https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/woman-killed-three-days-uk-failed-raging-4259360?fbclid=PAQ0xDSwQVAZRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA8xMjQwMjQ1NzQyODc0MTQAAacB6grwA2dGibd_K-i-QUOHBJFdx9fLaVC4Yn4S7RPKqSKCJVMyOI9I2jAuYQ_aem_XL_wYjX4K20bRj_aEfSH6w

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from a bus stop in the same year, the male leader of her local council told ITV News: “Everybody has a responsibility not to try to put themselves in a compromising position.” He later apologised for his comments, but they revealed a glaring truth. Society is prepared to look anywhere for the cause of women’s murders except directly at the perpetrators themselves.
When Kyle Clifford raped and murdered his former partner Louise Hunt and killed her sister Hannah and mother Carol in 2024,

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he had searched for and consumed the content of extreme misogynist #AndrewTate in the days leading up to his attack. Prosecutors argued at his trial that “the sort of violent misogyny promoted by #Tate is the same type of motivation that… fuelled both the murders and the rape”.
Societal and media misogyny continue to besmirch the memories of women who lose their lives to male violence. When headteacher #EmmaPattison and her daughter #Lettie were murdered by her husband

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in 2023, #media reports asked: “Did living in the shadow of his high-achieving wife lead to unthinkable tragedy?” As if to imply that her audacious decision to have a successful career had somehow pushed her emasculated husband into murdering her.
The number of police officers charged with sexual and domestic violence has only continued to mount: from #DavidCarrick, guilty of over 70 offences over a 17-year period, to #CliffMitchell, who carried out a “campaign of rape” against two victims,

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including a child under the age of 13, while he was a serving officer.
These weren’t shocking anomalies. In 2023, the #MetPolice revealed it was investigating 1,633 sexual and domestic abuse claims involving over 1,000 of its officers.

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after appealing against his sacking for gross misconduct. A vetting review concluded in 2023 found that thousands of police officers and staff had not been properly checked between 2019-2023, leading to 131 recruits going on to commit crimes or misconduct, including rape.
A Panorama investigation in 2025 saw more than 300 people contact the BBC with allegations of racism, corruption and bullying of victims by police, including repeated failings of domestic violence victims.

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Clear evidence that the policing “culture change” we’ve heard so much about remains a far-off dream.
In December 2025, over four years after Everard’s death, the second part of the Angiolini report revealed that more than a quarter of police forces in England and Wales still had not implemented basic policies for investigating sexual offences.
Just this month, we learned that the number of police sexual misconduct allegations involving currently serving officers has risen

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by a third compared to the previous year.
Yes, there has been some progress. In 2025, the Government announced new powers enabling chief constables to sack officers who failed vetting standards. Recent measures to improve the justice system for rape survivors have included a ban on “bad character” evidence being used against rape survivors who have previously reported abuse, and new restrictions to police access to rape survivors’ therapy notes. There have been some welcome

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boosts in funding for victim support services and action finally taken to curb technology facilitated violence, such as measures taken against non-consensual image abuse and the depiction of strangulation in pornography.
But these measures too often feel like piecemeal tinkering at the edges of a broken system, often only taken after painful years of campaigning by courageous survivors and activists.
The Government’s long-awaited action plan on Violence Against Women and Girls

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centred on prevention with its focus on education, but more funding will be required to make this an effective reality. And a more ambitious, preventative approach is desperately needed elsewhere too. Instead of waiting to act on issues like AI deepfake images – after millions of women and children have already been harmed – we urgently need common sense regulation of AI tools before they are released.

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While we wait, and rage, and protest, and advocate, and grieve, women are continually reminded of how little our lives, voices and pain matter. The recent release of the Epstein files only served to remind us of the sheer extent of impunity for powerful, rich, well-connected men. Women and girls harmed, raped, trafficked, dead. Powerful men using powerful institutions to protect each other. And society seems to shrug.
We live in a country in which policing

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and criminal justice fail women so badly that #rape is virtually decriminalised. This might sound like an exaggeration until you realise that #HomeOffice statistics for the year ending March 2024 indicated that the proportion of rape offences resulting in a charge or summons was just 2.6 per cent, a paltry 0.5 per cent increase on the previous year. Little wonder that we have one of the lowest rape conviction rates in #Europe.

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Progress is so slow that women are literally paying with their lives while wealthy men laugh at one another’s crimes behind closed doors and email accounts.
An emergency on this scale demands an emergency response.
“This report should mark a turning point”, said #LadyAngiolini. But how many “turning points” and “tipping points” and “watershed moments” have we been promised? Words without action and recommendations without implementation and plans without adequate funding

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won’t stem the tide.
Susan Everard, Sarah’s mother, told an inquiry into her death of a “turmoil of emotions — sadness, rage, panic, guilt and numbness”. They are feelings I know so many other women also feel as we struggle against institutions that were never made to protect us, in a society that often simply doesn’t seem to care.

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Until real, ambitious, proactive reform happens, until institutional misogyny and normalised societal sexism shift, women don’t just “feel” that we aren’t safe. We know that we aren’t.

Laura Bates is the author of The New Age of Sexism

#LauraBates #TheNewAgeOfSexism