The abduction and death of a marketing executive, Sarah Everard, 33, sparked a torrent of concern for women’s safety in London and the rest of the UK, with thousands of women telling their own stories. of harassment in a new increase in support for the #MeToo Movement.
Mrs. Everard disappeared after leaving a friend’s flat in south London on 3 March and caused a police search in the south-east of England. On Friday, police confirmed that the remains found in a wooded area southeast of the capital were his and that a postmortem examination was being conducted. A London Metropolitan Police officer has been arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and murder.
The case has caught the attention of Britain, in part because Ms. Everard had done many of the things that are often recommended to women to ensure their safety.
She was wearing bright, visible clothes when she left her friend’s apartment at 9pm to go home which should have taken her 50 minutes at most. He had called another friend to tell him he was on his way. And it had stuck to the well-lit main roads. However, she was abducted by a police officer and, according to investigators, suspected.
Many women have shared their own experiences of being harassed or feeling insecure walking the streets of the city.
Some described that they wore comfortable shoes in case they had to run or pretend to be involved in a loud phone call to deter potential attackers. Others explained how the wedge nails between the knuckles had become second nature, so that they would cause as much damage as possible if they had to attack in the hope of gaining enough time to get out safely. .
Police officers investigating the disappearance of Sarah Everard conducted a search in Deal, UK, on Friday.
Photo:
paul childs / Reuters
Author Julie Cohen said on Twitter that she once had to change trains because of three seemingly normal middle-aged men who had begun harassing her. “We can’t know which men are safe because even those who are supposedly safe feel able to humiliate us for fun,” he wrote.
Fern Brady, a Scottish comedian, remembered wondering how old she needed to be before she stopped worrying about being murdered for being a woman. He said he realized the answer was “never.”
UN Women, a United Nations agency, released a survey this week that found that approximately 70% of women and girls in the UK had experienced sexual harassment in public spaces and urged the government to do more to combat it. the problem. Among the findings, only 3% of women between the ages of 18 and 24 said they had not experienced any sexual harassment. It is also a global issue, said UN Women, which reported that in some cities around the world, nearly nine out of ten women feel insecure in public.
A group called Reclaim the Streets planned a vigil for Ms. Everard in London on Saturday evening. Similar meetings were planned elsewhere in the country, despite police warnings that would contravene Covid-19 blockade restrictions. Opposition Labor MP Harriet Harman was one of many who said she would attend, although it is unclear whether the event would continue.
“When the police advise women not to go out alone at night, women ask why they should be subjected to an informal curfew?” Mrs Harman told Parliament earlier this week. “It’s not the women who are the problem here, it’s the men.”
Andrea Leadsom, of the ruling Conservative party, said she was angry that women walking home in the dark should be afraid if someone else walks behind them.
Labor lawmaker Rose Duffield alluded to the months of Black Lives Matter racial justice protests that spread around the world after George Floyd was murdered in police custody in Minneapolis last year.
“Sarah Everard has lit the fire inside us the same way George Floyd did, that’s enough,” Mrs Duffield said.
Some politicians have suggested that men be subjected to a curfew. Although British government ministers quickly downplayed the idea, Welsh government leader Mark Drakeford said he would not rule it out if circumstances dictated. He later ruled out the possibility.
Meanwhile, anger is forming against London police over trying to avoid Saturday night and over the revelation that the detained officer suspected of kidnapping Mrs Everard had been arrested separately for an alleged indecent exposure at a restaurant fast food three days. before it disappeared.
Several lawmakers have called for the vigil to be allowed without any consequences for the organizers, who have told participants to put on masks and observe social distancing.
The Reclaim the Streets group that suggested the event tried to convince the London High Court to allow the vigil without legal repercussions. The court dismissed his challenge and refused to intervene.
Write to James Hookway to [email protected]
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