The prevalence of violence against women and girls throughout society can no longer be ignored, argues Terina Hine

Last week, Emma Patterson, along with her seven-year-old daughter Lettie, became yet another statistic. The police called Emma’s murder an isolated incident. But tragically the murder of a woman by their male partner is anything but isolated.

The number of people killed by an intimate family member has more than doubled in the last year (2021-22). According to the ONS, 198 women were murdered in England and Wales between 2021 and 2022, many by their husband, partner, or relative. While, in the same period, 1.7 million women aged 16 to 74 experienced domestic abuse. These are brutal statistics.

Domestic abuse leads on average to two women being murdered every week in England and Wales. It is also a major contributor to suicide, with almost a quarter of domestic deaths being suicides by victims of abuse.

The police receive over 100 calls relating to domestic abuse every hour, approximately one call every thirty seconds. This is just the tip of an iceberg. According to Women’s Aid, the Crime Survey of England and Wales showed only 18% of women who were abused by their partner reported the abuse to the police in the year ending March 2018.

And even when women do report abuse, the response by police is far from encouraging. The charity Victim Support claims that over half of the women who reported domestic abuse had to submit multiple complaints against their abuser before any action was taken; in 10-12% of cases no action was ever taken. The research also shows that fewer women of colour have their cases taken forward than white women. Black women are hit by both misogyny and racism.

Institutional sexual violence

So when on Monday, Wayne Couzens (the rapist murderer of Sarah Everard) pleaded guilty to exposing himself three times, it should not have been a surprise to anyone that no action had been taken, regardless that the crimes were reported by witnesses, that the police had been given the registration number of Couzen’s car, registered to his home address, as well as details of his bank card. A simple computer search – basic desk-based policing – would have revealed that he was a cop armed with a gun. A cop who had been given the nickname ‘the rapist’ by his colleagues.

Couzens’ fellow armed and now ex-Met officer, David Carrick, was jailed for dozens of sexual offences last week. Their convictions have helped lift the lid on the sewer that is the Met police. The Met and other forces are riddled with a combination of sexual offenders and officers willing to turn a blind eye to both the abusers in their ranks and the wider community.

The Sexual Abuse & Sexual Violence Awareness Week occurs each year in the first full week of February. This year, it was the week Emily and Lettie Patterson were murdered, the week yet another Met officer, PC Sam Grigg, was found guilty of having attacked and imprisoned his girlfriend, the week Couzens admitted to his previous crimes, the police to their lack of response, and the week Carrick was sentenced. Made aware we certainly were.

It was also the week Channel 4’s new drama Consent was broadcast. The drama portrays teenage sexual abuse and rape, revealing the toxic rape culture prevalent in many schools. It shows a boy who filmed himself having sex with a drunken classmate without her consent who is unable or unwilling to see what he has done wrong. The drama is fiction, but, according to its producers, based very much on fact. Research from the anonymous Everyone’s Invited chat forum, where incidents experienced in schools and university are shared by victims, along with numerous news stories, fed into the programme.

Sexual abuse is prevalent in society, from parliament to the police to our schools. At times, and far too frequently, this abuse has fatal results. It is way past time society stopped protecting the perpetrators of sexual violence and stopped normalising so called ‘low-level’ abuse.

How often must women be told no further action is possible, that cases were ‘sadly missed’ or an incident ‘isolated’? These cases are not isolated. What we have is a pandemic of abuse and a state that perpetuates it.