Sarah Everard’s Murder Must Be a Wakeup Call: We Need Real Change Now

More bobbies on the beat are not going to change misogyny at the heart of the police

It was 10.30 pm on a warm summer Friday night. 16 year old me had decided to walk back from my restaurant job when 10 minutes from home, someone grabbed me from behind and pulled out a knife.

I don’t need to tell you that this was a man holding the knife. Because you already know right?

This happened over twenty years ago but I can still remember the reverberating silence before he attacked, that second your instinct tells you something bad is going to happen that’s always a second too late, the adrenaline that kicks in and helps you run for your life as you escape.

There are no words to describe the fear when running from someone with a knife. You don’t look back. I ran until I found an elderly couple walking their dog. I couldn’t breathe let alone clearly explain but they managed to grasp the seriousness of the situation and called the police.

What would have happened if I didn't get away?

We all know. Because we are looking at her face now plastered across every newspaper in Britain. Sarah Everard. The normality of her life summed up by the last seen picture of her in a bobble hat and colorful trainers. Her age, 33. Her job, a marketing executive.

Her face, warm and friendly is familiar. Did you meet her once or does she just remind us all of a friend, a cousin, a niece, a neighbor, or a daughter?

Sarah’s normality and familiarity are the ice bucket of reality that we all need.

Every woman in the United Kingdom, for we can all stand together here, no matter of race, age, financial status, or how we voted in Brexit, has looked at the picture of Sarah Everard and thought with a shiver down our spine, ‘that could have been me’. ‘That could have been my daughter.’

Or even worse, that could be my daughter.

But I can also hazard a guess that not every man thinks the same.

Why? Because violence against women by men is much more prevalent than violence against men by women.

This is the problem. What are we going to do about it? More police on the streets, great I guess. Although wasn’t the man who has been charged a copper?

Or should we be trying to work out why some men have such violent tendencies? Why they target women with their anger? This was Marina Hynde’s point and yes this is at least trying to find the rot at the core.

But unfortunately working out why men are violent towards women is going to take a long time and we need change now.

The blaming and the judgment has to stop:

Sarah’s murder would have been treated completely differently by the media if she had been drunk, wearing a short skirt, or had any kind of ‘dubious’ past.

This is because we have become accustomed to blaming women in these situations. This has to stop now.

When the police arrived to take my story, they questioned my version of events.

Are you sure he had a knife?

They couldn't believe that a woman could escape a sexual assault from a man with a knife.

They questioned why I chose to walk home.

Why didn’t you get a taxi or ask for a lift?

Because I felt like a walk. I had finished work early. Why is it not possible for a woman to walk home from a restaurant? But to justify, the walk home was along a main road, I didn’t go down some shady cycle path. But even if I had why should that matter?

I felt guilty that I had chosen to walk home, that it was somehow my silly faulty that this had happened. My parents, my boss, and the police all blamed me.

We have to call out and stop the blaming and judgment of victims. This week I read Lucia Osborne-Crowley’s story, she was drunk when she was sexually assaulted so didn’t contact the police. I get that. Because if I had been drunk I know for a fact that they wouldn’t have believed me. I don't think my parents would have believed me. How can this be right?

We need to stop questioning women who admit to being assaulted, whether this is verbal or physical.

Women do not admit to these assaults lightly. Like many women explained during #metoo, I have never even mentioned half of the horrible things that have happened to me because of this reason.

If someone admits to an assault, do not doubt them, do not question them. If you doubt them or question them you are siding with the abuser. That’s called an accessory. Do you want to be seen as an accessory to a rapist?

‘Small’ crimes against women need to be taken seriously:

Policing needs a shake-up. I know we already figured that out with BLM, but they need to re-examine now how they prioritize crimes.

The police are letting women down. And Sarah's blood on their hands.

Their job is to pick up on clues but they keep on ignoring them. The police are bloody good at doing this with terrorists. They seem to know when someone is a potential extremist. But what about picking up on the clues when someone shows an inclination of violence towards women?

These glaringly obvious clues were there with Sarah’s murder. The police are currently being investigated after neglecting to follow up on a complaint about the man accused of her murder previously exposing himself in a fast-food restaurant.

What would have happened if they had investigated that? They might have stopped Sarah’s murder.

You see the police had the clues, they didn't have to even look for them. Two separate women made official complaints. But no one put two and two together and thought: maybe this guy who likes getting his dick out is a threat to women.

It might be forgivable if this was the only time they did it.

But they do it all the time. Men who kill women don’t just wake up one day all of a sudden angry and think I’m going to find a victim. No, they have been building up to it, and often the police have failed to investigate the clues.

Why are the police not doing this? Are they misogynist as well as racist?

Well, I’m no expert but I think we can say the clues if we choose to notice them are there. After all, racism and misogyny do seem to go together nicely. Of course, until fairly recently, misogyny was allowed. A man could beat the s**t out of his wife if he wanted to. It was a family matter. Even Sean Connery, the nicest man to come out of Scotland recommended beating a woman if she didn't agree with you.

For too long it has been considered by police that a man who gets a bit lairy with his wife and kids or gets his dick out in public is different from a man who rapes.

You might be wondering what happened with my case? Did they catch the guy and lock him up in a secure facility? Are you joking? Of course not. They even told me that they probably wouldn't find him.

This I think makes it clear that they weren’t going to bother trying to find the guy. Because as far as they could see I was fine and nothing serious had happened.

I have often wondered what happened to my attempted rapist? Did he improve his skills so that the next woman wouldn’t get away so easily? And if the police had taken my story more seriously could he have been stopped?

Everyone has a stake in this. We all need to work together to ensure that women feel safe. Safe to walk the streets and safe to report a crime. Crimes against women are never to be questioned, never to be accepted, and never to be justified.

Police need to make crimes against women a priority in the same way hospitals made head injuries a priority. Ignoring a ‘small’ crime against women is the same as ignoring a murder.

How many more Sarah’s do we need for attitudes and policing to change?

Doran Lamb is a freelance writer on addiction and mental health. She writes to challenge the stigma that exists as a result of mental health and through her writing wants the world to know that individual difference makes the world dynamic, sexy and beautiful. She is proudly an addict in recovery, a mother, and an opinionated woman, who has learned not to give a f**k what anyone thinks.