Anyone follow the coverage of the Sarah Everard case today and want to vent?

[HangingOver]

I'm home alone today and except for whatsapping my friends have nothing to do with this incandescent rage and hopeless sadness.

Anyone else need to talk?

Nothing to do with gender. It's sex.
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the sex that holds most of the world's wealth and power, and also commits 99% of sex crimes and 96% of murders to, you know, have a go at fixing the situation.

I completely agree.

It’s utterly horrific. Sarah had no chance.
Her poor, poor family. So dignified, so articulate.
Speaking for their beloved daughter.
I’m so incredibly sad but I’m also angry.
In fact, incandescent.
I’m in my 50s and sick of living in fear but not even recognising it as fear because it was ever thus.
Always being careful.
Women’s rights and stopping violence against women and children has to be top of the political agenda and at the forefront of society and I for one, am not going to sit back and let this keep happening.

Please don't tar all men and police officers with the same brush.

But brutality within the police force isn’t unusual, our police force as a whole is racist and sexist. Victims of DV are ignored, victims of sexual assault are laughed at, people of colour are illegally detained and searched.

Positions of power attract people who want power for the wrong reasons, there are certain careers where it really does need to be one strike and you’re out. Careers where you have access to weapons, handcuffs and public influence should most definitely be one strike and you’re out.

We have so many corrupt officers that corruption within the police isn’t shocking, its completely normal.

[quote JonahofArk]@Jennifermadison if there was an epidemic of women brutally murdering children at the rate of two a week then yes, I would expect women to start asking very serious questions about their collective behaviour and working to make significant changes. Unlike male violence against women, the likes of Myra Hindley are incredibly rare, so they can be classed as anomalous.

Men assaulting, raping and murdering women happens day in and day out. The two cannot be compared, so stop trying to derail the topic by focusing on individuals like Hindley whose behaviour very clearly lies outside of the norm. [/quote]
You need to stop assuming the gender of a person defines their character as skin colour doesn't define a character either. The reason men commit more sickening crimes of physical assault/murder is primarily because they are physically capable of doing so. There are many evil women like men who would do the same if they could- a person being male does not give them a higher propensity for being basically evil.

@WrapAroundYourDreams

Please don't tar all men and police officers with the same brush.

When you have experienced abuse at the hands of a police officer, my ex husband, and witnessed first hand the appalling response of his 'colleagues' when reporting him, it tends to change your view of both men and the police, and I won't apologise for how I feel on it.

Some men may care. Some police may care. The vast majority don't.

I don't really care about upsetting men/the police with my views. I care about the actual harm being done to vast numbers of women and children on a daily basis.

The vast majority of men don't care about women being murdered- really?

@pucelleauxblanchesmains

"We would all still lean on the police if we were in an emergency and needed their help." Yes. I would. But while this is true, how do I trust that an individual officer isn't going to hurt me?

The same way you trust that not all doctors will be another Harold Shipman and that not all teachers abuse their students?

Look at the percentage of police officers who are convicted of seriously harming women and it’s very small, the same as it is for every profession. The discussion around the culture and misogyny in the police and missed opportunities is more than valid (and I say that as a police officer) but going around saying you’re terrified of all individual officers is over the top

It enrages me that the rarity of public violence against women is always emphasised. It's rarer than domestic violence but not so rare that it hardly ever happens. Women always have to wonder whether the minor incident of harassment is going to escalate, if this is the man who is going to turn really nasty.

I said on another thread at the time of Couzens's arrest that the violence men face tends to be overt; drunks, yobs, football hooligans, robbers, men obviously out to cause trouble. Women have to fear all that but also the normal-looking men who are just biding their time. A taxi-driver might avoid picking up somebody he or she doesn't like the look of, but does it ever cross a man's mind that his taxi-driver might be waiting for an opportunity to rape and murder a man? Are men ever nervous about the workmen they let into their home?

It's beyond belief.
So sad and also worrying too
The Met do have blood on their hands
RIP Sarah Everard

@Jennifermadison firstly, we are talking about sex, not gender. Secondly, stop bringing race into it, that just shows how messed up your thinking is.

Thirdly, if it's simply a case that men are more violent because they're stronger than women, then why aren't women committing the same level of crimes against children or animals-after all, women are stronger than children and animals right?

You are talking absolute crap and you know it.

How are we supposed to trust the police ever again?

Come on now. That's like saying you'll never use the NHS again, because of Harold Shipman. I don't know what you do for a job, but I'm pretty sure that someone else with the same profession as you, will have broken the law in a way that you never would.

Wayne Couzins didn't kill Sarah because he was a Police officer, he killed her because he's a deranged and dangerous individual, who happened to be a Police officer.

I'm glad he's getting a life term. But can't understand why Pitchfork is now a free man.

I’ve long thought that I should start wearing a body cam that starts a live feed to somewhere (FB?) as soon as I hit a button on it when I’m out and about, mostly on dog walks I think this when I worry someone might have been following me. It feels like we are just permanently at risk of being harmed but that no one will actually do anything even if we are.

Apparently there are "no issues" in the Met and their developed vetting process works just fine.

Who on earth were they turning away ?

Oops, I see someone else already said this!

@Simonjt

Please don't tar all men and police officers with the same brush.

But brutality within the police force isn’t unusual, our police force as a whole is racist and sexist. Victims of DV are ignored, victims of sexual assault are laughed at, people of colour are illegally detained and searched.

Positions of power attract people who want power for the wrong reasons, there are certain careers where it really does need to be one strike and you’re out. Careers where you have access to weapons, handcuffs and public influence should most definitely be one strike and you’re out.

We have so many corrupt officers that corruption within the police isn’t shocking, its completely normal.

Have you actual stats of police being disproportionately racist in 2021 that bear up to real life crime stats instead of people stopped and searched in ghettos which have a high crime rate leading to the stop and search in the first place?

It’s absolutely horrific. My heart goes to her family.
I think it’s also even more shocking because he abused laws that were in place temporarily that were pretty horrendous but that we followed for the greater good. For him to abuse those (and the greyness of them, which is presumably why she complied) feels even more tragic.

It’s a matter of not now trusting the checks and balances in the police force, the oversight of safeguarding procedures etc that would stop a man like him doing what he did.
Do I trust the police? Yes, in the main. Do I trust their system is set up to filter out men like him? No, not really.

@Jennifermadison I’m an Asian man, the fact that I’m brown means I’m subjected to stop and search, I’m yet to be subjected to a search that has actually been legal. I’ve been called a Paki and worse by police officers while being illegal searched.

Are you aware that for every 1,000 recorded searches (four of mine were never recorded) 157 involve black people, only 6 involve white people.

Just wanted to echo the sentiments of other posters. No sentence is long enough for that disgrace for a human being, but unfortunately the only option is prison. Nothing less than whole of life should even be an option. The calculated way he planned what he was going to do and the way he just dumped her body afterwards is beyond words. Evil evil man. Let’s hope he gets his comeuppance in prison. RIP Sarah.

HeronLanyon
jennifer I said I would bloody love it. Wouldn’t you ? I didn’t say it would ever happen. I’m not in government. I’m at the criminal bar and deal with mostly male violence on both men and women daily.

jennifermadison
Would I love my husband and son to be under curfew? No I wouldn't, it's an utterly ridiculous suggestion

We’ll just for once I wasn’t thinking of your ds /DH or any men. I was thinking of you and all women. It’s a powerful and radical thought. ‘Utterly ridiculous’ you may well find it. That’s ok. We get to think differently.

The vast majority of men don't care about women being murdered- really?

It's telling that you're more bothered about some of us being completely fucking sick of shitty men (and I mean the shitty ones, not all, but like many on this thread I'm so sick of NAMALT and all the handmaidens who spout this crap) that our opinions and trust of them is in the gutter, than what is actually happening to women ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Sarah Everard, Sabina Nessa, Julia James, Bibaa Henry, Nicole Smallman. They are just a small number of recent victims. I couldn't possibly remember the rest because their are enough fucking awful men that keep doing this. All the time.

If men cared, they'd stop with their shitty misogynistic jokey comments, they'd care about sexism, they'd listen when we call ourselves feminists rather than shifting uncomfortably in their seats. Being a man who thinks it's wrong that some men hurt women is nowhere fucking near enough.

There are many evil women like men who would do the same if they could- a person being male does not give them a higher propensity for being basically evil.

That makes no sense. Off the top of my head I can think of about 10 ways I could injure my 6 foot 2 husband without breaking a sweat. Presumably all the women who apparently have the same drive to violence as men would figure it out too.

@HeronLanyon

HeronLanyon jennifer I said I would bloody love it. Wouldn’t you ? I didn’t say it would ever happen. I’m not in government. I’m at the criminal bar and deal with mostly male violence on both men and women daily.

jennifermadison
Would I love my husband and son to be under curfew? No I wouldn't, it's an utterly ridiculous suggestion

We’ll just for once I wasn’t thinking of your ds /DH or any men. I was thinking of you and all women. It’s a powerful and radical thought. ‘Utterly ridiculous’ you may well find it. That’s ok. We get to think differently.

so just to clarify, you work as a criminal lawyer/ solicitor and support a curfew on all men due to a minority of evil bastards like this killer?

It is a shame this thread is being derailed.

Let us hope for an outcome tomorrow which brings some justice for Sarah and her family.

The statistic of two women murdered a week is only for women murdered by a current or ex partner. Crime statistics are unsatisfactory and unreliable. Some exclude child victims, some exclude older people, some only allow a victim to be counted a certain number of times per year, sexual violence is counted separately from other violence, and, of course, some crimes are more likely to go unreported.