'Wayne Couzens proves that flashers are potential predators - crimes escalate'

11 March 2023 , 15:52

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Wayne Couzens flashed three women in Kent before killing Sarah Everard (Image: METROPOLITAN POLICE/AFP via Gett)

Two young women sat opposite me on the train recently, silently scrolling their phones.

Then one of them gasped and showed her friend a “dick pic” just sent by a cyberflasher.

She had absentmindedly accepted some creep’s AirDrop, so I said she ought to take a screenshot and report it to British Transport Police.

Her friend just rolled her eyes. “It happens to everyone,” she shrugged. “All you can do is switch off AirDrop in settings.” Her mate did, then went back to scrolling.

But I noticed her anxiously scanning the carriage, wondering who the culprit might be.

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Cyberflashing is about to become a criminal offence, with perpetrators facing two years in jail. Research shows half of 18 to 24-year-olds have been sent unsolicited nude images by men.

Sarah Everard was killed by Wayne Couzens (PA)

But few report it and in 2019 British Transport Police recorded just 66 ­cyberflashings. I was shocked the train girl decided to do nothing.

Until I remembered the times I shrugged off actual flashers as a kid. I was eight the first time. A man in a car stopped to “ask me ­directions” with his penis propped in a road atlas.

A bloke sat beside me in the cinema and started masturbating when the lights went down, and I soon learned to avoid the park where “the dirty mac brigade” hung out. I’m not sure I even told my mum. I mean, they didn’t actually touch me . They were only flashers.

And yet I still sensed I’d better not laugh at them – just pretend I hadn’t seen anything.

Now I wonder how many unseen perverts have gone on to become sex attackers.

Like predatory cop Wayne Couzens who flashed three women in Kent, two a month before he abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard, 33.

He exposed himself twice at a fast-food restaurant in February 2021 and once in woodland in 2020.

Couzens, 50, got 19 months for the crimes on top of his whole life term.

But a victim told the court she was not taken seriously by cops and the judge agreed they did nothing to stop him.

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Research shows 5-10% of men who indecently expose themselves go on to commit contact offences. One in 1,000 will escalate to sexual violence.

But indecent exposure still goes under-reported as it is trivialised and shrugged off. Wayne Couzens is proof that we need to start taking “non-contact” sexual offences more seriously.

Because rapes and murders CAN be prevented. If we start identifying ­potential predators and don’t see them as “only” flashers.

Rachael Bletchly