On Friday Sadly Sarah’s murder far from a one-off
MY eight-year-old daughter overheard me on a call yesterday talking about Sarah Everard.
‘Who was that girl you were talking about who died?’ she asked when I finished the meeting.
I tried to explain. She was a woman, a bit younger than me, who was walking home. She was on her way back from a friend’s house and a man pretending to be a police officer – actually, he was a real police officer, but he was pretending to be on duty – stopped his car and told her she was breaking Covid rules and said he was arresting her. Then he killed her.
I couldn’t tell her the full horrifying details. That this man, Wayne Couzens, had hired a car and bought adhesive tape and gone out looking for a lone female.
That after identifying his victim and staging a false arrest, Couzens had handcuffed the 33-year-old in the back of his car and driven her 80 miles to Kent.
Once there, he’d subjected his victim to a brutal rape before strangling her with his police issue belt. He
then filled a can with petrol and set her body on fire.
Her family’s statements in court this week will stay with me for a very long time. “You treated Sarah as if she was nothing,” said her sister. “Placed more emphasis on satisfying your sick, disgusting perversions than on a life. Her life. You disposed of my sister’s body like it was rubbish. Fly-tipped her like she meant nothing. She meant everything.”
“The impact of what you have done will never end,” her dad, Jeremy Everard told the Old Bailey. “The horrendous murder of my daughter, Sarah, is in my mind all the time and will be for the rest of my life.
“A father wants to look after his children and fix everything and you have deliberately and with premeditation stopped my ability to do that. I can never forgive you for what you have done, for taking Sarah away from us. You burnt our daughter’s body – you further tortured us – so that we could not see her again.”
Life in prison is not long enough for this despicable crime. It certainly isn’t long enough to atone for the grief suffered by Sarah’s poor family and friends.
But it’s not long enough for any of us. Sarah’s disappearance triggered a wave of anger about the lack of safety for women on Britain’s streets. Her murder motivated thousands to participate in action against gender based violence.
Protests and vigils were held under the #ReclaimTheStreets banner, thousands revealed their own experiences of misogyny and harassment as part of the #MeToo and #EveryonesInvited movements.
It felt as though it marked a turning point.
But still there are violent attacks on our streets and in our homes; most – but not all – of them perpetrated by men on women. In the past six months since Sarah Everard went missing, thousands of other women and girls have been verbally abused, physically assaulted or raped.
Eighty women have been killed by men (or where a man is the principal suspect) since Sarah’s murder. One woman dead every 2.5 days so far this year, according to the Counting Dead Women project.
Only this week, a man appeared in court charged with the murder of primary school teacher Sabina Nessa, whose body was found in a park in London.
It’s true that it’s rare, but it needs to become unheard of.
Murders are often described as ‘isolated incidents’. But they’re never entirely isolated. There are almost always red flags. And we need to identify and call out those red flags.
That starts at school, with children like my daughter being taught to call out unacceptable behaviour, sexism and harassment and understanding healthy friendships and relationships both online and in the playground.
As adults, we need stronger laws on sexual harassment so that women – and men – have the confidence to report verbal abuse.
And we need greater checks on the police to ensure we can trust those people in authority whose job it is to protect us.
I didn’t tell my daughter any of this. I just had to tell her that this was a one-off. That this was a nasty man who would be jailed for the rest of his life. That it never happens where we live. That it was incredibly rare for it to happen anywhere.
And I just have to hope that by the time she’s a teenager, the systemic failures that allowed a police officer to commit murder, that enable thousands of women every day to be harassed without retribution, that still see women assaulted on our streets and in homes every day are properly addressed so that women and girls feel safe on our streets and Sarah Everard really is a one-off.