Sarah Everard: Serious flaw in plan to help women

Campaigners are furious with steps taken this week to protect women, claiming a controversial nightclub plan could do more harm than good.

Campaigners have hit out at plans announced by the UK government to better protect women from violence.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a series of “immediate steps” to follow Sarah Everard’s death including improving lighting and CCTV and installing plainclothes police officers at nightclubs and bars in program dubbed Project Vigilant.

“We’ve trained thousands of venue and bar staff to understand and respond to sexual harassment and not a single one has ever said ‘You know what would really help us feel safer? Undercover police in our workplace,’” tweeted Good Night Out Campaign, which works to combat sexual violence and make nightlife safer.

Labour MP Stella Creasy said that while improving lighting was welcome, the measures would not help women like Ms Everard, who was walking on a well-lit street and whose abduction was captured on a bus CCTV.

Sarah Everard was abducted and murdered while walking home in south London earlier this month. Picture: Metropolitan Police / AFP

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“Sarah Everard was not on a night out, so the idea that putting plainclothes police officers in nightclubs is going to solve this problem doesn’t recognise that women get abused, assaulted, intimidated in all sorts of places,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today program on Tuesday.

“Ask women who’ve gone for a run recently in broad daylight in their parks about their experiences and you’ll realise some of the scale of the challenge. And what strikes me is that 80% of women report being sexually harassed in public spaces but, in those surveys, 90% of them say they never report it because they don’t believe anything will change.”

She said misogyny should be made a hate crime “so that existing crimes like sexual harassment, abuse and intimidation can be reported and recorded as such, so we can build up patterns of where the problems are to help the police with the way in which they investigate these issues”.

ampaigners have raised concerns that at the same time, MPs on Monday voted in favour of the controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, bringing it closer to becoming law.

Floral tributes and messages are placed in tribute to the 33-year-old marketing executive at Clapham Common, near to where she was abducted. Picture: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

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The bill promises to curb protests that could “result in serious disruption to the activities of an organisation” or have a “relevant impact on persons in the vicinity” — the very definition of a peaceful demonstration, as human rights activist Shami Chakrabarti wrote in the Guardian.

The move comes after police clashed with women at the vigil for Ms Everard on Clapham Common on Saturday, with images showing officers grabbing attendees and pinning them to the ground.

Women said police trampled flowers and candles left in tribute, and one woman says officers dismissed her when she reported that she was flashed as she left the area.

“The awful events of the past week have lifted the veil on the epidemic of violence against women and girls. This must also be a watershed moment to change how we as a society treat women and girls and how we prevent and ends sexual violence and harassment,” said Opposition Leader Keir Starmer in Parliament on Tuesday.

The Labour leader said “this must be a turning point” in how violence against women is tackled.

Protesters march against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill and the actions of the police at Saturday night's vigil on Monday outside the UK Parliament. Picture: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Mr Johnson said he agreed, and that Ms Everard’s death had triggered a “wholly justified” reaction and he recognised that “women do not feel they are being heard”.

“We need a cultural and social change in attitudes to redress the balance,” said Mr Johnson, adding that the government was trying to invest in the prosecution service and speed up a tightening of the law on domestic violence.

The discussion over increasing women’s safety and doing more to end violence against women has been mirrored in Australia, when more than 100,000 marched on Monday to call for action after a wave of sexual assault and harassment allegations sparked by Brittany Higgins.

‘TRAUMATISED’

Meanwhile, the mother of a woman who was abducted, raped and murdered in Scotland has written an open letter after as anger continues over Ms Everard.

Beatrice Jones said she was “very distressed” by Ms Everard’s death, which was “similar in many respects” to the ordeal of her daughter Moira, who was grabbed as she walked home on the streets of Glasgow in 2008.

Ms Jones said her concern was for Ms Everard’s loved ones. “They are totally devastated and bewildered and vulnerable,” she said. “They cannot fully take in what has happened and the permanence of what has occurred.”

She said the family had experienced “nightmare on top of nightmare” and she was worried the situation had “escalated into a media frenzy more representative of individual anger than shared grief.”

We have received many requests from the media for comments in the aftermath of Sarah Everard’s terrible kidnap and murder and rather than engage directly with the media, Bea decided to write a short letter. pic.twitter.com/b00ryETeBS

— The Moira Fund (@themoirafund) March 16, 2021

Moira, a 40-year-old sales executive, was forced into the city’s Queen’s Park where she was raped and beaten to death. Marek Harcar was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the crime in 2009.

Ms Jones said she understood the outpouring of grief and anger from women, but added: “I am very concerned that events have developed to such an extent that those who matter most, Sarah and her family, are being totally swamped and further traumatised by what is going on around them, adding trauma to trauma.

“How can they cope at all - there is only so much that a head can absorb and a heart can cope with and they have so much more to find out in the weeks and months ahead as dreadful details of Sarah’s death are revealed to them.”

Jones, who set up The Moira Fund to help bereaved families, highlighted the plight of those left behind, saying Ms Everard’s mother might be asking questions like, “What did she have to go through?”, “Why was it Sarah not me?” and “Did she know how very much we loved her?”

A protester at New Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service, on Sunday, as demonstration continued. Picture: Daniel Leal-Olivas / AFP