Victoria Derbyshire discussing murders of older women on Radio 2

[CaveMum]

Victoria Derbyshire covering the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2 and discussing how the murders of older women are often overlooked.

Very moving conversation with a man whose brother murdered their 81 year old mother after years of abuse.

Worth a listen but a shame that they did not contact Karen Ingala Smith to talk about the work she does with the Femicide Census.

They did talk to an academic (whose name I missed) who said it’s actually Home Office policy not to keep statistics on murders of anyone over the age of 74 which is shocking.

They did talk to an academic (whose name I missed) who said it’s actually Home Office policy not to keep statistics on murders of anyone over the age of 74 which is shocking.

That came up in the recent Observer articles on femicide.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4188059-The-hidden-femicide-victims-older-women

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4185454-Observer-campaign-to-tackle-femicide

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4185386-The-Observer-End-Femicide-campaign

Thanks for those links @EmbarrassingAdmissions

I remember being so shocked that women weren't counted above a certain age until recently - and the impact this would have had upon statistics.

How are we supposed to address anything if we're not counting properly and most of us have no idea that it's not being done in the way that we'd expect?

What? That makes no sense at all. I don't understand why they wouldn't be counted.

They did talk to an academic (whose name I missed) who said it’s actually Home Office policy not to keep statistics on murders of anyone over the age of 74 which is shocking
I had to read that twice!😲

I dont understand the age limit either. For crimes which are self reported, women over the age of 59 weren't included until recently because it was thought it would be too distressing for them as they have to self report.

But they aren't saying victims of murder have to self report, are they? So whats the excuse here?

I'm horrified to think that this has a lot to do with the tacit acceptance of elder abuse in the UK.

Hourglass, formerly Action on Elder Abuse, said polling that it had commissioned suggested as many as one in five people in the UK over the age of 65 have been abused. The charity calculates that this equates to 2.7 million victims across the UK.

Previous estimates have put the figure significantly lower. The World Health Organization estimates that – globally – one in six people aged 60 and older experienced some form of abuse in the last year.
…
The Hourglass survey revealed that people have conflicting views about what constitutes elder abuse. More than a third of people did not believe that “inappropriate sexual acts directed at older people” counted as abuse.

Astonishingly, almost as many – 30% – did not view “pushing, hitting, or beating an older person” as abuse. A similar proportion – 32% – did not believe that ‘taking precious items from an older relative’s home without asking’ constituted abuse.

www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/29/one-in-five-older-people-in-the-uk-have-been-abused-poll-finds

They did talk to an academic (whose name I missed) who said it’s actually Home Office policy not to keep statistics on murders of anyone over the age of 74 which is shocking

Yes, I think Ms Ingala Smith has mentioned this. It's despicable.

it’s actually Home Office policy not to keep statistics on murders of anyone over the age of 74

Say what, now?!

What the fuck? Does a person stop being a person once they hit 75? That is fucking disgusting. That's the worst thing I've read today. Christ.

Does a person stop being a person once they hit 75?

Oh they're only women, and old. Annoying old grannies, so who cares?

I'm really shocked at this. I wonder why it isn't monitored. Thinking of someone like Harold Shipman who managed to get away with his crimes for decades because his victims were older and mainly female.
Laws were changed because of him but not this that would seem so obvious.

Jesus wept.

I listened to this too. Absolutely shocking.

So we don’t know what the rationale is?

For those that want to listen to the excerpt, it was at about 1hr and 9min into the show: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000wl1q

The academic that spoke was Dr Hannah Bows, Associate Professor in Criminal Law at Durham: www.dur.ac.uk/directory/profile/?id=12484

The case they discussed was of Beryl Hammond murdered by her son Darren in 2017. Victoria interviewed Beryl’s other son Dean, it was clear from the interview that the family was highly dysfunctional with the father routinely abusive to his wife and sons as they grew up and that the violence continued to be perpetrated by Darren after the father died.
www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/darren-hammond-who-killed-mother-14314657

Is it any wonder that there is such poor understanding of rape, elder abuse, and VAWG when our official bodies just aren't counting in the ways that we'd expect?

Following on from the wretched life of Beryl in the radio programme, I looked up more of Bows' work and saw this:

Bows, Hannah and Westmarland, Nicole (2017) 'Rape of older people in the United Kingdom : challenging the ‘real rape’ stereotype.', British journal of criminology., 57 (1). pp. 1-17.

Despite extensive research on rape and sexual violence, there exists an important gap in knowledge around older victims. This gap exists in relation to national statistics (the Crime Survey for England and Wales has an upper age limit of 59 for intimate violence), and by both criminologists and gerontologists. This research used an under-utilized method by criminologists—freedom of information requests to police forces. Data were obtained from 45 forces relating to 655 cases of rape and sexual assault by penetration over a five-year period and were analysed in relation to victim and perpetrator age, relationship, location of crime and type of offence. The findings challenge the dominant real-rape stereotypes and have implications for future research, policy and practice.

dro.dur.ac.uk/17159/

OMG so if I get raped it's not a crime - but if I misgender my attacker I'll be arrested immediately. FFS

@Redshoeblueshoe

OMG so if I get raped it's not a crime - but if I misgender my attacker I'll be arrested immediately. FFS

Up until April 2017 the crime would not have been listed but post then, the age cap was lifted to 74.

The age range for respondents eligible for the domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking self-completion module of the Crime Survey for England and Wales was expanded in April 2017, changing from adults aged 16 to 59 years to adults aged 16 to 74 years.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/domesticabuseinenglandandwalesoverview/november2020#:~:text=The%20age%20range%20for%20respondents,aged%2016%20to%2074%20years.

In one of the threads I linked above there's some discussion of the age group of people thought unlikely to be able to fill out the online surveys for to self-report some crimes - and that was the reason given for the age cap of 59 until 2017 (although now 74).

I note that Beryl's sexual assault wouldn't count given she was 81 (?).

It is a crime, the attacker can be prosecuted; but the crime won't be included in the ONS crime statistics.
Assaults are self reported. The upper age limit is supposedly because its too distressing for older women to fill in the form.
Murder victims can't self report, so there's no good reason to have an upper age limit.

I thought this was illustrated starkly by the difference in public reaction to the deaths of Sarah Everard and PSCO Julia James. Both women who died in utterly appalling, violent circumstances. But the public reaction to one was an outpouring of grief and to the other was very muted.

Even from forties and fifties not much help or support and no specialist services is big reason why older women get murdered. Nowhere safe to go and harder to leave more traumatised when so long and more need for privacy and dignity of own safe space no strangers even other women too much. Councils try not to help and if they do they want to house victims of domestic violence if no children or children over 18 so older women in dangerous shared housing including with men just released from prison.