Why ignoring indecent exposure is deadly

[IwantToRetire]

I haven't see a thread about this, but am really posting as I heard Lady Angiolini being interviewed after her report came out about Wayne Couzens. The interviewer, perhaps obviously asked why the police had let someone known as the rapist to continue to be in the police.

She said they had not found anyone who had said or had every heard him called that, but that everyone knew about his consistent indecent exposure. Which she felt, as others have also said, is a common indicator of a man who is likely to commit an act of sexual violence against a woman.

Lady Angiolini makes many important recommendations about police vetting, but about two thirds of her report focuses on a long-ignored issue: that masturbatory indecent exposure is both a serious offence in itself and often a gateway to even graver crimes. Four months after scaring that cyclist, Wayne Couzens abducted and murdered Sarah Everard.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-ignoring-indecent-exposure-is-deadly-mgl098582

Do the police / CPS even bother to pursue men who expose themselves or is just seen as a minor crime.

I thought it had now become well known that is was a sign of a potentially dangerous man.

Or is it just another of those issues that are ignored because only women are impacted by it? Or one of those boys will be boys responses?

Article can be read here https://archive.ph/Z6sVv

Well women know it's a gateway crime and will often lead to worse things - ESPECIALLY when they get away with it the first time. Couzens is a classic example of this.

But others too - e.g. Katie Dolatowski first committed voyeurism, wasn't really punished for that so then escalated to attacking little girls.

If the police really wanted to reduce violence against women, the most obvious and easy thing to do - alongside preventative risk-based safeguarding like single sex spaces, obviously - would be to crack down hard on indecent exposure.

Of course your common or garden flasher now only has to say he feels like a woman and can follow any teenage girls into any lav or changing room up and down the country now, without challenge. What progress!

A a long term participant in them “harm reduction partnerships” it was a given that flashing was a starting point for sexual predators.

I do wonder if., that now men can parade naked in women’s spaces, the police have back pedalled from that to accommodate them funny looking women. As obviously the two are incompatible.

I appreciate that there are of course the issues of men identifying as women to get into women's spaces, but the vast majority of women are being harrassed and worse by men who are only too condifent that as men they can intimidate and scare women.

Are they any statistics on how many men expose themselves in public? Do women report to the police, or have they been so conditioned that they too think boys will be boys and just brush it off?

How many schoolgirls have been made to feel unsafe walking home because a man follows her and then exposes himself.

Obviously this being known about a man in the police by other police is deeply troubling, but there are men every where doing this.

Experience of sexual harassment

Overall, 5% of people aged 16 and over reported experiencing at least one of the forms of sexual harassment we asked about within the last 12 months. Prevalence was approximately three times higher among women (8%) compared with men (3%).

The likelihood of experiencing sexual harassment was highest among younger age groups. This was particularly the case for women, with 23% of those aged 16 to 24 and 16% of those aged 25 to 34 experiencing some form of sexual harassment in the previous year compared with 5% of those aged 35 and over.

There was a similar pattern among men with 8% of the youngest 16-to-24 age group experiencing sexual harassment in the last 12 months, compared with 2% of men aged 25 years and over.

Figure 4: A quarter of women aged 16 to 24 experienced sexual harassment in the last 12 months

Prevalence of sexual harassment in the last year for adults aged 16 years and over, by age and sex, England and Wales, year ending March 2023
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/experiencesofharassmentinenglandandwales/december2023

There's chart further down the article that imples men exposing themselves is a tiny %

Even if it is a small number it would be good to know if they ever actively pursue this as a crime and take it to court.

Statistics from 2 years ago show that there were 10,000 incidents but only 600 were charged.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/01/police-log-10000-indecent-exposure-cases-but-fewer-than-600-reach-court

A man exposed himself to me one night near my home a few years ago. I reported it to the police and they took it very seriously, sent an officer to the house, followed up to ask if I’d seen him again (they didn’t find him though)

I agree. This is sex offending in many cases and is being downgraded.

Actually, it could easily be given a minimum sentence like other sex offences could. The government never seems too keen on that. Wonder why...

This happened to me.

As a school girl I was regularly exposed to by a stranger. I brushed it off as something that happens when you grow older and become a woman. I didn't tell anyone or report it to anyone, because I believed it was just part of life. It ended up with him seriously sexually assaulting me. That had a devastating impact on my life. Indecent exposure needs to be taken very seriously.

I am glad this is being talked about and I'm glad to share my experience....but I'm gonna hide this thread now, because it's still upsetting to think about over two decades later.

I am not going to @ WellThatEsculatedQuickly because she had indicated she doesn't want to be reminded, but it just shows / confirms that more needs to be done.

But really glad to hear from Rainallnight that the police did respond and take the incident seriously.

I wonder if after the publicity about Couzens and his history of exposing himself whether some police forces did re-evaluate how they respond.

And it would be interesting to see if there are any real changes to how the police treat and respond to incidents where the perpetrator is either in the police or closely related to serving officers.
Wayne Couzens of course was both.

Your average copper on the beat in the 50s could have told you a lot of serious sex offenders started out flashing and escalated. And that where you found one sexual paraphilia you'd very likely find others, and many sex offenders had a number of them. <They wouldn't have dressed it up so nicely language wise> .

It's all a part of the current demand that everyone pretend a faux naivety and agrees not to look or talk about the bleeding obvious, and to maintain an illusion that a male doing something totally inappropriate doesn't mean it that way/has a nice innocent agenda/ is to do with you politically perceiving it in a naughty way/ yada yada .

I reported one once. He lived very near me, was targetting me (as well as others) & I felt quite unsafe each night I returned home. He was brazen about it and, frankly, appeared deeply disturbed.

The policeman I reported him to laughed.

Remember that creep Jordan Gray? Indecently exposed himself on Channel 4 but the issue was hand waved away?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4757847-indecent-exposure-and-jordan-gray-on-radio-4

Yes. Hard to report given that it's pushed as 'a laugh' by Channel 4.

I'm sure Gray had no idea that flashing his penis may well distress some of the many women who have experience of sexual violence.

Well said. It's well documented in psychiatric literature that indecent exposure usually escalates to assault. It should be taken very, very seriously. I really hate that the flasher in the Mac has become a kind of comedy trope- it's not funny. Its a huge red flag for sexual assault and rape.

The murder of Libby Squire is a textbook case of the escalation of this kind of behaviour. It wasn’t done by a serving police officer, and it was in the provinces not London so it only got to national news briefly. But Libby is certainly remembered by the people of Hull.

i won’t say his name but if you google you’ll see that he was known for public indecency, stealing women’s underwear and personal items.

Does anyone know a single woman that's never been flashed? I don't. We really do need to shift the overton window back from 'you just have to deal with this, women and girls' and 'it doesn't really matter'.

The Police could stop investigating women having their own opinions about material reality and start investigating flashers like Couzens for a start.

Of course the vast majority of flashers aren't (yet) identifying as transwomen. But there's no doubt that trans ideology has infiltrated the thinking of the CPS, police, civil service, media, parliament etc to a degree vastly out of proportion to the number of people who believe in it, let alone who have a gender ID.

As a society we still struggle to think the worst of men and we resist making men look bad. Trans ideology didn't invent the victim blaming media, disinterested corrupt misogynist police and woefully low reporting and prosecution of sex offences. But it does capitalise on all aspects of sex inequality, including this. And trans ideology asserts an extra pressure to avoid making a particular category of male look bad.

When police release descriptions of a violent sex offending "woman " who is wanted, it is abundantly clear that they prioritise not making transwomen look bad over preventing more attacks.

Joan Smith wrote about the link between domestic violence and terrorism. Undeniably essential research. But Sadiq Khan sacked her from his VAWG taskforce because she doesn't pretend that humans can change sex; again the feelings of trans people prioritised over the safety of pretty much everyone.

It would be fascinating to find out how many women vs men have experienced this. And how old they were at first.

I agree, every woman I know. Helped massively by the fact there was a regular flasher both at my uni (on a public path between halls and academic buildings) and at my all girls school (on another public footpath! This time beside a playing field). It never occurred to me to contact the police, bathed as I was in 90s / 00s porn culture misogyny.

I was flashed at 9:15 in the morning after the school run. I took a photo of him getting back in his car, clearly showing him and his license plate. Reported to the police, gave a statement and said I was happy to go to court. A couple of days later I have a phone call saying they have spoken to him and he denies it so they won’t be taking it further.

Of course he’s going to deny it! He’s hardly going to go ‘Yes I did get my dick out, please arrest me’

We had a man walking naked here in the New Forest on popular walking and riding areas. He was dubbed “the naked rambler” by locals many of whom thought him a harmless eccentric.
I spoke to a local stable owner (male) who had seen him and thought it very funny and said it didn’t bother him so why would he report it to the police.
The fact that this frequently is a “starter crime” for rapists needs to be publicised.

First time I was flashed I was in my early teens in the UK.

Followed by regular experiences from then on. Inter-railing was the worst - was flashed in every country except Belgium. Multiple times in many countries. Not saying Belgium was particularly amazing, probably would have happened sooner or later if we'd stayed there longer - it was a one night stop I think!

Interestingly the frequency has reduced since becoming a Mum. Not happened so much whilst having small children with me. Do others find this too? Possibly just because of the times of day I'm out though? Or maybe because I'm crusty and old and have a finely tuned Paddington hard stare to quell small child tantrums.

i was with a couple of friends, it was dark but only because it was November and it was early evening, still rush hour. We were walking down a main road and passed the cemetery, where we were followed by a man masturbating and talking at us. Our route happed to take us past a police station so we smartly turned and walked up the steps (not a word was said by any of us!). The policeman on reception basically laughed at us and asked what we expected walking past the cemetery after dark.

Thank you for remembering Libby Squire @MyLadyDisdainlsYetLiving
And I'm sorry to hear you had such a shitty experience and weren't taken seriously by that police officer

Thanks. It was a while ago now, and I had hoped things had improved since then. I think it depends on your local force, but I get the impression that now they are unlikely to laugh, but say they are overstretched and it’s not a priority. That’s what happened to the other victims of the man that hurt Libby. The police and CPS suddenly found the resource to investigate and charge him with public indecency and voyeurism once they were investigating Libby’s disappearance, even though they had his DNA evidence for several years. Just like Couzens, he’d been escalating publicly for a while.

So in the Humberside police area at least, I think if you made a complaint and invoked what happened in this case, you’d get taken seriously because the failings of the police are still fresh in the institutional memory. Libby’s mum, Lisa, campaigns for women to be listened to and for non-contact sexual offences to be taken more seriously. Another strong woman trying to make good come out of bad.