‘A hero for all who refuse to be cowed’ ‘Tories’ weak laws cannot keep us safe’
HER name is Sarah Everard. She was 33 years old. She worked in marketing, after graduating from Durham University, and was “incredibly kind”.
A week ago, her lovely, kind face wasn’t known to most of us, but now we feel so much as if it was.
What happened to her didn’t happen in a vacuum but a cauldron of daily male violence and abuse. Witness the flowers not seen since the death of another young woman in a Paris subway. As Kate showed us, fear of male violence grips duchesses too.
Now we find ourselves retraumatised as women and as a nation by grotesque scenes on Clapham Common. It’s not enough that a male police officer is alleged to have murdered Sarah. His colleagues, ordered by a state increasingly abusing its chauvinistic powers, dragged women to the ground.
This was a vigil but make no mistake it was also a protest. We are not angry. We are incandescent. Sarah is all of us who dare to walk the streets after dark, who refuse to have our freedom curtailed by male violence. She is a hero. She just wanted to go home.
I WISH the heavy hand of the law had been there for me when I was sexually assaulted – and there for every woman I’ve ever worked with, too.
The reality is whether Cressida Dick stays or goes doesn’t make women in this country more safe.
The Bill today does absolutely nothing to increase sentences for rapists, stalkers, or those who batter, control and abuse women. It does
Shadow Minister for Safeguarding
nothing about street harassment and assaults. You can get more for fly-tipping than you can get for stalking.
Under the Conservatives, rape convictions have fallen to an all-time low, and domestic abuse conviction rates are dropping off a cliff. The police haven’t done enough to increase charging. Let’s face it – they don’t have the resources after years of cuts.
As somebody bringing up boys, I’m not going to give mothers another reason to be bashed. We’ve got a responsibility to look at the way we educate, the way all of society operates, which means that women end up being treated as objects on our streets.
It’s not all men, but it is all women.
THE Daily Record has successfully campaigned to help reduce the number of drug-related deaths in Scotland – spurring the Scottish Government to take action by increasing the number of rehab beds available to addicts.
In January, the First Minister announced a £250million war chest to fight the drugs crisis.
Police assessed there were 1346 suspected drug deaths in 2020 with a spike in December. That is 10 more than the 1336 it estimated the previous year, although that figure was lowered to 1264 in the official statistics for 2019 after delayed toxicology tests.
The funding, worth £50million a year, will kick in in April. It will include an annual £20million to offer residential rehab to every person who asks for it. At the time of her announcement, Nicola Sturgeon said: “There is no doubt that the Daily Record’s commitment to tackling drug deaths in our communities has helped inform the debate.”