In February this year, I wrote a piece for a newspaper discussing life in London whilst I was working in a homeless shelter during lockdown. At that time, of course, Sarah Everard, Bibaa Henry, Nicole Smallman and Sabina Nessa were still alive, as were 77 other women who had yet to die by femicide in Britain this year. They did not know that their decisions to walk home from seeing a friend, to sit in a park, or to go to meet someone in a bar would cost them their lives – nor should they have had to think about it.
The details that have emerged about Wayne Couzens approaching, falsely arresting, handcuffing, kidnapping, raping and murdering Sarah Everard left me in a state of anger and shock, to the extent that on the night of his sentencing hearing, I sat up until the early hours of the morning and wondered how society had got to this point – how did a man like Couzens become selected as and continue to serve as a Police Officer, which gave him agency to approach Sarah and to abduct her as he did? This was a man known amongst colleagues as “The Rapist”, who belonged to a WhatsApp group populated by Police Officers who swapped a range of what is being called “discriminatory material” with other Officers. There was the matter of an incident where he may (or may not) have indecently exposed himself, which was not investigated at the time. For comparison, one of the clients in the shelter I worked at who was a foreign national committed the same offence, receiving a fine that took months to pay off. His name was also added to the Sex Offenders Register for five years. It’s a serious offence, if taken seriously. In contrast, Couzens remained serving in the Metropolitan Police Force, unchecked.
In the immediate aftermath of Sarah Everard’s death (and just before some of the women who attended a vigil in Sarah’s memory were also handcuffed behind their backs and put to the ground), The Met stated that the safety of women was a priority.
Working in a shelter where our personal safety was threatened to the point that the charity and local authority were obliged to take out an injunction against a former male resident who was never visited by the Police to be warned about his conduct (although he had moved just down the road and we gave them his address), I would argue that women in London have not felt that their safety is, on any scale, a priority to the force.
However, it is another incident that has stayed in my mind, and which makes me question the statement of the Met prioritising female safety, even more. Two months or so after Sarah Everard was killed, a male resident (we will call him Resident A) threatened to kill me. He had spent much of my shift being rude, drunk and aggressive. At one point I had to stop him, with another staff member, from setting fire to another resident’s clothes with his lighter, as he “didn’t like the way that they looked at him.” As Resident A’s behaviour was so threatening, I called the Police and relayed the aggressive conduct, the attempt to set light to someone else’s clothes and the fact that we could simply not keep other residents safe with him in the building.
When the Police did arrive, the two male officers asked me why they were there. They seemed surprised by the fact that they could arrest the person in question for his threatening behaviour, sighed loudly and stated: “It feels like you’ve just called us here to uphold your rules.” Having taken no action, they left the premises.
When I inevitably had to call the Police back as Resident A’s behaviour had escalated, they did exclude him from the premises. We ensured that he had his money and travel pass. Resident A was warned not to return to the premises for three hours. Of course, he did return before this, angrier than before, and this time with his arm wrapped in a scarf that we believed could be concealing a pen or knife (he had been heard asking people on the street outside to borrow a pen).
As we could not let him back into the building, Resident A began to punch the front doors to the building, and then the window to the office that I had moved to, in order to be out of sight from him at the front doors. I called the Police again (counting each punch to the window up to nine) and they arrived once more, this time with their sirens on, to arrest Resident A, who by this time had made the threat to kill me and a security officer. It was a long night, with an incident report to write up afterwards – and it need never have happened. It is only right that I point out how protective the other residents were towards us, but they should not have witnessed this and should not have been put at risk either.
How was this episode in any way putting the safety of women first? What were the Police waiting to happen and why did they enable this situation to escalate to the point where someone could have been injured, or died? I don’t know the answer to this question. When I complained to the Met about this incident, feeling that it could have been avoided entirely, the response was a phone call a couple of weeks later and the statement: “Those Officers aren’t two of mine, but I’ll have a word.” I never heard from the Met again, and in all honesty, I did not expect to.
Other incidents at the shelter showed that the Police found it difficult to put the welfare and safety of females to the fore of their minds.
From time to time, clients would be arrested. Inevitably, an all-male policing team would arrive to arrest vulnerable women. We would question this, and staff would insist on remaining present during these episodes, to try and protect those under arrest. One resident arrested was a woman with significant trauma and mental health needs, another resident dropped from the window of her room when the Police were on site, breaking bones and spending several weeks in hospital afterwards. She survived, but why was the method and manner of arrest carried out in such a way that risk was so heightened? One way to try and contain such situations would be to ensure that mixed male and female teams operate wherever possible. I know that shift patterns make this difficult, but it would be a start.
The shelter was, though, one of the few workplaces that I have experienced (and there have been several!) which could describe itself as being truly diverse and where the team supported each other when the going got tough, as it often did. We are still each other’s work family.
Chauvinism, misogyny and everyday sexism are often insidious, but they all start somewhere. It was evident at the shelter when the male residents chose to shout at and try to intimidate the female staff but did not behave in this way with the male workers.
It is ingrained in many of our schools, our culture, our language, and our workplaces. Recalling sixth form, I remember a male teacher who had a Page 3 picture on open display in his classroom. He would ask me (one of a few girls in an otherwise all male class) “if I liked his calendar.” I didn’t, but what do you say? Why were we put in this situation? I couldn’t change to another class. This picture stayed there for other year groups of much younger boys to see. The same teacher didn’t like it when girls spoke up and once told me to “go back to my pots and pans”. This was puzzling, as I hadn’t done Home Economics for some years. Some readers may think this is an inconsequential example, but what do we expect from male pupils if their male teachers don’t set a decent example of treating all students with respect?
The chauvinism continued, shown in small acts of denial. No, I couldn’t join the Oxbridge preparation group as it was “full” – full of boys and the men who taught them. And with everyday sexism, there comes a quiet, creeping acceptance that this is “just how it is.” As women, we are all too often embarrassed, silenced and humiliated into not challenging these moments of exclusion, that all too often become a daily occurrence before we have even left school.
I have worked in law firms whose conveyancing department walls were covered with Daily Star Page Three girl pictures (this goes back to when I was a 16-year-old Project Trident student – remember that?). I was given a copy of a pornographic magazine on a mini-pupillage and asked to “fact check it for errors” by a jovial male barrister.
On the gentler end of the scale, I have witnessed in more recent years, the parade of the (still) all white, all male, discussion panels and conference delegations from firms that should know better, places that themselves advise on discrimination matters. I know those who turn down invitations to speak on single gender panels and admire them, because by refusing to participate in the status quo, they promote change. If you believe in the equality of your employees, why not ensure that a balanced proportion of them attend the conferences that your firm pays to attend? Why not ensure that they too have visibility, a platform and a voice? It’s about treating every employee as an individual, giving everyone in your organisation the same opportunities for training and promotion. I don’t think that this is an unreasonable or unworkable proposal. Before anyone tells me to “go and join some women’s groups”, I don’t think that creating separate networking forums solves the problem, because this can lead to further segregation.
When I ask female friends about the everyday sexism that they face (everything from unhelpful comments in the workplace to tackling the gender pay gap – a whole other article), they all say the same thing: “I’m so tired of it.” We’re all tired of it – of not seeing ourselves reflected in meaningful numbers in high-level government jobs and in other senior roles, tired of calling it out, of willing everyday sexism and toxic masculinity to also be challenged by other men so that it will change more quickly, so that, ultimately, we can all be respected at school and work and stay safe as we choose to walk home.
Sarah Everard. Bibaa Henry. Nicole Smallman. Sabina Nessa. All women like us. They did nothing wrong. They should have got home safely.
Only when every institution has the courage to challenge the reality of everyday sexism and to stop it becoming misogyny, will these patterns start to change. Thank you for reading.
(This post was first published as an article in the Jersey Evening Post on Saturday, 9th October 2021).
Sarah Nibbs 