“Everyone in policing feels betrayed,” said Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick last week, after the police officer Wayne Couzens had pleaded guilty to the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard in March this year.
“I’m sure they do,” said Suzanne Moore in The Daily Telegraph, but the police also owe us some explanations. Why, in the case of Couzens, a member of the Met’s elite Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Squad, did they ignore so many “red flags”? It seems he had been reported for indecent exposure twice in a McDonald’s car park, just three days before the murder. If anyone had bothered to check his number plate, they would have seen it was a police car. He also faced an indecent exposure allegation six years earlier.
Yet he was allowed to stay in his job, with appalling consequences: it seems Couzens may have used his police warrant card to persuade Everard into his car as she walked home. Men who commit so-called “minor sexual offences” like flashing or stalking often escalate their behaviour to rape, sexual assault and murder. Yet these offences are trivialised by our criminal justice system.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
It’s a relief that Couzens pleaded guilty, sparing Everard’s family a long trial, said Rachel Cunliffe in the New Statesman. But it doesn’t “tidy away the reality of sexual violence” that her murder “forced us to confront”. So often women are told bad things happen because they did something wrong, such as wearing a short skirt or being too drunk. That narrative helps excuse “abusive men”, but it also gives women the comforting “illusion” that they can avoid danger. But Everard did “everything right”, and still ended up dead in a wood in Kent. Couzens’s job signalled “he was someone to be trusted”. That’s why this case struck such a nerve: it shattered women’s last “semblance of security”.
Such crimes are often dismissed as “isolated” cases, said Lucy Bannerman in The Times. Yet since Everard went missing, more than 50 women have been murdered in the UK, with a man as the main suspect. Everard’s case was so appalling that everyone sat up. “She hadn’t made the error of being murdered indoors. Or of knowing her killer. Or trying to break off a relationship with a violent man.” But we also ought to accept the “subtle sexism” that condemns the other dead women to obscurity. The public outrage following Everard’s murder has “forced a national conversation about femicide”. It’s a tragedy that it had to happen in these circumstances. But “it’s a start”.
-
Film reviews: ‘Send Help’ and ‘Private Life’Feature An office doormat is stranded alone with her awful boss and a frazzled therapist turns amateur murder investigator
-
Movies to watch in Februarythe week recommends Time travelers, multiverse hoppers and an Iraqi parable highlight this month’s offerings during the depths of winter
-
ICE’s facial scanning is the tip of the surveillance icebergIN THE SPOTLIGHT Federal troops are increasingly turning to high-tech tracking tools that push the boundaries of personal privacy
-
Death in Minneapolis: a shooting dividing the USIn the Spotlight Federal response to Renee Good’s shooting suggest priority is ‘vilifying Trump’s perceived enemies rather than informing the public’
-
How the Bondi massacre unfoldedIn Depth Deadly terrorist attack during Hanukkah celebration in Sydney prompts review of Australia’s gun control laws and reckoning over global rise in antisemitism
-
Diddy: An abuser who escaped justice?Feature The jury cleared Sean Combs of major charges but found him guilty of lesser offenses
-
Crime: Why murder rates are plummetingFeature Despite public fears, murder rates have dropped nationwide for the third year in a row
-
The Sycamore Gap: justice but no answersIn The Spotlight 'Damning' evidence convicted Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers, but why they felled the historic tree remains a mystery
-
What are grooming gangs? The UK scandal, explainedThe Explainer National inquiry ‘stalled’ as senior jurists decline to lead it, while panel members disagree over scope of investigations
-
NCHIs: the controversy over non-crime hate incidentsThe Explainer Is the policing of non-crime hate incidents an Orwellian outrage or an essential tool of modern law enforcement?
-
The missed opportunities to save Sara SharifTalking Point After each horrific child abuse case, we hear that lessons will be learnt. What is still missing?
