – even sweet – in the face of unwanted attention from a stranger. Why? Because we know, instinctively, that to respond in any other way could put us in danger.

Then, there are those of us for whom danger comes right to our doorstep. The friends who have been date-raped, drugged; those of us who have checked boyfriends under Clare’s Law and called the police to report stalking and harassment. My teenage cousin’s drink was spiked just this month – she’s in her first term at university. I spent a period of time having to ask a friend to drop me home and wait with the engine running while I ran around the house turning every light on, checking behind doors and even inside the wardrobes, because of fear about an ex.

Those of us who have experienced violence or sexual attacks at the hands of men – often, both at once – recognise these behaviours only too well. We’re not fearful of rejection when we go on a first date with a stranger, we’re fearful for our lives.

Yet now, four years after the death of Sarah Everard at the hands of serving police officer Wayne Couzens – and three years after Zara Aleena was killed by Jordan McSweeney, following numerous failures by the police and prison and probation services – we hear that when it comes to women’s safety, well: the police simply don’t care.

We have proof that they don’t. According to the latest report from the Angiolini Inquiry, which was set up in the wake of Sarah’s murder, there is no record of how many women were raped by strangers in England and Wales last year. Instead, the report concluded, there is a “critical failure” to answer basic questions about sex crimes against women. And more than a quarter of police forces in England and Wales have not implemented basic policies for investigating sexual offences in the last four years since Sarah was killed.

What does this show us? It highlights – again – that urgent action is needed to prevent further violent, sexual attacks against women and girls, including targeting predatory men, sure. So, why haven’t the men in charge of the Met (here’s looking at you, Mark Rowley) and other forces learned anything since the first time a woman was raped and killed by one of their own?

We already know the answer – but now we have the stats to prove it. For while Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) has been described as a "national threat" (in 2023 the government outlined the need for police forces to coordinate their response and resources to tackle such crimes in line with other national threats), Lady Elish Angiolini KC, who is chairing the inquiry, says there is a glaring disparity between how forces dealt with violence against women and other high-priority crimes, where "funding and preventative activity is the norm".

So, there we have it. The police forces in this country simply do not care about women. How could they? Violence against us is provably not being treated as a “national priority” – because it just keeps happening, again and again. Women don’t even bother reporting the sexual violence and rape they experience, half the time, because we know nothing will likely be done about it. Prosecution rates were branded in the 2024 Labour Party manifesto as “shamefully low”. The Angiolini report found this to be true, too – there are gaps in national data, including how many women report being the victim of rape and other sexually motivated crimes in public spaces.

All this, yet according to the NPCC, VAWG (violence against women and girls) makes up just under 20 per cent of all recorded crime in England and Wales. We also know that around 12.8 per cent of women experienced domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking – approximately one in eight of us – in the year running up to March 2025. As Lady Elish says: "Until this disparity is addressed, violence against women and girls cannot be credibly called a 'national priority'." And she warned that without these figures being gathered and recorded consistently across all forces, patterns of offending cannot be spotted.

To my mind, the trouble is twofold: one, our police force doesn’t care enough about women; but two, the force doesn't just have an institutional problem, it has a man problem.

For while misogyny within the force itself is widespread and insidious – we know that two Met officers took photos of the bodies of murdered sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman and shared the images on WhatsApp, before being jailed for it; and that two other former officers were imprisoned for sharing “grossly racist, sexist and misogynistic” WhatsApp messages with Couzens in 2019 (and in the most recent example of this kind, a sergeant at Charing Cross police station was caught on camera making misogynistic comments about a woman arrested while wearing fancy dress) – it just keeps on happening (and nothing gets done) because people aren’t taking it seriously.

Stop telling us you “care”, stop saying sorry and promising to sort it out – and do something. Keep records. Write it down. Listen. Because by the time you finish reading this, another woman will have been raped or even killed. And another. And another.

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