Violence against women is a societal problem

Like many residents I was delighted to receive the f irst edition of Haringey Community Press. I was also impressed that the new paper chose to focus on the matter of violence against women in its inaugural issue.

The murder of Sarah Everard has rightly spurred a much needed public debate on women’s safety and sexual violence. However, it feels to me that too much of the debate has been focused on criminal justice responses which brackets the problem with a small group of dangerous sexual predators like Wayne Couzens.

This is an attempt to diminish the issue. We must acknowledge that the problem is about male behaviour and attitudes to women across our society regardless of race, religion or social class.

It’s clear that we need a greater emphasis on education across our communities in confronting sexism and misogyny. Young people and all institutions supporting them and their families would be a good place to start. Particularly following the revelations earlier this year of hundreds of state and private schools being named on the Everyone’s Invited website which seemed to suggest some schools were brushing instances of serious sexual violence under the carpet.

These revelations did of course include schools in Haringey. Educating our children through a proactive anti-misogynistic curriculum would be welcome, as well as placing anti-sexism at the heart of a rebirth of community-based youth-work − a profession derided and pilloried through the last decade of government austerity.

I am proud that during my time in the council’s cabinet we saw year-on-year increases in youth-work funding, an acknowledgement of the huge damage caused by cuts to this service.

Finally, of course there is one area of the criminal justice system that should be a priority in the post Sarah Everard agenda and that is the Met Police dealing with the issue of sexual misconduct amongst its own ranks. Apparently 160 Met officers were accused of sexual misconduct over 2019 and 2020. Sexual misconduct complaints have been made to nearly 800 Met officers since 2010 with only 191 leading to an arrest.

A criminal justice system focused response conveniently avoids inconvenient truths. What we need from the Met, politicians and across our communities is leadership to address this pervasive issue.