Violence against women is an epidemic which requires far more attention and resources, Jess Phillips MP has said as she recited in the Commons the names of women killed by men in the UK over the last year.
Labour’s shadow minister for domestic violence said the name of Sarah Everard “rang out” as she listed the 118 women who were victims of domestic violence or attacks in the last year.
Phillips read out the list as she does each year in the parliament’s International Women’s Day debate, in the wake of the disappearance of Sarah Everard, who police believe may have been abducted as she walked home in south London.
Ahead of the debate Phillips said random attacks on the street were a “rarity” but violence against women was not.
She said: “The reality is that it’s not a rare crime. Since last week since when Sarah first went missing, six women and a little girl have been have been reported as being killed at the hands of men.
“So it’s not particularly rare and the fear that women live with is an everyday thing. For most women they have had some form of experience that they feel frightened of and the message that they should be sending out is not one about what women should or shouldn’t do.
“It is about how serious violence against women and girls is and how it is an epidemic that we have to put far more attention and resource into.”
On Wednesday night, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick, announced that police had discovered human remains in woodland in Kent during the search for Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive.
The remains have not yet been identified. A serving police officer has been arrested on suspicion of Everard’s murder.
PC Wayne Couzens, 48, was arrested on Tuesday at his home in Deal, Kent, on suspicion of kidnapping Everard, who vanished after leaving a friend’s house at around 9pm on 3 March and beginning a 50-minute walk home.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has expressed his “sadness and shock” at the murder and Labour’s Keir Starmer said “the scale of violence, intimidation and misogyny that women and girls suffer on a daily basis” must be recognised.”
