Open Letter to Cllr Louise McKinlay, Deputy Leader of Essex County Council and Leader of the Safety Advisory Group
Please also read the following post:
Dear Cllr McKinlay and Members of the Safety Advisory Group,
You are all a part of the safety advisory group set up by Essex County Council with a budget of £500,000 with an emphasis on women’s safety.
Last night I participated in a focus group via zoom regarding this. It was interesting, and I do think the person running it was eager to help regarding the subject matter. I will not in the course of this letter disclose anything anyone else in the group said, disclose any names, or even the names of the people running it. This letter will solely contain what I said and my own past experiences.
Here is a link regarding the safety advisory group:
The sole cause of rape is rapists. With murder the cause is a murderer, with any kind of harassment or sexual assault against women, the cause is someone who commits an offence.
Sarah Everard is mentioned, her death is truly truly tragic. She was beautiful and from every single account i’ve read, she was an amazing person.
What happened to Sarah is incredibly rare, 90% of rapes are committed by someone the victim knows and trusts, likewise with murder. Stranger murder is incredibly rare.
Her killer, Wayne Couzens, planned to rape and murder a woman on that night, and went to a lot of effort to do so.
There were two allegations of indecent exposure against Wayne Couzens that were not investigated fully, if at all.
That kind of thing is common, and it’s why women do not report. I was raped by a boyfriend, I didn’t bother reporting it based on the experiences of two friends who had reported rapes to the police. There was no point.
The man who raped me was my boyfriend at the time. I’d gone to his sister’s house and had a lovely evening, he picked me up, he drove me back to his flat and he was quite obviously upset with something i’d said or done even though I didn’t know what i’d done wrong.
He then raped me and hurt me. I didn’t scream, I didn’t struggle, I just lay there, I froze and just let him do it.
Given my friends experiences, going to the police wasn’t even an option I considered. I didn’t put up a fight, he was my boyfriend, we’d had sex before many times. The police would have laughed at me.
Men who do anything to females get away with it. The conviction rates for rape are extremely low, even getting someone charged with rape is almost impossible.
Then you have the rest. Even things like photos that men send to women over the internet of their genitals. It is upsetting, disturbing, and traumatising for any woman to receive an unwanted photo of male genitalia. Men do it because they know there will be absolutely no consequences for their actions. I’m unsure if it is against the law, i’m guessing it comes under some law, but nobody is ever going to bother reporting it because it won’t be followed up.
As for Essex Children’s social care. The disclosure of both adult and child sexual assault results in PTSD for the person making the disclosure. It’s bad, really bad. I discourage anyone who plans to report sexual abuse or suspected sexual abuse to Essex Children’s social care to not do so due to the way they take disclosures of abuse. Not that they do anything with the names yourself or your children give them.
Here is a link to how they handle disclosures:
It’s possible that the social worker who forced me to disclose childhood sexual abuse and rape while my children were present may end up getting investigated by the regulator, that isn’t that important for the protection of the wider public when Essex Children’s Services insist that disclosures of childhood sexual abuse can be forced, over the phone, with children present.
I got PTSD from that, I myself have not reported suspected child sexual abuse on two occasions because I could not live with myself being responsible for what they did to me being done to another woman and/or child.
One was a child who for various reasons I realised may be being sexually abused about 2 years ago. The PTSD was so bad at that point, flashbacks were awful, that there was no way I was going to be the one to put a child, and the childs parent through that. It turned out I was right and the matter is now being dealt with by the Police who have protocols for dealing gently and with the victims best interests in mind when disclosures are made and statements are taken.
The other was regarding a man who my children actually named, having attempted to groom them in the past. I’d always planned to contact social care the moment he had access to children, he now has access to children. The feeling of helplessness I feel at not being able to do anything is horrendous. I leave it and a child gets harmed, I report it and a child and parent has to deal with PTSD, flashbacks, and mental health problems on top of what they have already been through. It would be the equivalent of me abusing them further.
I told children’s social care the names of the two men who sexually abused me as a child, one had access to children when I looked 2 and a half years ago. The man who raped me has access to children.
Then we have Essex County Council running a safety advisory group with an emphasis on womens safety.
Educating boys and men on how to treat women, while a good idea, is something they already know how to do. If you go into schools and run special educational programmes on young male children then that will take decades to make a real difference, if it ever does.
As it stands now, men can do whatever they want to women and their are no consequences for their actions.
The only exception to this is in the workplace, where if the woman is believed then the man will get disciplined and maybe lose his job.
Other than that, there isn’t really anything.
Rapists for the most part don’t even get charged, let alone convicted. It is incredibly rare that any sexual assault or harassment that would legally count as less serious as rape would result in even a criminal charge, let alone a conviction.
Men are safe online to harass women. I would count things like the sending of a photo of an erect penis to be assault, in the same way that someone found guilty of exposure would be guilty of a sexual offence.
Men are safe to do whatever they want without fear of any consequences.
Meanwhile, Essex County Council have set aside £500,000 to make women feel safer, mentioning more street lighting as an option.
Firstly that would not be enough money to improve absolutely every route that women take to wherever it is they want to walk to after dark. Secondly, if a woman doesn’t use the new lighted routes and gets attacked, then the narrative appears as if it’s going to be the woman’s fault for not taking advantage of the new street lighting.
I’ve heard it said that Sarah Everard was in the wrong place at the wrong time. No she wasn’t, she had every right to be where she was when she was. Wayne Couzens set out to rape and murder a woman that night. The police did a fantastic job in catching him.
The police did not do a fantastic job regarding the two allegations of indecent exposure against him.
Another woman, Sabina Nessa, has just been murdered in London while going about her business. Whether she was attacked by a stranger or by someone known to her has not yet been made public.
It is only a small minority of men who commit sexual assault and harassment against women, but outside of a workplace, there are no consequences for their actions.
Essex County Council are talking about making women feel safe, one option being installing more street lighting.
What about actually making us safer by making sure that men’s actions against women actually have consequences for the man.
I’ve been raped, i’ve been sexually abused as a child, I have made a disclosure to Essex County Council of this, given them names. I ended up with PTSD as a result and to do my best to ensure that other women and children do not disclose any kind of abuse or assault to Essex County Council.
Essex County Council are absolutely fine with them doing that to me, but think they can make women safer with improved street lighting.
I have complained to Essex County Council regarding being forced to disclose in the way I was and with children present. Their reaction was to lie repeatedly over the course of 15 months as to why they couldn’t possibly investigate, their monitoring officer Paul Turner even investigated their refusal to investigate, found that the reasons they were giving to refuse to investigate were unlawful, and then was more than happy for Essex County Council to come up with yet another fake, totally bizarre, and easily proven as fake, excuse as to why they cannot investigate.
I believe this link shows how utterly bizarre their excuses are but to be honest, I haven’t had another look at it because it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that by their refusal to investigate they are admitting that they are perfectly fine with their actions and it counts as one of their policies.
Essex County council and the safety advisory group appear to be planning to make women feel safer while out by educating boys and men and improving lighting along with some other little things. Telling males not to do something because it’s bad, then on the other hand them knowing that whatever they do to a woman they will face absolutely no consequences is not going to improve safety for women.
That £500,000 will be wasted, but Essex County Council, which is mostly run by old white men, will give themselves congratulatory pats on the back for keeping women feeling safer.
Women and children are failed horrendously when it comes to sexual harassment and assault in Essex, given the aims of the Louise McKinlay and the safety advisory group, that is not going to change any time soon.
I did reach out to Cllr McKinlay a few months ago with regards to Essex County Council refusing to investigate my complaints, I got nowhere.
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