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Sarah Everard, Sabina Nessa and too many others

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I am not sure what I want to say about this. The details of Sarah Everard’s rape and murder by a serving police officer are utterly horrifying. Sabina Nessa was a much loved teacher; a woman, like Sarah, just going about her normal life. In these and so many cases, men took away their lives to serve their own gratification – because they could; because, in some sick way that is hard for most of us to comprehend, they obviously thought it was OK to do so.

I have seen so many comments from women saying that men – even well-meaning ones – simply have no idea what it is like to be a woman, thinking about how and when they go out; acutely conscious of any lone man on the street. Whereas most men don’t have to give these things a second thought – if I want to go out for a run in the dark after work I happily will. That option isn’t available for half of the population without a level of care that simply should not be necessary.

The problem is us. In the way we view women as sexual objects. In the way we exercise power over them. In the way our Society has been built around the male perspective. In the way, because we all think we are decent people (and most of us are), we fail to empathise and therefore to understand and address the problem; in the way we have created a society that is failing to protect women on our streets and even often in their homes.

It is obvious that the Police need to respond immediately and ensure that no woman can ever accosted by a single male police officer, and that women know this to be the case. But this isn’t just about how we organise our policing, or how we light our streets. It isn’t even just about how we educate our young people, though God knows that’s part of it. It is about something much more fundamental in our society and how it is so often modelled on the worst aspects of men’s psyches. In the first instance we men have to own up to the problem and think how individually we behave and act to address it. But that won’t solve it. That won’t stop there being another Sarah, another Sabina. I don’t know what will do that and it makes me despair.

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Comments

  1. I’m reluctant to wade into this debate, as it’s a minefield where even the most well-meaning observation is likely to be open to misinterpretation. What I will say as a 60 year old man is that I have lived long enough to realise that while society moves forward in small steps, the sins of the fathers always seem likely to be repeated by successive generations. We are all much more aware of sexism, misogyny and racism than we were when I was young, but all three are alive and well, and indeed positively thriving right across the globe. Hatred and brutality towards others seems to be ingrained in the human psyche, and I’m not sure what the solution is, or even if there is one. That doesn’t mean we should be passive and not try to make changes, but it’s all profoundly depressing.

  2. These horrible crimes are heart-breaking.

    Wise words, Boneshaker. There are a lot of experienced professionals in this field whose opinions are worth listening to. I would rather listen.

    But what I will say is that there probably all kinds of organisations working to make the streets safer in the UK

    Recently I joined something here called Nattvandrare. (Night Wanderers).

    https://nattvandrarna.se/

    It consists of groups of parents who go out on walkabout on Friday and Saturday night to keep the streets safer for teenagers and young people. When I attended the opening meeting, I was impressed by all the different groups and organisations who are working in this field.

    Hopefully, this organisation helps to make the streets safer for young women too.

    I’d better not get too self-righteous! I haven’t been out on patrol yet. My sofa is far too cosy!

    • It’s astonishing what kind of impact these Night Wanderers can have. In the late 90s I was part of such a group in Berlin. We walked the streets in groups of two or three, in a quarter full of young hoodlums, drug dealers and worse. Even if there was only one or two guys you could actually talk to (“Hey Kevin, I’llhave a word with your mum tomorrow morning at the grocer’s…”) in a few weeks time the atmosphere on some corners had changed. For the better, of course.

  3. The impact statement by Sarah Everard’s mother was heartbreaking. I remember once, many years ago, a female colleague of mine asked what advantages I thought there were to being male.” Being able to pee standing up” was the only thing that came to mind. Now I feel ashamed of that comment and I can’t believe I was such an fool.

    • In the normal everyday run of things, we’re (by which I mean blokes) all guilty of (un)thinking like that from time to time; there’s no need to feel ashamed. You can’t go through life constantly on edge for fear of saying something that hindsight will reveal to be shallow or flippant, when a serious thought would not have pushed the same words out of your mouth. I’m sure almost every thinking male has said something dumb along the same lines at some point.

      The real problem is revealed when you realise that there are a depressing number of males who simply don’t understand the consideration you wish you’d made; it’s beyond their comprehension to grasp. Those are the problem people. Those are the ones who should feel ashamed, but are too dim or culturally blinded to even see the issue.

      • Exactly this. It’s Equal Opportunities (or similar) week and I sat in an hour-long seminar by one of the co-authors of “The accidental sexist”.

        I thought “Done that… seen that… Christ, do people really do that?”

        I then had to put my head in my hands at some others in the Q&A. It was apparent which ones don’t have sisters/wives/partners/daughters. They must all have had a mum, surely?

  4. I work as a mental health worker alongside the police (and yes, I know there is a huge spotlight on the police force and its culture due to this bastard), and I come away from most shifts feeling appalled and heartsick at the disgusting, abusive behaviour of so many men who manifest violent, coercive misogyny as a way of life.

  5. It is a terrible crime,. My daughters are still young, but when my older one cycles off to school, I watch until she reaches the corner to make sure that her friends are there and they cycle together. This morning she came back because she was early and while she was waiting, she didn’t like the way a man on the opposite corner of the crossroads was looking at her. She is vigilant, but apparently so was Sarah Everard. It’s going to be like this for the rest of our lives, I fear. And Bonn is a relatively low crime city.

    Men can be terrible and abuse our relative power in society, but it takes a special kind of terrible to commit crimes like this. The only prospect for hope I can see is in the work of people like Bob Johnson, who managed to transform the anger of the worst violent offenders in Parkhurst prison. To understand and help them face and overcome the desperate childhood terrors that lay dormant and destructive in their psyches.

    “His renown largely stems from his time as consultant psychiatrist in the Special Unit for dangerous prisoners in Parkhurst, on the Isle of Wight, UK. While there he devised his talking cure techniques around which the James Nayler Foundation and his personal crusade against psychosurgery and psychiatric medication are formed. His work formed the basis of a documentary investigation by the BBC’s flagship programme Panorama.

    There was evidence, during Bob Johnson’s work with some of the most disturbed and dangerous men in our prisons, that through his ways of treating them there were marked changes in their behaviour and their approach to themselves and others. The close work with the early life experiences of damaged people, reaching to their ‘terror and rage’ and enabling them to speak about the unthinkable showed remarkable results both in the lives of individuals in the unit but also in the general ambience of Parkhurst’s C Wing, in which disturbed and dangerous prisoners were housed. The level of emergency alarms dropped dramatically, as did the use of medication and incidents of self-harm and of violence“.

    • My wife is a child psychotherapist and through learning osmosis I’ve come to understand that the overwhelming majority of abusers were themselves abused. It’s perhaps obvious to everyone but seeing actual statistics confirming it is another thing.

      It seems the only way to break this cycle is to to throw enormous amounts of money into mental health (a catch all term but I’m sure you understand the shorthand I’m employing) , but this will never happen, given that the results won’t be apparent for at least a generation. That to me is as depressing as the frequent rate at which these appalling crimes occur.

      • I am no expert in this area, but the remarkable thing about what Bob Johnson and others seem to be saying is that talking is the important key to unlocking and freeing people from childhood trauma. Although training is clearly needed to successfully manage that frightening process of what he describes as opening the box, it doesn’t require costly medicines or healthcare resources.

        One of my very best friends is a leading advocate and trainer in Open Dialogue, a model of mental health care pioneered in Finland which involves a consistent family and social network approach where all treatment is carried out via a whole system/network meetings, which always include the patient.

        72 per cent of those with first episode psychosis treated via an Open Dialogue approach returned to work or study within two years, despite significantly lower rates of medication and hospitalisation compared to treatment as usual, which is probably why the cash-strapped NHS has taken an interest in it.

  6. Sometimes the discipline of 160 characters on Twitter works wonders when expressing my thoughts..

  7. Despite my interest in sport (and, frankly, at the level I view and research sport, women are as numerous as men), I go out of my way to avoid the male species.
    Don’t like them much.

    Did an archival-type stint today… me in a room with two women… well aware of space (I hope), and always (I hope) listening and mindful of any negativity (I don’t hope) that might exist in the room.

    I prefer women.
    I do stuff, little stuff in the village – Man: “What are you doing?” – Woman: “Oh, that’s a good idea.” It’s a different mentality entirely.

    Mind, my New Year’s Resolution was to be the polar opposite of Fat Boy J. – someone on this website mocked that… but it’s a great resolution for a male in this awful country now…

    … if you’re the opposite of him, you’re on the right side of sexism, homophobia, racism and even bagism (a reference he wouldn’t understand, which makes it wonderful).

  8. In the event someone believes they are in “real and imminent danger” the Met advised they “must seek assistance – shouting out to a passer-by, running into a house, knocking on a door, waving a bus down or if you are in the position to do so calling 999”.

    Let’s just hope the public do their duty and save you from the police, eh?

  9. What I am about to say may seem like I am going off topic, but please indulge me.

    Before I start, I would just like to say that I know that I am not much of a writer, so apologies in advance if I seem to ramble & struggle to make my point clearly.

    I was recently a member of a Facebook site called “debate the left with facts “ (it does neither – it is just a right wing echo chamber).

    I lasted a few weeks then had to leave, it was wearing me out. I found it amazing to see so many experts in global warming, American politics, the inner workings of the EU, economic theory & so on.

    During the recent football tournament, there was outrage about the England team taking the knee. I really could go on, but I think that you can get the gist of the place.

    Basically it is anti woke culture.

    As an ex serviceman (Royal Navy 71-96), it could be reasonably assumed that the political stance of that site would be catnip to me & people with a similar background.

    I am happy & proud to say that there is a small, but determined collection of ex armed forces who belong to anti racist/sexist groups.

    Service humour is still there, but it is not sexist or racist (trust me, that can & does exist).

    So, while I was a member of the site, I initiated & took part in many discussions (I won’t call them debates because they weren’t – they were just pile ons).

    Because of the overwhelming majority of members shared similar, if not identical views (everyone knows that Trump won the last election, the death penalty should be restored etcetera), any view that varied from this by even a sliver meant that person was a raging Marxist, coming from my parents having been brother & sister.

    I believe that the site & its opinions are a reflection of the state of politics in this country post referendum/Brexit.

    A serious lack of tolerance to anyone who does not share their views. A belief that all sexual crime in this country is carried out by refugees &/or illegal immigrants, coupled with an unwillingness to see &/or accept any view that differs from their own.

    I did warn you that I would struggle to get my point over & I am not sure that I have. But I believe that sites like this & no doubt many others create & encourage an atmosphere of hate & intolerance that (to me at least), allo people like this wretched policeman to do what he did almost with impunity.

    I read on Twitter (yeah, I know) that his work nickname was “the rapist”, & he had recently exposed his genitals in a restaurant.

    Let that last paragraph sink in.

    Apologies for rambling, but I have very strong feelings about this.

    Please excuse me while I go & put on my tin hat.

    • Please don’t apologise for what you write, Jack. I ramble with the best of them. What you did was effectively set the context for your thoughts, which you expressed clearly and lucidly*

      *now THAT is rambling (in short form) – the two adverbs mean the same thing

    • That’s a great post Jack. I have no idea if this individual took sustenance and justification for his planned actions from the toxicity and self affirmation of so many corners of the internet, including the mainstream social media sites, but there is no doubt that many do. And we are paying a heavy price for that.

  10. I only wish to make one observation. It’s an observation that is culled directly from being sixty five years of age and having during those sixty five years had the privilege to know a lot of women. I’ve known them as a son, a brother, a husband, an uncle, a boyfriend and simply as a friend and every single one of them have told me at one time or another that every single one of them had at one time or another been harassed or worse, sometimes far, far worse by males.
    I am often not proud of being a man.
    I wish with every fibre of my being that that wasn’t so.

  12. The victim statements from Sarah Everard’s parents were some of the most harrowing things I’ve ever read. But there are other victims in this: Couzens’s wife and children. What must they be going through? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

  13. This story has received some coverage here in Australia, but I haven’t seen much about the background of Couzens. This was the act of a predatory killer who has either killed before or would have killed again, had he not been caught. Conversations about societal attitudes to women are irrelevant when talking about psychopaths like him: he didn’t do this because of permissive, toxic societal values.

    Did he have a history of worrying behaviour?

    • There had been allegations of flashing (driving without trousers on specifically). But yes, I know very little of criminal psychology but it seems unlikely to me that a 48 year old man would plan and carry out a crime such as this as a first offence.

    • Psychopaths, if he is one, don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re not comic book monsters who live free of the contexts and experiences which shape the rest of us.

      “Othering” Couzens is exactly what the Met are doing: giving it the No True Scotsman. It’s so utterly typical of their bullshit, and I don’t think it’s a line the rest of us should be taking. It might feel convenient to act like societal objectification and casual violence towards women isn’t a factor here, because it lets so many off the hook, but it’s the dead wrong take, IMO.

      • This wasn’t casual violence towards women, this wasn’t an escalation of domestic violence and this wasn’t the inevitable end point of sexism in our society. It was something very different: a planned, predatory attack by a psychopath with the specific intention of killing a random woman. As abhorrent as all of these scenarios are, I doubt they share the same causal lineage.

          • Nor do I.
            These things have starting points in attitude.
            The attitude is learned from upbringing and one’s peers.
            And it can escalate into something a lot worse than just thoughts and words.

        • I’m with hedgepig here. Although I’m not sure what ‘casual’ violence towards women means, violence in any expression, be it ‘domestic’, psychopathic, or state-sponsored, is the use of physical force to deliberately injure, abuse, damage, or destroy. Objectifying women means depriving them of their personhood, their identity. A culture which allows that to continue creates the fertile soil for all these expressions of violence to flourish.

          Yes, there is something separate about psychopathy – a mental illness, I talk about in posts above. But an organisation that deals with the use of physical force must pay particular attention to any risks that that use of force degenerates to violence.

          As women take on more roles, jobs and positions of power in society, I think it will become easier for them to become subjects, not objects. But, as a man, it’s important for me to deny that objectification, that othering, whenever it occurs.

          • I meant casual in the sense of everyday. For many, many men, the laddish sexual objectification of women is totally routine. When you treat a class of people as objects for your use and entertainment, you’re on a continuum which ends in violence. You probably won’t ever go any further along it, but many will. When you catcall a stranger, you’ve inched along it. “Come on love, gizza smile” – another inch. When you insist on “getting her number” you’ve inched a bit further. When you CALL the number in front of her to make sure it’s not fake, it’s another couple of inches. Brushing against a woman on the bus for kicks: further. Now you’re not far from being the guy who gropes, who up-skirts, who follows. And those guys will rape and kill if the conditions are right.

            A lot of men simply have no idea how many of their friends and colleagues are violent towards their partners. You definitely know someone who is. Violence against women is endemic, and constantly ignored and minimised. Every woman knows it, and lives their life accordingly. Wayne Couzens isn’t some freak outlier: he’s the logical product. Why wouldn’t a man like that want to become a copper?

            Incidentally: I read today that he didn’t wipe his phone for six days, until 39 minutes before his arrest. Think that’s a coincidence? Several of his colleagues acted as character witnesses at his sentencing hearing after he’d admitted raping and murdering Sarah Everard, and burning her body so that her family could never see her again. Every one of them should be fired.

            I’ll say it again: this stuff is in the air we breathe. He wasn’t a freak outlier. He’s the logical product.

            • Very well articulated, thank you.

              Violence in all its forms is a primitive, instinctive reaction to threat (fight or flight) and fear. Where that fear comes from needs to be addressed.

              • Honestly I think for a lot of guys, the primal fear is not being the specialest handsomest boy in the whole big wide world. Who to take it out on? Well, luckily, half the available population is smaller, weaker and has traits he finds attractive. Result: a bubbling hate-soup, which he hardly understands and may not even be consciously aware of.

                • That’s really interesting, because I have the feeling that in a lot of patriarchal cultures, boys are treated like little princes who can do no wrong, a feeling encouraged by their primary carer, their mum. Growing up, there must be such an expectation for all women to see them in the same adoring light, that when they get called to account for their egotism, they can’t take it – it conflicts with their core self perception.

                  • I think we agree on where it comes from, though I’m not blaming mum any more than dad, if present. It’s that cold water of reality. They don’t like it up em.

                    • I don’t think blame needs to be apportioned when it’s the cultural norm, and I take the point about both parents being responsible influences. I suppose I was seeing it from the perspective of the little prince – the person with whom he gets his first encounter with women. But certainly, the cold water of reality rings true as a metaphor.

  14. Not quite as severe, and not attracting as many headlines was the recent judgement against the Met and others in the Wilson vs MPS case, involving an undercover officer who had a realtionship with an unknowing woman.

    It’s chilling on a number of levels, and left me with the feeling that the Met, and Police generally, are largely uncontrolled.

  15. Perhpas worth reflecting that far, far more women are attacked and indeed killed by people they know. That’s important in terms of the response to the latest murders, which will doubtless include demands that more should be done about investigating indecent exposure and the like. Where I live, minor sex offences do indeed sometimes take a back seat, as the Police go from one report of D.V. to the next. It was the same story where I lived before and I suspect it’s the same pattern pretty much everywhere.

    • My other half’s daughter was a police officer for a year after graduating, though that didn’t work out as a career and she is now teaching. Some of the confrontation management techniques she learned in the police have their uses in the classroom too. Anyway, I once asked her what her typical working day involved. She rolled her eyes and replied, ‘So many domestics.’

    • Only about 7% of reported rape cases result in a conviction. I wonder what that percentage is for “minor” sex offences is if they take a back seat.

      • I’m a bit reluctant to write this, cos it’s potentially very unhelpful, but… my cousin is a detective inspector in a vice squad. She reckons that “four out of five” reported rape cases she deals with are women who want to get back at their ex and they are usually swiftly disproved when it’s clear that the man in question has a valid alibi.

          • There was no “attitude”, just her reality. She’s actually a very lovely person and as far as I know an excellent policewoman. As I say, I’m aware it’s not a helpful thing to say, but might explain some the disparity between reported crimes and convictions.

              • No worries, thanks for the apology. I agree there are a lot of reasons to be sceptical and it is a very unpleasant thing to say considering I have no idea of how representative it is of any wider reality. But she in particular would be the last person to lie about anything like that as it was her own personal experience that led her to persue her chosen field.

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