Police must take flashing more seriously

They really should. In our quiet small town we had a flasher last year, he was literally flashing at roughly the same time of day in the same place yet it literally took a couple of weeks to actually get an officer out to catch him. By this point many women in the town had stopped using that particular footpath despite how convenient it is for getting into the town centre.

The laugh emojis and silly comments by men on any Facebook posts about the situation gave away many men's attitude to 'low level' sex crimes and given that the majority of officers are men....

I think they need to bring some criminal psychologists in and train the police better in how these type of offences are often the foothills of more serious sexual offending.

I totally agree. Exposing your genitals to someone is a sex crime. You are forcing them to look at your genitals without their consent, for your gratification. It should be taken more seriously and it needs a new description 'flashing' sounds almost funny. Sexual exposure or something more serious would give it a more appropriate description. I actually think there should also be consequences for sending dick pics. It's exactly the same thing but just done digitally. If men thought they were going to get fined or put on a sex offenders register if they did it, they might think twice. As it is, women are subjected, again, to being forced to look at a man's penis without wanting to or asking to.

Not that anyone has asked but for various reasons this has been a topic on my mind recently, to make rape convictions more successful they need to BAN any investigation into the victim's previous sexual history. This is one moment, one action, one rape (or multiple in some cases) and that is what needs to be on trial, not the victims. They can be a sex workers, extremely promiscuous, cheating on their partner with multiple people, it is irrelevant, rape is rape.
No-one puts mugging victims under the spotlight - should you have been walking home alone that night, have you walked home alone many nights before? It would be ludicrous.

But, of course, these things are crimes against women and therefore will never be taken seriously because as we all know, women have a huge, well documented history of violence against men and being devious liars who like nothing more than having intrusive medical examinations followed by their personal lives torn apart on a witness stand when they falsely accuse poor men of raping them

A flasher exposed himself to my mum a couple of years ago when she was walking one morning along the canal.

The police were excellent in that case. They came when she called and found the guy and arrested him that day. They gave mum the option of counselling and were very understanding. They said that they take flashing very seriously because men who do this normally escalate on to bigger crimes against women. They guy was successfully convicted.

So if my local police (in quite a poor town) can do this, and understand the seriousness of flashing, there is no reason why this can't be the standard approach across the country.

I am so depressed about the state of women's safety in society from predatory men.

NAMALT, but I am starting to think that the number of men who have overstepped the boundaries of appropriate sexual behaviour is likely to be the majority, not a small minority. The small minority are just at one end of the sexual harm spectrum. That's why it's not taken seriously, because the majority are doing it, and so society doesn't think it's a big deal.

I think they need to bring some criminal psychologists in and train the police better in how these type of offences are often the foothills of more serious sexual offending.

Indeed, they really should.

A couple if years ago I was walking home from work with a friend. We got followed by a known.local problem man. We took refuge in take away to try and get away from him but he followed us in there and was screaming and shouting in our faces indread to think what would have happened if it hadn't been fir the staff. They were so kind .

I called the police and I couldn't even get last the call handler who must have heard him screaming in our faces. She told us to get a cab home.

No one gave a shit

They really are just used to it and aren't even interested in what would he a realky easy crime to prosecute due to 4 witnesses, a call handler who over heard and cctv of that day akd footage circulating of the same guy amongst other local face book groups.

Public safety and predominantly women's safety isn't even worth the effort when jts easy

The police need to take a good fucking look at themselves.

In The Other Paper there is a report that colleagues gave him the nickname The Rapist because he made female colleagues feel uncomfortable.

So: the feelings of women were discounted. The men thought it funny to label someone ‘rapist’ as a nickname. How dismissive of women’s concerns and if the term ‘rapist’.

Having said that I have friends who’s teen Dds have been harassed and assaulted and the police have taken it seriously, and treated the girls very well, leaving them feeling very validated.

And of course the ones who identify as women seem to get a free pass to do as they please wherever they may roam, and the crime is recorded as having been done by a woman. Sometimes their feelings matter more than those of the women and girls it has happened to.