'Male violence against women and girls is an epidemic on every street in the UK'

08 March 2023 , 15:20

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Jess Phillips during the International Women's Day debate in the House of Commons in 2021 (Image: PA)

I receive plenty of heartbreaking emails throughout the year, none more so than those I get in the days before I read the list of women killed by men each year on International Women’s Day.

The women from the Femicide Census send me the list a week in advance and always without fail in that final week, there are new names to add to the list - women killed or found that week.

The most famous example in 2021 was Sarah Everard whose name was added to my speech in pencil moments before I rose to my feet to speak.

While others hold happy International Women’s Day events I spend this week pouring over domestic homicide reviews, and newspaper articles about women slain in their homes and on our streets.

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Couzens kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard just days after exposing himself in a McDonalds (PA)

'Male violence against women and girls is an epidemic on every street in the UK'

Sarah Everard was kidnapped on March 3, 2021 (PA)

I read through inquest findings after the fact of women whose names I’d read many years before.

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The stories are always the same, police didn’t assess risk properly, agencies didn’t speak to each other, and across our town and county borders, health data, police data, and children’s social care data fell through the cracks.

Violent perpetrators are released and bailed on investigation without any semblance of risk management in place to protect the public.

Every single enquiry into the murder of a woman by a man asserts that lessons must be learned. This week I’ve read that in inquests from murders in 2016 and from reports drafted by probation and police in 2023.

I wonder when we will actually stop saying this and actually learn the lessons.

I have long dreamed of a day when political leaders would talk about our nation’s security and specifically include the epidemic of male violence against women and girls.

I could have wept when Keir Starmer was so explicit about how it would be a driving force for him to end it when he launched his five missions for the government.

It isn’t an add-on for us, it is the core. Lessons will never be learned until across every department of government violence and discrimination against women and girls isn’t just merely an add-on only mentioned or cared about on International Women’s Day as it is at the moment.

Zara Aleena was an aspiring lawyer when her life was cut short last summer by Jordan McSweeney (PA)

Abi Fisher was a teacher and had recently had a baby before her husband Matthew Fisher killed her and dumped her body in the woods (MEN MEDIA)

We should consider femicide and the crimes that lead up to it such as rape, and sexual and domestic abuse as an epidemic that exists on every street in our country.

The Killed Women campaign led by bereaved families and many of the families of women killed this year and for years before will join me on Thursday in the chamber of the House of Commons as I read this year's list of women slain.

They know the urgency, and they know lessons haven’t yet been learned, but like me, they have hope that in the future they will. I promise I will never rest.