Why ignoring indecent exposure is deadly

I must have been conditioned by the 70’s a bloke did this to me and my mates on the way home from the youth club, we all fell about laughing. But there again we were in a group.

Also in the seventies i worked in a shop and allegedly a bloke put his penis on the counter top at the till and the cashier slapped it with a fly swatter (This was in canada, where fly swatters were normal things to have)

dont know what i think about what i have just said, help!!!!

Happened to me in my 20s, while waiting at a bus stop in the dark. The police could not have been less interested and it was obvious that they were going to make no effort to find him, even though it was a city centre so, even back in the day, there would have been CCTV in the area.

Paul Britton*, the forensic psychiatrist, wrote in his book Jigsaw Man that he struggled to get cops to accept that flashers and knickers pinchers should be taken much more seriously.

*He was discredited after the Colin Stagg case but according to him the police went beyond his recommendations at the time.

Yes, Libby's was the case that brought home to me how seriously the police need to take exhibitionism offences. In her case, the murderer had previously broken into women's houses, stealing their sex toys etc. Exhibitionism and housebreaking both involve transgressing social norms and boundaries, which can then lead to more serious crimes. There was a Canadian study which found that breaking and entering is the most common first offence for sex offenders. https://theconversation.com/how-police-underestimate-break-ins-as-gateway-crimes-for-sex-predators-95102

It would be fascinating to find out how many women vs men have experienced this. And how old they were at first

Mild sexual assault, twice. At 11 a 15 year old shoved my hand down his pants and tried to make me rub his dick.

At 16 I and a friend went backpacking. One night we slept in a barn next to a pub with the landlady's permission. A pub regular joined us later and asked if he could sleep between us since it was raining outside and it was a long ride home. We assented but then both felt his hands on our buttocks...

We told him to stop, then we all fell asleep! No further outrages were perpetrated on us, as far as we know.

Every woman I know has a story to tell.

And at my all-girls' school too.

To be honest, at the time we mostly just flocked to the railings and cackled unkindly at him until one of the staff bustled over and gave him a piece of her mind. But we were kids. The adults should have been taking it more seriously.

Thanks. It was a while ago now, and I had hoped things had improved since then. I think it depends on your local force, but I get the impression that now they are unlikely to laugh, but say they are overstretched and it’s not a priority. That’s what happened to the other victims of the man that hurt Libby. The police and CPS suddenly found the resource to investigate and charge him with public indecency and voyeurism once they were investigating Libby’s disappearance, even though they had his DNA evidence for several years. Just like Couzens, he’d been escalating publicly for a while.

So in the Humberside police area at least, I think if you made a complaint and invoked what happened in this case, you’d get taken seriously because the failings of the police are still fresh in the institutional memory. Libby’s mum, Lisa, campaigns for women to be listened to and for non-contact sexual offences to be taken more seriously. Another strong woman trying to make good come out of bad.

Thank you for remembering Libby Squire @MyLadyDisdainlsYetLiving
And I'm sorry to hear you had such a shitty experience and weren't taken seriously by that police officer

i was with a couple of friends, it was dark but only because it was November and it was early evening, still rush hour. We were walking down a main road and passed the cemetery, where we were followed by a man masturbating and talking at us. Our route happed to take us past a police station so we smartly turned and walked up the steps (not a word was said by any of us!). The policeman on reception basically laughed at us and asked what we expected walking past the cemetery after dark.

First time I was flashed I was in my early teens in the UK.

Followed by regular experiences from then on. Inter-railing was the worst - was flashed in every country except Belgium. Multiple times in many countries. Not saying Belgium was particularly amazing, probably would have happened sooner or later if we'd stayed there longer - it was a one night stop I think!

Interestingly the frequency has reduced since becoming a Mum. Not happened so much whilst having small children with me. Do others find this too? Possibly just because of the times of day I'm out though? Or maybe because I'm crusty and old and have a finely tuned Paddington hard stare to quell small child tantrums.

We had a man walking naked here in the New Forest on popular walking and riding areas. He was dubbed “the naked rambler” by locals many of whom thought him a harmless eccentric.
I spoke to a local stable owner (male) who had seen him and thought it very funny and said it didn’t bother him so why would he report it to the police.
The fact that this frequently is a “starter crime” for rapists needs to be publicised.

I was flashed at 9:15 in the morning after the school run. I took a photo of him getting back in his car, clearly showing him and his license plate. Reported to the police, gave a statement and said I was happy to go to court. A couple of days later I have a phone call saying they have spoken to him and he denies it so they won’t be taking it further.

Of course he’s going to deny it! He’s hardly going to go ‘Yes I did get my dick out, please arrest me’

It would be fascinating to find out how many women vs men have experienced this. And how old they were at first.

I agree, every woman I know. Helped massively by the fact there was a regular flasher both at my uni (on a public path between halls and academic buildings) and at my all girls school (on another public footpath! This time beside a playing field). It never occurred to me to contact the police, bathed as I was in 90s / 00s porn culture misogyny.

Of course the vast majority of flashers aren't (yet) identifying as transwomen. But there's no doubt that trans ideology has infiltrated the thinking of the CPS, police, civil service, media, parliament etc to a degree vastly out of proportion to the number of people who believe in it, let alone who have a gender ID.

As a society we still struggle to think the worst of men and we resist making men look bad. Trans ideology didn't invent the victim blaming media, disinterested corrupt misogynist police and woefully low reporting and prosecution of sex offences. But it does capitalise on all aspects of sex inequality, including this. And trans ideology asserts an extra pressure to avoid making a particular category of male look bad.

When police release descriptions of a violent sex offending "woman " who is wanted, it is abundantly clear that they prioritise not making transwomen look bad over preventing more attacks.

Joan Smith wrote about the link between domestic violence and terrorism. Undeniably essential research. But Sadiq Khan sacked her from his VAWG taskforce because she doesn't pretend that humans can change sex; again the feelings of trans people prioritised over the safety of pretty much everyone.

Does anyone know a single woman that's never been flashed? I don't. We really do need to shift the overton window back from 'you just have to deal with this, women and girls' and 'it doesn't really matter'.

The Police could stop investigating women having their own opinions about material reality and start investigating flashers like Couzens for a start.

The murder of Libby Squire is a textbook case of the escalation of this kind of behaviour. It wasn’t done by a serving police officer, and it was in the provinces not London so it only got to national news briefly. But Libby is certainly remembered by the people of Hull.

i won’t say his name but if you google you’ll see that he was known for public indecency, stealing women’s underwear and personal items.

Well said. It's well documented in psychiatric literature that indecent exposure usually escalates to assault. It should be taken very, very seriously. I really hate that the flasher in the Mac has become a kind of comedy trope- it's not funny. Its a huge red flag for sexual assault and rape.

Yes. Hard to report given that it's pushed as 'a laugh' by Channel 4.

I'm sure Gray had no idea that flashing his penis may well distress some of the many women who have experience of sexual violence.

Remember that creep Jordan Gray? Indecently exposed himself on Channel 4 but the issue was hand waved away?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4757847-indecent-exposure-and-jordan-gray-on-radio-4

I reported one once. He lived very near me, was targetting me (as well as others) & I felt quite unsafe each night I returned home. He was brazen about it and, frankly, appeared deeply disturbed.

The policeman I reported him to laughed.

Your average copper on the beat in the 50s could have told you a lot of serious sex offenders started out flashing and escalated. And that where you found one sexual paraphilia you'd very likely find others, and many sex offenders had a number of them. <They wouldn't have dressed it up so nicely language wise> .

It's all a part of the current demand that everyone pretend a faux naivety and agrees not to look or talk about the bleeding obvious, and to maintain an illusion that a male doing something totally inappropriate doesn't mean it that way/has a nice innocent agenda/ is to do with you politically perceiving it in a naughty way/ yada yada .

And it would be interesting to see if there are any real changes to how the police treat and respond to incidents where the perpetrator is either in the police or closely related to serving officers.
Wayne Couzens of course was both.