Tragic Sarah’s legacy: “Every woman has a story – now we’re being listened to”
The shocking abduction and killing of 33-year-old Sarah Everard has shone a light on the horrific level of violence against women in the UK – and sparked a new movement to stamp it out for good
After leaving her friend’s house in south London at around 9pm three weeks ago, Sarah Everard expected to be home within the hour. The 33-year-old marketing executive called her boyfriend on her way home and spoke to him for 15 minutes. But Sarah never made it back to her flat. Her boyfriend reported her missing the following day and, following a huge police search, her body was found in Ashford, Kent.
The man charged with her abduction and murder is a Metropolitan police officer, Wayne Couzens.
DEATH
While the Met Commissioner, Cressida Dick, insisted that “it is incredibly rare for a woman to be abducted from our streets”, statistics show stranger killings account for one-in-12 of all murders of women by men.
And between 2008 and 2019, 119 women were killed by men who were not known to them.
A recent investigation also revealed that almost all women aged 18 to 24 in the UK – a staggering 97 per cent – have been sexually harassed.
Sarah’s death sparked a national outpouring of grief and anger, with the details surrounding her death serving as a reminder of the fear women feel when walking alone. Thousands of people laid flowers in Clapham Common – a large park on Sarah’s route home. Even the Duchess of Cambridge was pictured at the memorial site, and later Kensington Palace released a statement saying, “She remembers what it was like to walk around London at night.”
The hashtags, #SheWasJustWalkingHome and #WeAreAllSarah began trending on Twitter, with women sharing their own experiences of harassment and assaults.
Jamie Klingler, 42, who works in marketing, was one of those who took to Twitter to express her shock. She soon connected with others, and became one of the co-founders of Reclaim These Streets, the group that organised a vigil for Sarah on 13 March.
Though it was cancelled by the Met for breaking COVID restrictions, thousands of women still attended – and shock scenes emerged of police officers pinning women to the ground in a bid to break up the protest. Jamie says, “After Sarah went missing, police knocked on doors in the area, telling women to stay inside. That made me so angry – why should women be locked up?
“After I tweeted about holding a vigil for Sarah, another group emailed that they had already contacted the council and police and asked if we should join forces, they had already named their collective Reclaim These Streets.
“We tried everything to persuade the police to let us go ahead – we suggested staggered start times and took legal action but they warned the organisers to stay away, or we’d be fined £10,000 each. When I turned the TV on that night and saw what had happened, I felt sick.”
CAMPAIGN
Now, Reclaim These Streets wants to continue to campaign for women’s safety. Jamie says, “We want to see street sexual harassment criminalised, more training for police officers around misogyny and sexism and more funding for domestic and sexual violence organisations led by women of colour, as we think it’s important that all women have a voice.
We’re also calling for the Mayor of London to put together a Violence Against Women and Girls strategy – part of this is to commit to record misogyny as a hate crime, which Boris Johnson agreed to last week, which felt like a huge win.”
One woman who was affected by Sarah’s death is Svenja O’Donnell. The news brought back memories of her own assault in October 2011. Svenja, 40, from Northamptonshire, says, “My own experience happened one night at around 10pm, when I was walking home from the cinema. I was in my local area and I was walking along a main road with streetlights. But then I noticed an older man following me. I felt threatened and paused at a bus stop, but instead of passing by, he waited with me, so I carried on walking, and he followed.”
Svenja pretended to make a phone call, in the hope it would deter the man, but he kept following. Trying to shake him off, she turned off the main road but, scared and confused, she realised that she was headed down a dark cul-de-sac and turned back on herself.
WORST FEARS
Svenja says, “He grabbed my arm. Clutching tightly, he said, “I know you won’t have sex with me, so I’ll make you.” I tried to stay calm, I couldn’t scream, I was so scared. He had my arm gripped and there was a tussle.”
Fortunately, a taxi driver saw them. She says, “He pulled up
beside us, and told me to get in. Panicked, I didn’t have time to stop and think, but my gut instinct was to trust him – and thankfully, he just wanted to help. I truly believe I would have been raped that night if it wasn’t for him.”
Back home Svenja called the police, but was shocked at the response she received. She says, “When I phoned 999, the call handler lectured me on wasting police time. He said nothing had really happened. I was stunned. Now, years later, I still don’t feel safe walking alone. I look back over my shoulder and I grip my keys between my knuckles, always on high alert. I’m a journalist, and I’ve worked in war zones, but I felt more unsafe in my own area than
I did in Afghanistan.”
Svenja says that Sarah’s case has highlighted that more needs to be done to keep women safe. She says, “Sarah could have been me, or any of my friends. Every woman has a story, and now because of Sarah, it feels like we’re finally being listened to.”