When there was a body found near my house I was worried, however, in the last week, a second body has been found. You might think I live in the heart of the city, but I don’t. I live in a quiet area in the South-East of England. Before these incidents, the biggest incident that occurred was the meat packaging factory burning down.

Both the bodies were women, both had been brutally murdered by men, both resulting in a manhunt. As I write this, both suspects have been caught and are in Belmarsh prison awaiting their trial. The similarities in the cases have been identified and leave you wondering whether women will ever be safe to walk the streets.

Sarah Everard

Everard was the first body discovered in woodland ten minutes drive from me. The police helicopter cycling the house was the first we knew that an issue was occurring. Never did we consider this may have been connected to the missing person case on every news channel.

On the evening of 3rd March 2021, 33-year-old Everard left her friend’s house near Clapham Common to walk home to Brixton Hill, it was a fifty-minute walk. Leaving the house at 2100 she started the walk, west walking across the common and along the A205, known as the South Circular. A busy, well-lit road. She spoke to her boyfriend on the way home and arranged to meet him the next day. At 2128 she was caught on footage from a doorbell in Poyders Road, four minutes later she was caught on the dashcam on a police car. 2135 she was caught on footage from a bus that drove past. That was the last time she was seen. Her boyfriend reported her missing the next day when she failed to meet him.

An extensive, missing person investigation started. On the 9th March 2021, Wayne Couzens a Metropolitian policeman was arrested in Deal, Kent for her kidnap. One day later the police helicopter circled my house as remains were found in woodland in my home town. Couzens, previously charged with kidnap was charged with murder.

The remains were found in a builders bag, they had so badly deteriorated Everard was identified through dental records. Various locations close to the body have been searched. Couzens who joined the police in 2018 has been charged and help on remand, his trial is set to commence in October. Eight weeks on from the discovery of the body a cause of death has still not been established. I believe this is not the first killing this murderer has carried out. He appears to have been far too organized for this to be his first kill. A jury will decide whether Couzens is the murderer or not. There is a lot more to be established with this case.

Julia Jones

Just six weeks after, Everard was found Julia Jones a Community Police Officer was out walking her dog when she was murdered. Her home in Kent is a twenty-minute drive from my house. Jones was fifty-three and found on April 27th, she had sustained multiple head injuries. Her beloved Jack Russell, Tony staying beside her until she was found.

The murder has some chilling similarities to the Chillenden Murders that happened three miles from this.

A manhunt started immediately and police used social media to help catch the perpetrator. On the 7th of May, they arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of her murder. Having questioned him they asked for an extension of thirty-six hours to collect further evidence. Callum Wheeler, twenty-one was then charged with her murder. The case will be heard in November this year.

Why are women not safe?

There are many similarities between these two cases. The more obvious ones are that neither suspect has been convicted yet, so it would be wrong to focus on them. They are both being held in Belmarsh Prison to await trials that start at the end of the year.

The main question both these murders have asked is why women are not safe to walk the streets alone. Many men feel it is okay to make rude remarks or wolf whistle a woman as she walks past. This is the start of the lack of respect many have for females. The worse case of this being that women are attacked in the streets, by men who feel it is their right. As a woman out with friends, I have lost count of how many men have thought it acceptable to grab and grope me without my permission. When this behaviour escalates we see the cases above.

According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales year ending March 2020, an estimated 1.8% of adults aged 16 to 74 years (773,000) experienced sexual assault (including attempts) in the last year.

For those that think this figure is a lot lower than they expected, these are the figures for a year in lockdown. The majority of our time we were not allowed in pubs and clubs. The figure for the year previous was 2.4%. Twenty per cent of women admit that they have been sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime. That is one in five.

The police recently announced they would be putting plainclothes policemen in pubs and clubs to catch the perpetrators of this behaviour. As one of the men charged with these murders is a policeman, forgive me if this does not resolve my fears. I am also not saying all men are the same, far from it, but there is an element in our society that think women should be pleased with this type of attention. Imagine if women walked up to men and asked them to see their dick, yet men find it acceptable to shout, show your tits at every attractive woman who walks past them.

I have two little girls that will grow up to be women, this is a subject close to my heart. It is through our children that we need to start to change this thinking. We need to teach young boys and sons to respect women. To treat them as humans rather than objects of sexual attention. This is the 21st Century, we have put men on the moon and flown into space, yet still, a woman is not safe to walk home from her friends, or take her dog for a walk.