To be profoundly saddened by this story

[Changeditforyou]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12565699/Police-rush-scene-incident-outside-busy-Croydon-shopping-centre.html

They tell us to help our daughters to protect themselves from male violence by thinking about what they wear, how much they drink, how late to stay out, where they go…
Are we supposed to add to the list ‘not rejecting a bunch of flowers in case you get stabbed to death’. This is horrifying.

I’m so so sick of male violence. It feels everywhere and inescapable. More luck than anything that your daughter isn’t the one. This poor girl and her family.

But stop and search has been proven to not make the streets safer.

My heart aches for that poor girl's family.

We live in Croydon and the helicopters this morning signified that something serious was happening. But it's becoming all too frequent and with two teen DS, it's really hard to develop boundaries around their independence.

I had to again talk to them about what had happened today - one already knew as he had friends who had witnessed it. But it comes on top of the murder of 15 year old in a local park by a classmate. And my youngest DS was only 8 when a knife was brought into his classroom by a child, and 10 when another child brought a knuckle duster into class to enact revenge on another pupil. It is everywhere.

We are failing our children if we don't teach them how to respect each other, and deal with their emotions and relationship fallout properly.

More absurd than the police advising women to stay in when a rapist is about?

We should do it. It would drive the point home.

Yes I have read this.

I just can't get myself to understand the boy's mindset. Taking flowers and a machete. As someone else has said prepared for whatever response he received.

That poor girls' family this morning.

Sure. And just how do you plan to enforce a 24 hour a day curfew on all men for a week and quite what do you think it will achieve? It’s an utterly ludicrous suggestion imo.

It’s beyond belief so young and carrying a machete …what was he planning to do with that it’s terrifying.

Police have to come down hard and fast and long prison sentences we are far too soft on crime.

Stop and search needs to happen regardless, police shouldn’t tethered for fear of being labelled racist…this is beyond awful and so disturbing.

Had there been any indication yet of who was arrested?

I too worked with care experienced teenagers, nearly all the boys I worked with carried knives. Some said it was because everyone else did and they needed protection, some just thought it made them look like a big man.

The thought of prison, or actually going to prison was no deterrent. It was seen as a badge of honour. One of the young men I worked with stabbed his friend to death and is currently in prison. 8 years for manslaughter, he’ll be out in 4. There is no rehabilitation in prison, he’ll come out and live the exact same life he lived before, just with a bit more “respect” from his peers because he’s been inside.

I don’t know what the answer is, I really don’t.

You fall into the same thinking as the Daily Mail and Laurence Fox by describing women as 'loved and beautiful' - it's nothing to do with how loved and beautiful a woman is. No woman- however, unloved, ugly, a prostitute, a drug addict, a criminal, whatever, deserves to be murdered by a man.
It's borne out of misogyny against all women and not sadder if they are loved and beautiful and innocent.

Also the boy may well be not privileged, new Addington is the cheap end of Croydon which is rough anyway

Croydon has a reputation for being rough, but I can assure you that there is plenty of upmarket housing there - All the roads with Croham in the name, anywhere between South Croydon and Selsdon, anywhere near Lloyd Park, Sandilands, parts of Selsdon and Sanderstead and parts of Shirley. I'm sure i have missed a lot out, but the whole of Croydon is not just one huge sink estate.

When I was at school the most deprived areas were New Addington, the Shrublands estate in Shirley and West Croydon. A lot of pupils at my school were from New Addington, and I must admit that I did find several rather intimidating at first.

For example: a lot of South Croydon has houses like this one:
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/139103615#/?channel=RES_BUY

How do you think we'll get the message home? Being kind?

Curfews are easy to enforce tbh

Just to point out that it was not the ex girlfriend murdered, it was her best friend who stepped in to help her. Not that this makes it any less horrific.

The women killed by the Yorkshire ripper were described as innocent victims if they weren't sex workers. That was abhorrent.

The problem with prison being ineffective is that it's used as a threat rather than a certainty and, in the unlikely event that you do end up there, you won't be there for long. The odds are the police won't investigate the crime, the odds are you won't be caught, the odds are the CPS won't prosecute, the odds are you won't be sent to prison, the odds are the sentence won't be long, the odds are you won't serve the full sentence. Criminals know their chance of gaming the system is good. The Tories don't want to spend money on fixing this and Labour and the rest don't have the will to fix it.

Absolutely. Male violence against women is a daily occurrence and is not restricted to a particular area or race.
I live in a ‘nice’ leafy suburb . Both my dds have been approached by young men asking for their snap chats/ phone numbers and both have been abused and threatened with violence when they politely decline to give out this information.
As others have pointed out, the rampant misogyny, the influence of social media( access to porn) and male entitlement are at the core of why incidents such as this appear to be on the increase.
The truth is this can happen to anyone…

@SofiYol The answer is if you take a life you should get life. Simple. It would not matter if you were rehabilitated or not, you are incarcerated for life.

The point about prison is that it protects the public from dangerous people. That is a legitimate idea.

I do not care if it is a badge of honour. It protects, for a period of time, the general public.

It may not be a deterrent but that says something about the kind of upbringing and depravity of these child offenders. By the time they have harmed someone with a knife it is too late. Knife carriers are dangerous. That it is why it is a criminal offence.

The other thing is this; this is a youth crime. It's done by the young. People above 25 largely do not commit these type of crimes with anything like the same type of frequency as teenagers.

People talk about prison as a nasty place. Yes it is. I have been to a few. But that is where violent people and people who carry knives deserve to be.

Regrettably over years in the criminal justice system I have seen rehabilitation rise as an aim and dominate youth justice all very well and it's part of the law but I would put violence in a different category. The actual law is failing because it does bit address that for some gangs, it's far better to have children carry weapons or run drugs because of lower penalties. Gangs exploit children and they are setting the agenda in terms of "protection".

There would be absolute uproar if knife carriers all went to prison; parents and youth outreach but the truth is that is failing. These offenders would be off the streets. It's not the only answer but will start to protect society. Oh that level, prison works.

There's a massive staffing crisis in prisons. Building more is not going to help. The answer is in pouring money into regeneration, opportunities and intervention, and in making careers working with those convicted rewarding.

Yes, I made exactly that point earlier up the thread. We have learned nothing in the last 45 years.

No more ludicrous than lockdown. And look how many people complied with that.

It’s not a (completely) serious suggestion anyway, more of a thought experiment to show how equally ludicrous and ineffective are the restrictions we as a society place on women ‘for safety’.

I am completely aware the prison service is on its knees. It has been decimated by cuts. People do not want to work in them. They are very dangerous places. You can thank the Conservative Party for ruining what existed. That needs fixing.

Just the other day a man was on here being wildly misogynistic about “modern day women” saying we were gold diggers and IG obsessed and essentially one night stand whores.

many women on here were excusing it when we called it out due to him being ND
and saying some people have different opinions.

there were suggestions he go to church to meet like minded women!

if us on this mostly women’s forum are not robust in recognising and calling out misogyny and incel rhetoric and even go further in offering up other women to men such as that we have no chance.

you may be traditional, liberal, progressive, socialist, conservative whatever. Misogyny and patriarchy underpins VAWG, call it out in your own spheres we need to protect each other.

solidarity to every woman and Rest in Peace to that poor girl ❤️

Explain “curfews are easy to enforce” in the context of ALL men, for 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

I’m glad it wasn’t a completely serious suggestion because it was seriously bonkers.

This story made me think of my male friends and the way they look after me and keep me safe. It's all automatic - they don't even think about it.

Clearly, men are capable of treating women considerately, even though their biology makes them capable of doing otherwise. So, if nature isn't dictating their actions, it's got to be nurture. This boy was only 17 - so something has gone wrong in childhood.

There needs to be a massive intervention at school age. I don't know what shape that takes, but I do think we need to do something whilst our boys' brains are still malleable and can be taught that girls are worthy of respect. More policing re knife crime is tackling the symptom rather than the cause. We need to tackle why little boys can even think a certain way in the first place and stamp it out before they turn into big, scary men who kill.

God, I just feel so sad for the girl's family. I also feel sorry for the bus driver (what a human) and for the girl's friend, who is going to grow up with a huge amount of survivor's guilt.