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?

My vent. Is offensive the big coverage and people acting like they care about women being murdered cos is not true. Several women murdered every week in domestic violence and no news mostly and people not enough people care. Is not police main problem. Is councils who break the law and get away with it and don't give safe housing for victims and is also cos not enough money for domestic abuse organisations so lots of women get murdered but people don't care cos they think domestic violence victims not normal women.

@OvaHere If we make those things legal to carry and easy to purchase though they'll just get used on women

So we make them legal for women to carry and purchase. Harsh sentences for men who are caught with the same.

I wonder what behaviour he displayed, or what did he say to get a nickname like “the rapist”.
I have a heap of alarming experiences regarding the Police but I can’t go back there. Although I will say that the worst encounter was with a WPC. I was a battered wife about 30 years ago now, and only just got out with my life.

I learnt from a very young age to never trust the police.

I was taught from a young age to never trust the police. And I grew up in a middle class lovely home where we never had a bad encounter with police.

My mother explicitly told us not to stop for a single policeman at night - just drive on to the nearest police station and explain. She told us to look for women to help us if in trouble - not policemen not security guards. I am in my 50s. My mum would be nearly 100 if alive. I think people were more aware of the dangers posed by men back in the day before we had to swallow all this NAMALT and women are evil too etc. my mum (who had a lovely father brothers and husband) knew what the risks for women really were.

@LukeEvansWife

Its really not a snark - so no, I won't go away.

It is a genuine question. The vigils etc for Sarah were fairly high profile but I want to know what about this specific case has started all of it. I am asking as a woman who sees the world as a dangerous place, but no more so than, say, ten years ago.

If you don't want to answer, that's fine. But no need to be arsey about it.

Probably because she was a woman walking home from a friend's house. A fairly unrisky situation we've probably all been in.

Equally Sabrina Nessa - a young woman walking back from a first date. Neither we're doing anything particularly risky or one of the things that we know we shouldn't be doing so we can keep ourselves safe. They were just fucking walking home. It's heartbreaking.

And it really hammers home all the shitty rules we give ourselves- don't go out too late at night, text me when you get home, walk confidently, don't wear a pony tail; they're too easy to grab, careful you're not getting into an unlicensed taxi etc etc are all a load of bollocks if we have to add don't go for a fucking short walk to that list. I know from experience that (in my area at least) if you try and book a taxi to go a short distance (a couple of miles) they won't take you anyway. I used to finish work at 11 about a mile and a half away from home and always had to walk back because no taxi driver would take me such a short journey.

How many years ago was Rachel Nickel killed while out for a walk and it's still not safe.

@LeonardBobby This would only lead to more women being coerced by men into being involved in criminality. If a woman won't be arrested for the non-violent offence of handling stolen goods for example, men will pressure women into storing criminal property. Then it can be moved on as soon as the woman is notified to present herself at a police station.

We have to do something. The fact that men would try and abuse it in their favour isn't a reason not to try (because really what's new about men using women for their own gain). I don't understand the difference in what would happen with evidence collection etc in the two scenarios ie whether the woman is arrested on the spot or given a summons the procedure around evidence collection would be the same. I'm not familiar with how it all works though. I just think we need to do something.

If you want something revolutionary then just make the police force open to women only. The imbalance of power in society makes it dangerous to hand over such a role to men and expect them not to misuse it.

I think people were more aware of the dangers posed by men back in the day before we had to swallow all this NAMALT and women are evil too etc.

I think so too. I think also the police can’t be so blatant about it nowadays so people seem to assume those officers who abuse their powers have gone away, and many probably have. But these men are still out there somewhere. My 16 yo Dm and a friend were abused in a police station by several officers in the 70s, I didn’t even occur to them to make a complaint (they were similarly ‘arrested’ under false pretence). Every woman in her 60 & 70s I’ve spoken too on the subject of male violence and sexual abuse has at least one absolutely chilling story of being abused as a young woman by a male in a position of power over them, to varying degrees. It was completely endemic. Is it now? I don’t know but I’ve had a very scary incident as a teen with a lone male police officer who demanded I got into his car, which I did of course. His aim was clearly to intimidate me. So that’s one snapshot of one family and no I will never trust the police and will tell my dd the same. To answer @LukeEvansWife that’s why this case has struck a chord, because generally woman are at the mercy of police officers and generally we are conditioned to do what they say. Generally people trust them.

[quote Pikamoo]**@OvaHere* If we make those things legal to carry and easy to purchase though they'll just get used on women*

So we make them legal for women to carry and purchase. Harsh sentences for men who are caught with the same.[/quote]
There's no way something like that doesn't end up in the courts as discrimination. A man sued a brewing company and won because they sold a type of beer cheaper to women as part of a gender pay gap awareness campaign.

I sobbed whilst reading the statements written by Sarah's family. The pain they are feeling is unimaginable.

It terrifies me to think that he is not the only police officer who would have these intentions.
In my naivety, I would have trusted a police officer on the streets.

This is also why I hate getting taxis on my own. Willingly getting alone into a car with a man has always felt so unnatural and I'm always instantly relieved when I reach my door.

Why do we have to live like this?

An ITV article stated that she was "wearing appropriate clothing"
Wtf. See what I mean it's engrained, make sure the woman was doing everything she possibly could before we blame the man

@MrsSkylerWhite

Pumperthepumper

Everyone thinks this though.

But the fact is, men are committing sexual assaults and murders at an incredible rate - two women per week murdered in the UK by men. So that’s either the same bad men being very busy, or it’s the ordinary men, the nice coworkers and the police and the people we know. Which is more likely?“

Worse, 3 each week, according to PM programme today.

It’s almost impossible to comprehend, even as someone who watched her mother beaten and raped as far back as she can remember.

That’s how I know now, though, that the men I love (including the young man I have raised) are good people because they wouldn’t be in my life if they weren’t. I would have no hesitation in walking away if I suspected otherwise, whoever they were.

You only see the parts they want you to see.

I suspect he will get shanked in prison or attempt to self harm. Coppers in jail are not popular and given the crime, he may have to be held in a segregation unit or in isolation.

I can't stop thinking about it to be honest.
All the footage we are seeing now, all the information over how horrific her last hours must have been.

Her lovely smiling face is permanently in my mind.

[quote Pikamoo]**@OvaHere* If we make those things legal to carry and easy to purchase though they'll just get used on women*

So we make them legal for women to carry and purchase. Harsh sentences for men who are caught with the same.[/quote]
But soon any man - even if big, beardy and with tackle intact - will be able to declare "I'm a woman" at any point anyway; so no measures, laws, dispensations or safe places to protect women will be effective anyway.

Yes, given his previous attempt to self-harm in custody I think he will try to commit suicide.

Although I think the previous self-harming was a cynical pre-cursor to pleading insanity.

He was getting his ducks in a row telling his superiors he was suffering with his mental health due to his salary.

there are no adequate words when life is brutalised by male violence like this. My thoughts are with her family.

One of the most chilling things for me is where he picked her up. Not being familiar with London I hadn’t appreciated quite how big the road was, well lit, big wide pavements, a steady stream of traffic despite lockdown.

He was so so confident and brazen, there’s not a chance I would have questioned him or even had the slightest doubt he was legitimately arresting me. He used his confidence as another way of trapping her.

Sarah didn’t stand a chance. If he had jumped out of a bush on an abandoned pathway she could have run, she could have hit and kicked and pushed and screamed and fought.

What he did is worse than any other opportunistic rapist and murder I can think of.

Been thinking about this and her so much - and her poor parents having to endure the trial and him. The thought of his two kids too -he's wrecked their lives too but Sarah is where my mind keeps going back to - awful

@Badgercity

One of the most chilling things for me is where he picked her up. Not being familiar with London I hadn’t appreciated quite how big the road was, well lit, big wide pavements, a steady stream of traffic despite lockdown.

He was so so confident and brazen, there’s not a chance I would have questioned him or even had the slightest doubt he was legitimately arresting me. He used his confidence as another way of trapping her.

Sarah didn’t stand a chance. If he had jumped out of a bush on an abandoned pathway she could have run, she could have hit and kicked and pushed and screamed and fought.

What he did is worse than any other opportunistic rapist and murder I can think of.

Absolutely. It’s just horrendous.

The level of planning is (like every other aspect of this case) utterly chilling.

He started assembling his “kit” on 10 February. Sarah was taken on 3 March:

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/29/wayne-couzens-timeline-footage-shows-movements-before-murdering-sarah-everard

@OvaHere There's no way something like that doesn't end up in the courts as discrimination. A man sued a brewing company and won because they sold a type of beer cheaper to women as part of a gender pay gap awareness campaign.

Then while we're at it we can change the law around discrimination where it's to redress imbalance between men and women. We've managed it in some instances (eg where certain positions are open to only BAME people or "all female" shortlists).

@LowbrowVictoriana that's a whole other issue. Of course the laws should be changed there too.

It made me sick when I heard he took his kids to the park where her body was. It also seem it is not the first time he has attacked women (what a surprise).

The level of planning is sickening. He was so arrogant too.

Hed planned it so meticulously in his sick mind that he even knew how to gain a woman's trust and make them feel they had no choice but to go with him. That's what makes it so much worse. He didn't just grab her, he knew how to guarantee he could Carry out his sick desire. It scares me to the core