Sarah Everard - it's five years ago today that this young woman was murdered

[Westfacing]

The Covid era seems a lifetime ago now and I expect most of us have tried to forget those difficult times.

I'm sad to think that women are still being killed when just going about their everyday lives.

Sarah Everard's mother says her daughter added to beauty of world - BBC News

i read her mum’s impact statement as well, I’ll never forget it. Poor Sarah. It could have been any of us.

this case and the crossbow killer one haunts me.

Love the sentiment, but terrible writing!

RIP Sarah, until this moment I would probably have got in a car with an under cover police officer. Now I wouldn’t.

You wouldn't have a choice though, would you? He'd "arrest you". Most women (I know there are outliers) are not a match for a strong man. Especially when they're disorientated by a situation.

He was enormous and a policeman. Pretty much all of us would have complied. And if we hadn’t he would have shoved us in the car anyway and no one would have intervened because he was “police”. She had no chance. Nothing she could have done.

Yeah that part got me he’d have locked the doors so no way out.

Plus it was in Covid times where new rules were being introduced all the time. It’s easy to say you wouldn’t have got in the car but at the first sign of a police badge you’d be scared and/or trust them. Sorry to say but I still don’t trust police.

Utter cunts x

I heard a similar decades ago when I did some criminal law. Young girl was murdered the defence and police chat was so derogatory. Remember feeling sick at the time. Who bloody cares if she was abit flirty and was unfaithful to her boyfriend- did that warrant being strangled and left in a ditch? Hope things had changed.

I can easily see how she complied with his instructions and let him handcuff her.

Remember how the police in the early days of Covid were inspecting peoples shopping for non-essentials, Easter eggs? or some other nonsense; and people in trouble for sitting too close on a park bench or having a coffee outside their zone, and being filmed by a drone when walking in the countryside. Seems crazy now but we thought it was for the greater good.

The bus cam footage of her getting into the back of his car was heart breaking.

Ideal times for the bastard to take advantage - I feel so angry that he was still a serving Met officer despite his known despicable and criminal behaviour.

There was a vigil last night at the Bandstand

Vigil marking five years since Sarah Everard's murder

As someone who strongly disagreed with the lockdowns this case fills me with rage.

Rest in peace lovely Sarah. Rot in hell Couzens and all of those who could have stopped this and did nothing. Hang your heads in shame police forces throughout the country who should be properly screening their officers and weeding out the rotten ones but don’t.

I cannot believe it was five years ago and yet so little has changed where women's safety is concerned.

I still remember the advice of our great PM (sarcasm alert) at the time was for women to run in front of buses if they felt unsafe when being confronted by a policeman in the street.

I think of Sarah a lot, it's unbelievably distressing 😞 her poor poor family

This behaviour and attitude towards women reminds me of the scandalous behaviour of the police officers who were guarding the crime scene, including their bodies, when sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman were murdered in a park.

They were taking and sending selfies with the bodies of 'two dead birds'.

I work in retail (think golden arches) and I cannot count how many times men (and its never a woman) come through the drive thru wanking/flashing/hearing a young girl on the speaker so they start with the dirty talk-its so common,I warn the new starters

I've been assaulted 11 times in 10 years-groped/touched/filthy talk/punched/spat at/flashed and my manager is a bitch to work with but shes amazing at sticking up for her staff

We ring the police every single time-if we are lucky they turn out

Always with an air of 'Well what do you want us to do about it?' and when its pointed out that its their bloody job,there is cctv and witnesses they get snotty with us and dont do anything-they dont even look at the cctv,let alone 'have a chat'

One bloke was utterly filthy towards me (he didnt touch me but spoke to me and flashed his very small cock at me-a few weeks after sarah)

We rang the police,they did fuck all (it had been caught on cctv-they didnt even bother to watch it)and about a year later,he killed a woman (I have mutual friends with this lady and know her family) and left her body for the hostel staff to find

Her name was read out by jess phillips as yet another woman who was killed that year

If the police had done something then,he might not have killed her as he would have been stopped in his tracks

It's all one big boys club-to read that it was spoken as if 'she'd gone off to fuck another man behind her boyfriends back' is utterly disgusting

@Vintageblueribbon the way those assaults are treated as a an inconvenience by the police is absolutely disgraceful

We all know the pipeline from flashing to rape to murder. The police could have their pick of perps off that CCTV - absolutely slam dunk cases.

But they're not interested. And it ends up in women being killed exactly like that woman you know. I'm really sorry. It makes me so angry.

yes that was the turning point for me as well.

The footage of him in B&Q buying tape and other things he used to subdue and rape and murder her. It was so planned and thought out.

I really have no words adequate to express how I feel properly.

@Vintageblueribbon I’m really sorry you experience that so regularly in your place of work. How awful

Such a wicked, senseless thing to happen. We shouldn’t even know her name. She should simply be living her life.

A police officer is someone the public are supposed to be able to trust in moments of fear or vulnerability.

When my now adult son was a baby I had to take him to A&E one Saturday night. On the way there I skidded and spun the car. My son started crying and I was really shaken and flustered.

A car pulled over (normal car not a police car) and the driver got out. He showed me his police ID and said he was a Detective Sergeant on his way to start his Saturday night shift. He offered to drive us to the hospital. He even radioed in from his car to say he was taking us there.

And I trusted him completely. Without hesitation. Because he was a police officer and I believed that meant we were safe.

Everything was absolutely fine. He was kind and helpful and got us there quickly.

But when I think about Sarah I think about that moment and realise that the level of trust I had then just doesn’t exist in the same way anymore. There’s no way that if similar happened now me and my baby would be going in a car with a lone police officer. And it’s clear I am not the only one.

That’s one of the many things that was taken from all of us by what happened to Sarah Everard.

May she rest in peace

I was once touched up by a teenager (the first assault back in 2016)

They did come out (in the end but inly because my manager is a force of nature)

Wandered in with 'well we can't do anything' and 'what where you doing standing there?' (At the bin-i was emptying it)

They did pull him in for questioning but let him out again with 'try not to do that again' ringing in his ears (his father was telling him he'd done nothing wrong)

3 guesses who walked straight back into work and sat smirking at me? (Work had banned him but the useless male then main manager didnt throw him out)

He's gone on the do the same to other girls and nobody gives a fuck

WC is also an example of how so called lesser sexual crimes are not taken seriously. Before he attacked Sarah he went to collect a drive through naked from the waist down exposing himself to staff. WTF? Why wasn’t he suspended and his police ID removed at that point

I was attacked on my way home from work one evening. It was about 8 pm and dark at that point. I went to the police station and their question was 'Well, what were you doing?'. I said 'Walking home from work' and the response was a snigger and 'It's the pretty ones who get attacked. You should be pleased he thought you were pretty'.

Sarah's murder really drove it home about how vulnerable we are, if you also you can't trust the police, it makes for an even scarier world.

Whenever people talk about the death penalty I say a civilised country doesn't execute people but I'd make an exception for Sarah's murderer (and the crossbow killer).

I also think about Ashling Murphy who was murdered for having the temerity to go for a run in broad daylight.

The other thing that sickens me about Sarah's case is the way the police reacted to the vigil. Just shocking.