The kidnapping and death of 33-year-old marketing director Sarah Everard has sparked a torrent of safety concerns for women in London and across the UK, with thousands of women telling their own stories of harassment in a new revival of support for the # MeToo movement.
Ms. Everard went missing after she left a friend’s apartment in South London on March 3, triggering a police investigation in South East England. On Friday, police confirmed that the remains found in a wooded area southeast of the capital were hers and that a post-mortem investigation was underway. An officer of the London Metropolitan Police has been arrested on charges of kidnapping and murder.
The case struck a nerve in Britain, in part because Ms. Everard had done many things that women are often advised to do to ensure their safety.
She was wearing bright, visible clothes when she left her friend’s apartment at 9 p.m. for a trip home that should have lasted no more than 50 minutes. She had called another friend to say she was on her way. And she had stuck to well-lit main roads. Still, she was kidnapped – and, investigators suspect, by a police officer.
Many women have shared their own experiences of being harassed or feeling unsafe on the streets of the city.
Some described wearing comfortable shoes in case they needed to break in or pretending to be on a loud phone call to scare off potential attackers. Others reported how clenching keys between their knuckles had become second nature, to do as much damage as possible if they had to strike in the hope of buying enough time to get away safely.
Police officers investigating Sarah Everard’s disappearance conducted a house search in Deal, Great Britain, on Friday.
Photo:
paul childs / reuters
Author Julie Cohen said on Twitter that she had to change trains one day because of three seemingly ordinary middle-aged men who started harassing her. “We can’t say which men are safe because even those who are supposedly safe feel empowered to humiliate us for fun,” she wrote.
Fern Brady, a Scottish comedian, recalled wondering how old she had to live before she could stop worrying about being killed because she was a woman. The answer, she said she realized, was “never.”
UN Women, a United Nations agency, published a poll this week showing that about 70% of women and girls in the UK had experienced sexual harassment in public places and urged the government to do more to address the problem to fight. Of the findings, only 3% of women between the ages of 18 and 24 said they had not experienced sexual harassment. It’s also a global problem, said UN Women, who reported that in some cities around the world, nearly nine in ten women feel unsafe in public.
A group called Reclaim the Streets scheduled a Saturday night vigil for Mrs. Everard in London. Similar meetings were scheduled elsewhere in the country, despite warnings from police that they would violate Covid-19’s lockdown restrictions. Harriet Harman, opposition and labor law legislator, was one of many people who said she would be attending, although it is unclear whether the event would still take place.
“When the police advise women not to go out alone at night, do women ask why they should be subject to an informal curfew?” Ms Harman told Parliament earlier this week. “It’s not the women who are the problem here, it’s men.”
Andrea Leadsom of the ruling Conservative Party said she was angry that women walking home in the dark should be afraid if someone else is right behind them.
Labor lawmaker Rose Duffield hinted at the months of Black Lives Matter protests for racial justice that spread around the world after George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis police custody last year.
“Sarah Everard has rekindled the fire in us like George Floyd did – enough is enough,” said Mrs. Duffield.
Some politicians have suggested that men are subject to curfews. While British ministers were quick to downplay the idea, Welsh head of government Mark Drakeford said he would not rule it out if circumstances made it necessary. He later rejected the opportunity.
Meanwhile, anger at London police for trying to prevent the Saturday vigil from continuing, and for the revelation that the officer in custody on suspicion of kidnapping Ms. Everard was separately arrested for alleged indecent exposure at a fast food restaurant for three days. before she disappeared.
Several lawmakers have asked that the vigil take place without any consequences for the organizers, who have told participants to wear face masks and observe social aloofness.
The Reclaim the Streets group that proposed the event tried to convince the Supreme Court in London to allow the vigil to go ahead without any legal repercussions. The court rejected their objection and refused to intervene.
Write to James Hookway at [email protected]
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