Sarah Everard: Who will protect us?
When I first heard of Sarah Everard it was whilst her disappearance was still recent. There was hope from many, including myself, that she would be found soon. Her walk through Brixton’s well-lit, well-walked paths that many women before her had tread couldn’t have taken her too far.
As the police investigation ramped up, that’s when things started to become more concerning. Here was a woman who had gone missing in one of the most popular parts of Clapham Common, and all evidence was pointing towards a more sinister cause: abduction.
Of course, while the head of the Metropolitan Police Cressida Dick called this a ‘rare event’, the dangers of night-time walking is one that most women are familiar with. Indeed, from October 2019 to September 2020, 5,663 kidnapping crimes were reported. As such, it’s become a commonality to have your keys on hand, to walk quickly but not run, to ensure that you have someone on speed dial to call if you’re ever in trouble. That fear never leaves you.
So when the news came out that a police officer named Wayne Couzen, a so-called gatekeeper of safety, had been charged with the kidnap and murder of Sarah, with her body being found in a woodland in Kent on Thursday, what followed was an outpouring of rage.
Who would’ve thought that the suspected attacker of a woman walking home in London would be a member of an institution that should have been there to protect her? Well, anyone who knows that regardless of the geography, the police are inherently a violent institution.
You only have to take a look at what happened throughout the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests, both here in the UK and across the pond to understand that. What happened to Sarah Everard wasn’t the ‘rare event’ that Dick believes it to be, but part of a more frequent and serious issue of the increasing dangers that the gatekeepers of our society continue to create.
What better example to support this point than the action that ensued last night at the Everard vigil being held in Clapham Common? With the debate around women’s safety still fresh in the collective mind, police still arrived in aggressive throngs. COVID-19 protocols being broken was used as a disguise, however, if this was the case, herding the women close together and into arrest through physical contact would have surely only increased the risk of infection and contagion.
The threat of prosecution from the Met Police for those who were merely trying to raise awareness for Everard’s case sent out a dark message for any woman trying to voice their concerns on the institutionalized violence that Couzens’ actions had exposed: speak up and you will be met with force.
Time and again this message has been enforced, from Everard to Sarah Reed, Nicole Smallman, Bibaa Henry, Claire Parry, Katrina O’Hara, and many more. There’s a structural problem with the police; they allow this culture of male violence and impunity to flourish and stamp out any hope for women to fight back. The phrase ‘only a few bad apples’ does not apply when the Met’s use of physical force is a top-down approach from Pritti Patel through to Dick.
Though both women may have been forced to condemn the action around the Everard vigil, at the time of writing, the police crime, sentencing, and courts bill, sponsored by Patel’s office, is being given its second reading. If approved it will result in an expansion in the power given to the police with more freedom to act violently towards demonstrations against authoritarian institutions.
Trying to change this school of thought is a difficult one when political influences continue to perpetuate so many ideologies that contribute to the mindset of people like Couzens.
In saying that, there is a certain bleakness in the idea that things may remain this way for a while. Sure, Everard’s case may have sent shockwaves through the world and created some space for a conversation around women’s safety, but the fear and continued harassment remains at large.
The only option that is left in the short term is for women to protect themselves — and one another. It’s clear that even walking in brightly lit, popular pedestrian paths do not eradicate the risk of being attacked. Therefore the solution lies in going one better and traveling in packs, being armed with keys, pepper sprays, rape alarms. And most importantly, continuing to be vocal about Everard’s case and the implications this has had for all women.
Until we can address this problem in its entirety, then this fear and inability to trust will remain, for all women who have to brave the fray and hope that their fates won’t end the same way as Sarah’s.
