The kidnapping and murder of 33-year-old marketing executive Sarah Everard has unleashed a torrent of concern for the safety of women in London and the rest of the UK, with thousands of women telling their own stories of harassment in a new surge of support. to the #MeToo Movement.
Mrs. Everard disappeared after leaving a friend’s apartment in south London on March 3, triggering a police search in south-east England. On Friday, police confirmed that the remains found in a wooded area southeast of the capital were hers and that a London Metropolitan Police officer, Wayne Couzens, 48, was arrested and charged with Everard’s kidnapping and murder. .
Mr. Couzens, whose duties included guarding embassies, could not be reached immediately for comment, nor was it determined whether he had any legal representation.
The affair hit a nerve in Britain, in part because Everard did many things that women often do to ensure their safety.
She was wearing bright, visible clothes when she left her friend’s apartment at 9 pm for a trip back home that should have taken 50 minutes at most. She called another friend to say she was on her way. And she stayed on well-lit main roads. However, she was kidnapped – and, investigators suspect, by a police officer.
Many women shared their own experiences of being harassed or feeling insecure when walking the city streets.
Some described wearing comfortable shoes in case they had to run or pretend they were making a loud phone call to deter potential attackers. Others told how putting the keys between the knuckles became second nature, in order to inflict as much damage as possible if they needed to attack in the hope of gaining enough time to escape safely.
Law enforcement officers investigating the disappearance of Sarah Everard conducted a search in Deal, England, on Friday.
Photograph:
Paul Childs / Reuters
Author Julie Cohen said on Twitter that she once had to change trains because of three apparently ordinary middle-aged men who started harassing her. “We cannot say which men are safe, because even those who are supposed to be safe feel able to humiliate us for fun,” she wrote.
Fern Brady, a Scottish comedian, remembers asking herself how old she needed to be before she could stop worrying about being murdered for being a woman. The answer, she said she realized, was never.
UN Women, a United Nations agency, released a survey this week that found that about 70% of women and girls in the UK suffered sexual harassment in public spaces and urged the government to do more to combat the problem. Among the findings, only 3% of women between the ages of 18 and 24 said they had not experienced any sexual harassment. It is also a global issue, said UN Women, reporting that in some cities around the world, almost nine out of ten women feel insecure in public.
A group called Reclaim the Streets planned a vigil for Everard in London on Saturday night. Similar meetings have been planned in other parts of the country, despite police warnings that they would violate Covid-19’s blocking restrictions. Harriet Harman, a Labor opposition MP, was one of many people who said she would attend, although it is unclear whether the event will continue.
“When the police advise women not to go out at night alone, they ask why they need to be subjected to an informal curfew?” Mrs. Harman told Parliament earlier this week. “It is not women who are the problem here, it is men.”
Andrea Leadsom of the Conservative Party said she was angry that women who walk home in the dark must be afraid if someone is walking behind them.
Labor lawmaker Rose Duffield alluded to the months of Black Lives Matter protests for racial justice that spread around the world after George Floyd was killed in police custody in Minneapolis last year.
“Sarah Everard rekindled the fire within us in a very similar way to what George Floyd did – that’s enough,” said Duffield.
Some politicians suggested that men be subjected to a curfew. While British government ministers quickly downplayed the idea, Welsh government leader Mark Drakeford said he would not rule it out if circumstances determined it was necessary. He later dismissed the possibility.
Meanwhile, anger is growing towards the London police for trying to prevent Saturday’s vigil and for the revelation that the officer in custody on suspicion of kidnapping Mrs. Everard was arrested separately for allegedly indecent exposure in a fast-food restaurant. -food three days before it disappears.
Several lawmakers called for the vigil to take place without consequences for the organizers, who advised participants to wear masks and observe social distance.
The Reclaim the Streets group that suggested the event tried to persuade the London High Court to allow the vigil to continue without any legal repercussions. The court rejected the challenge and refused to intervene.
Write to James Hookway at [email protected]
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