Violence against women and girls includes harassment, stalking, rape, sexual assault, murder, honour-based abuse, coercive control, but is not limited to those crimes. It can cause immense damage to the victims, but also to families and friends who have to pick up the pieces.
A woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK. Domestic abuse makes up 18% of all recorded crime. In the year ending March 2022, there were 194,000 sexual offences, of which 70,000 were rape, in England & Wales.
Policing, and society, must focus on violence against women and girls so that it can be eradicated. The long term solution lies in changes to society, but we can make a start with robust policing and effective crime prevention measures.
- Elevate violence against women and girls to a crime type that policing leaders must treat as a national threat, ensuring victims can always access professional support. Targetted resources to tackle Domestic Abuse Plan, including funding for victim and witness support services. Implement the Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy
- Ensure a victim-centred system for victims of rape in the long-term
- Support the national change so that nobody can rely on a ‘rough sex gone wrong’ defence to murder and creating the new offence of non-fatal strangulation, so that the worst crimes do not go unpunished
- Ensure that the new offences of stalking and stalking involving fear of violence or serious alarm and distress, are taken seriously and prosecuted.
- Prosecute ‘upskirting’
- Prosecute new offences of coercive control, strengthening protections for victims
- Put in place technology needed to investigate ‘revenge porn’
- Hand out effective countermeasures to drink spiking
