Life in jail for Sarah Everard’s killer isn’t enough to prevent future violence against women and girls

Editorial: Women and girls have been the most betrayed, both by this crime and a wider official indifference

(Dave Brown)

If evil exists then one face of it would be that of Wayne Couzens. During the trial, the prosecution stated that Couzens’s crime could be summarised in five gruesome words: deception, kidnap, rape, strangulation, fire. That it was premeditated, indeed meticulously planned, has become clear from the various purchases Couzens made in person and online in the weeks before he struck. He conducted reconnaissance missions. He hired a car especially for the purpose. He purchased petrol for one purpose only. He used his specialist knowledge to avoid detection. He knew exactly what he was doing.

The crime was all the more heinous because it was committed by a serving police officer, using his lawful warrant card and abusing the respect of the office he held. All Sarah Everard wanted to do that evening was walk home safely. A police officer, there to protect the public, took her life. Her family told of how the manner of her death deepened their grief, and of what a fine young woman Sarah was.

Sarah’s broken mother, Susan, stood up in court and said that she keeps a dressing gown of her daughter’s to hug, as it still smells of her. The friends and family of Sarah have also been tortured. Yet Couzens, confronted by the human consequences of his actions, showed little reaction and throughout has shown no contrition, merely a plea of guilty after an absurd alibi about Romanian gangsters collapsed. The judge was right to use the exceptional features of the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard to impose an unusual whole-life tariff on Couzens.

One mystery is why someone who showed such forensic awareness, and with police experience, imagined that he could get away with his crime, such is the ubiquity of CCTV, and especially in a busy neighbourhood such as Clapham in south London. Perhaps Couzens was as arrogant as he was warped and callous. In any event, a measure of justice has been delivered. It cannot be the end of the matter, because it is now clear that Couzens could have been stopped, and Sarah’s life saved. It is difficult to believe that anyone who chose to publicly expose themselves in a McDonald’s restaurant wouldn’t be taken into custody and charged. That it was a police officer makes it still more bizarre – but it seems Couzens somehow managed to avoid that normal course of events, and his breaking of the law wasn’t taken too seriously – with appalling results not far away soon afterwards when he abducted Sarah.

It has also emerged that Couzens’s own colleagues had their doubts about a man they knew enjoyed violent pornography. In his earlier days, fellow officers had nicknamed him, grotesquely, “the rapist” because he made women feel uncomfortable. He had been accused of indecent exposure twice in 10 days before the abduction, rape and murder. There was a similar accusation made in 2015 when he was a member of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, and an investigation by the Kent police.

He was not vetted properly when he joined the Metropolitan Police and was assigned to the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection branch. Investigations by the Independent Office for Police Conduct have resulted in some 12 misconduct notices served on police officers. The Metropolitan Police, its commissioner Cressida Dick, and the Kent and the Civil Nuclear police still need to account for their apparent failures. Every police force has to have procedures in place to prevent misuse of police computers and intelligence by officers who are stalkers and sexual predators.

If Sarah’s legacy is to be honoured fully now that the trial is over and the murderer will spend the rest of his life incarcerated, then there must be legislation specifically aimed at protecting women and girls, who are the ones who have been most betrayed – both by this crime and a wider official indifference.

They have a right to feel secure on the streets and to be protected by the police and by the law. There needs to be a new “Victims’ Law” that makes proper provision for the support of families and the say they have in courts, and particularly sentencing. Legislation and tariffs specifically to bolster the rights and welfare of women and girls from violent assault would also send a clear message to society and would-be perpetrators that, at last, the police and courts will take their accusations seriously. The pitifully low prosecution rates for crimes of sexual violence have to be remedied. Nor should women have to tolerate casual sexual threats or intimidation masquerading as “banter”.

The #MeToo movement uncovered the dark truths about how women are routinely pressured by men, subtly and not so subtly, at work or in their own homes. There is too much complacency still about the fears women and girls feel as they walk home on a dark street in the evening. They should not be afraid to do what a man rarely thinks twice about. There is much work to be done and attitudes to be changed, but change they must.