July 24, 2024 - 10:00am
The figures are staggering: two million women in England and Wales will be affected by male violence every year. That’s one in 12, and the situation amounts to a “national emergency”. The numbers are contained in an analysis of violence against women and girls by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), published yesterday.
It’s made headlines, not least because senior officers are highlighting the role of “toxic” misogynists such as the influencer Andrew Tate, who is facing charges of rape and sex trafficking in Romania. They’ve revealed that officers dealing with violence against women are in touch with counter-terrorism teams, comparing the risk to young men being radicalised by terrorist organisations.
I have long argued that there is a link between domestic violence and terrorism. Nor am I in any doubt about the impact of misogynists and online porn on the behaviour of boys and men who abuse women. But there is a bigger picture here, and we’re in danger of being distracted from it. The word missing from the NPCC report is “impunity”. For years now, it has been clear that the vast majority of rapists and abusers have nothing to fear from the criminal justice system.
In February, statistics emerged trumpeting the fact that the number of rape prosecutions in England and Wales increased by 54% in the 12 months to June last year. But the devil is in the detail: they rose from just 1,410 to 2,165. Around three-quarters of defendants will be convicted, but it’s a fraction of the almost 70,000 rapes reported to the police each year. The volume of domestic abuse incidents is much higher, around 900,000, but results in just over 50,000 prosecutions.
The reasons are quite clear, and I’m afraid the police are squarely in the frame. Over a long period, their ability to deal with sexual and domestic violence has been severely compromised by the presence of flagrant offenders in their own ranks. Wayne Couzens was a serving Metropolitan Police officer, protecting embassies and carrying a gun, when he abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard. David Carrick, another member of an elite diplomatic protection squad, raped at least 12 women and used his position to terrify them into silence.
Last year, it was revealed that more than a quarter of 548 Met officers accused of domestic and sexual misconduct were continuing to work without restrictions. Indeed, the Casey Report, commissioned after Everard’s murder, recognised that the Met’s vetting processes do not “effectively root out bad officers”. It also pointed to the force’s failure to identify “clear warning signs” among recruits, such as previous accusations of indecent exposure or domestic abuse.
What do perpetrators have to fear from police forces that either fail to recognise or tolerate such extreme misogyny among their officers? No wonder women who reported rape found themselves treated as suspects, told to hand over everything from their mobile phones to school reports. After an outcry, there are now restrictions on how much personal information detectives can demand, but the inevitable result of decades of victim-blaming has now been laid bare.
One in 20 adults will be perpetrators of violence against women each year, according to the NPCC report. (Adults? Surely they mean men.) The resources needed to identify and prosecute this volume of offenders are mind-boggling, but it’s too easy to point to creatures like Tate. The police must bear a heavy responsibility for a situation in which millions of abusers and predators are walking around without any fear of arrest, let alone conviction.
Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.
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SubscribeOne factor that might explain Italians’ relative tolerance for fascism is the manner in which the Italian fascist régime ended. In 1943 the Grand Fascist Council deposed Mussolini, who was replaced by one of his own generals, Badoglio, who had committed atrocities in Italy’s colonial campaigns in Africa. The deposed Mussolini was imprisoned but then released by German commandos, and he set up a rump fascist state in northern Italy under German control. The fact that prominent fascists betrayed the Duce and joined the Allies was no doubt the circumstance that prevented an Italian version of the Nuremberg trials. As a matter of fact countless fascist criminals were never punished.
The fact that fascist crimes were not denounced in open court, that no heart-rending testimonies were publicly broadcast, that fascist criminals were not hanged, set the stage for a gradual rehabilitation.
A considerable amount of axe-grinding going on in this article. Just one observation: if ‘a new low’ for the secularists is being slightly ascerbic about theists, it compares very favourably with theists’ historic and current lows; the anti-science resulting in the spreading of the virus, not to mention the murders, pogroms, wars….
Alarmist Feminazi propaganda unfounded in fact, meant to garner support to expand the misandrist agenda to dehumanize men and rob them of any and all basic human rights. I cannot believe this rubbish is being peddled on this forum.
IPV Facts:
Most IPV is initiated by females
33% or 1/3 of all IPV victims are male
In the UK and most other countries number of beds for male victims of IPV = 0
Number of innocent boys denied housing in publicly funded shelters as a consequence of IPV = >6600
Let’s deal in facts and not hysterical fictions.
Test Case: In the recent Australian Bush fires Femanazi propaganda article claimed “extraordinary claims firefighters battling Australia’s devastating blazes will return home to BASH their partners” (https://www.dailymail.co.uk…
This claim is based on a so called “Study”, which like all Feminazi propaganda does not stand up to acedemic rigor even slightly. This was based on a survery of a total of 46 people, all who were women who responded to a newpaper advertisement and were not asked if their partner was fighting Bush fires but generally asked the timeframe and correlated that with bush fire activity in the general area.
It is time to call out this type of propaganda wanting to disguise itself as jounalism. Shame on you Joan Smith spreader of hate and lies.
I am a secularist – but I also acknowledge the good that religious institutions do, incuding my local church. I support my church when I can – because they do good work with the homeless and in the community, not because I am a Christian. Is this really the time to be trying to drive a wedge between various religions, atheists etc when we are all facing a global pandemic?
Thanks for this interesting and informative article. One small caveat:-
“…The crisis has been unimaginable…”? Depends on your imagination, and memory. History is replete with far stranger and worse crises, real and imaginary.
Only in the US is the far-right against the welfare state, because of the race history. « No Germans will be cold or hungry » promised Hitler and it may be the only time he kept his word. He never promised they wouldn’t be killed but still.
I would not ring alarm bells or shout from loudspeakers yet. The secular worldview will not get weakened “If different religions all get along,…” In true sense, and by definition, major religions will never get along. Only on surface, yes, they may and do, forced by .. well … secular politics of states. In my opinion, the defenders of theism should not focus on Die-Hard atheists (out of fashion lately) but on (exponentially!) rising numbers of agnostics. The After-Covid19-World may have one more polarization on top of Liberals v. Conservatives, Globalists v Populists, etc. The “educated” may turn toward agnosticism or what-ever and “masses” will seek comfort in even more orthodox religious faiths.
I believe that every religion worship to the same God with a different name, at the end of the story humanity needs to have a superior deity to believe specially in times of adversity… for good or 4 bad
Thank God all that Richard Dawkins stuff has largely been going out of fashion