This year, two stories in particular have brought home the reality of what it is like being a woman in 2021.
Sarah Everard was a young woman going about her daily life when she was betrayed, violated and murdered. The images of her popping into a supermarket to buy wine on the way to her friend's will have resonated with so many who have done exactly that, but made it to our friend's house, sat on the sofa, drank the wine and been there to share the stories the morning after.
Thousands of women shared their stories in the aftermath of that horrific attack. They wrote on social media how they have worn flat shoes rather than heels in case they needed to run, how they have put their keys in their hand before reaching their home in case they need a weapon, how they have a system to ensure they can tell their friends they are home safe.
Then, in October, it emerged that while on nights out, drinks were being spiked in nightclubs via injection. Women shared their stories of the steps they took to protect themselves and others, some saying they wore denim jackets as the thick fabric made it harder to be injected.
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Both issues prompted hundreds of headlines, both have prompted reviews and investigations. Suggestions have included everything from more street lighting, more police, more charities, more volunteers, better education.
Not every woman is a victim of a sexual assault, just as every man isn't a perpetrator but even those who aren't victims in the criminal sense are changing the way they live their lives.
If you look at anecdotal statistics, women are scared to walk alone at night. A recent YouGov poll one in five women (19%) refuse to walk alone at night by themselves in the first place.
In 2018, 46% of women who ever walk alone at night said they always/often felt unsafe doing so. In 2021, that figure has risen to 63%. Among men it has hardly changed (15%, from 10%)
The number of women saying they are taking steps to protect themselves from sexual assault than they did in 2018 is now 41%, up from 32%.
Then, look at the figures of those who make a criminal complaint. The number of rape and sexual assault victims who have waited more than a year for their trial to go through the courts rose from 246 to 1,316 - a 435% rise - between March 2020 and June this year, according to the National Audit Office. In June, the UK Government had to formally apologised about the backlogs in courts, and low conviction rates.
Thousands of crimes of sexual violence were committed against women and girls in Wales last year - and yet for the vast majority no charge or court summons was issued.
Last year a total of 4,201 sexual attacks were carried out against women and young girls across all four police force areas in Wales including 2,144 crimes of rape and 2,057 of sexual assault. Yet only 163 offenders were charged with a crime or received a court summons, figures from the UK Government show.
In Wales, one in two offenders (50.1%) got away without any form of punishment whatsoever, either because of problems with the evidence (including the victim not supporting further action), a suspect not being found, or prosecution deemed not to be in the public interest.
Of the rest, 17 offenders received an out-of-court sanction, such as a caution or a penalty notice, and responsibility for further investigation was transferred to another body in 53 cases.
Another 1,506 offences (35.8%) recorded by police in Dyfed-Powys, Gwent, North Wales and South Wales have yet to be assigned an outcome, the figures to the end of March 2021 show.
We've asked charities, Wales' police forces, a barrister and the headteacher of Wales' last boys school their thoughts on what is working, what isn't and what needs to be done and what needs to change. There seems to be an acceptance the system isn't working because women are still at risk of danger, still being attacked and if, or when, they make complaints they are taking too long to get through a justice system that is overrun.
We were told about the Crown Prosecution Service being overworked and underfunded, about police forces needing better and specialist training. A barrister explained the reality of courts being cut to the bone and not having the capacity to deal with the new cases, let alone the backlog. "There are no winners in this system that everybody's a loser," he told us.
A headteacher told us there needs to be a national programme to help support teachers to know what they should be passing on. "When we talk about it, we're talking about a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem," Chris Parry said. "There is an urgency because we don't want another generation to come and go and then evaluate it."
The head of a charity told us there needs to be a whole societal change which starts with stopping catcalls and "banter".
"We need a society where the acceptability of violence against women and girls is diminished substantially, where the social narrative is not to dismiss low level or so called low level harms against women because they link together," Sara Fitzpatrick said.
And she made another point. "This is a massive problem and it isn't just a women's issue," she said.
A barrister
Andrew Taylor, Apex Chambers
"The situation in fact has got worse and not better because what happens now across the board, not just in rape and complaints of serious sexual offences, but you have a situation where the police take ages to investigate. Very often the victim might say, 'I'm fed up, My life's on hold and I don't know whether this case will ever go anywhere. I want to move on with my life. I don't like the prospect of going to court.' It can't be easy for anybody to give evidence, regardless of the complaint, going to court is a traumatic experience more so when you're making a statement about something as intimate as a rape allegation.
"The way in which allegations of rape are dealt with in court in terms of cross examination has changed. When I started doing this job, you could literally put almost anything to a complainant upon instructions. You could lead for example, ’Is it right that you've been a prostitute’ ‘Is it right you’ve got loose morals?’ ‘Is it right that you slept with 10 men in the last couple of weeks?’
"Those days have long gone."
However, he admits that technology has made elements better, including avoiding the need for vulnerable witnesses to go to court but also more complicated. He says police will often want to check a victim's mobile phone but "lots of people who are complaining whether it be sex offences or otherwise, are very reluctant to hand over their mobile phones. Because, you know, young people in particular, their life is their phone."
They'll say ‘ Well, I don't want anyone having my phone because I might have intimate photos on there’ or ‘I might have things on there to do with my friends’. Handing your phone over, it's almost like handing your soul over and of course, that then becomes perhaps a disincentive for them to go ahead."
But he says you can’t avoid the fact money in the court system has been reduced including in the amount courts are sitting but also staffing.
"When I started doing this job you'd always have a caseworker or you'd have somebody there who would help you and they probably know the case to a certain amount. Some of the caseworkers are not qualified lawyers but I'd see their knowledge and their commitment and their understanding of the case was phenomenal.
"Now, you'll be very lucky to have a caseworker. You will get one at a high profile case, but if you were prosecuting, for example, even as a serious case, as a rape or a serious sexual offence, some days they’ll say you can share a caseworker.
"Money is a big thing. I also think it's mentality. I think the police in the past have tried to cut corners. I think they are not sufficiently monitored."
If, for whatever reason, all the information required for a fair trial hasn't been disclosed to relevant parties it will lead to a delay. It is no longer rare to hear a judge criticise delays and try mitigate between say the police and CPS about whose fault it is.
"At the same time, you've got a complainant who's probably in tears at home and you've got a defendant and his or her family who are going to be saying ‘Well, this is ridiculous’.
Court delays too are an ongoing, and worsening issue with a backlog in crown court of 60,000 cases. "If you today went to Cardiff Crown Court, and you were to ask for a date for a listing for a rape case they would probably give you a date more than six months into the future. What invariably happens of course is then people say ‘Well, look, this has taken ages to get this far. I can't wait another six months’.
"If that case is taken out of the list, because a witness is unavailable or somebody is ill, they then don't say, well, try the case next week you go back in the list for say another four months."
"This system simply isn't working.
"We’ve tried to use sticking plaster when we should in fact be having radical surgery but there's no money to do radical surgery. I think there's been an awful lot of goodwill on the part of the Crown Prosecution Service, defence solicitors, barristers, judges, court staff, a man if you like that professionalism and goodwill has just been abused by the government."
"In Cardiff Crown Court there are nine courts and those nine courts could be occupied every day of the week. And one stage before Covid we had about three of them operating and we still had a backlog but they said sitting hours are being cut because they wouldn't pay part time judges and court staff. And so they were told you got to operate in a way where you have to try and compress all these cases, into your say three or four courts when there were nine available.
"There are no winners in this system, everybody's a loser because you've got a defendant whose life is on hold, and let's not assumedly that everybody charged with rape is guilty.
A charity CEO
Sara Kirkpatrick is CEO of Welsh Women's Aid
"You need all of the things to be better and need them all to be better at the same time and them all to be pointing in the same direction because let's imagine that we put up the streetlights and that's really, really useful, it wouldn't actually fix everything. It'll just move a problem over there.
"We need a society where the acceptability of violence against women and girls is diminished substantially, where the social narrative is not to dismiss low level or so called low level harms against women because they link together and if that's all right, then what's the next step? And if that's all right, then what's the next step?
"But if that's all right, so that the wildly anomalous behaviour of for example, Wayne Couzens is not so wildly beyond the norm, when the norm facilitates catcalls, yes, but also the former president of the United States of America, saying 'grab them by the pussy' and that being something that everyone went 'oh that's unfortunate'. If it's comfortably dismissed as banter and people aren't held to account.
"If we didn't have the acceptability of banter, then the transgression would be much more obvious much sooner. So actually it has to be a social change. We can't just get the police to bring the change and impose it. It has to be we all move we all change everything, like smoking indoors. This has been on the agenda for longer, and we've made less progress in some ways. So that tells us about the resistance and the discomfort that it creates.
"I think one of the challenges is that this is not a woman's problem. This is a social problem that affects all of us whether we are mothers or fathers or not even parents. We are part of a society that for as long as it's shrugging its shoulders and going it's not that bad to what is in fact, on a continuum of disregarding harm to women., we have a problem. And that can't be the police's job alone to fix. The police have to be a component part of it but the social change will make that easier. And that says when you support me,
"Misogyny is one of the things it's still okay to make jokes that include harming women, you wouldn't see a casually racist joke as a meme that people were happy to share these days. I'm not saying they don't exist. I'm saying it wouldn't be comfortably shared across easy spaces. Whereas a casually sexist joke I think still would much more."
At the opposite end of the scale are the survivors.
"Survivors need to be believed. If I think about particularly intimate partner violence, the state will have been used as a threat quite often. So 'please comply and if you don't, I will do a b and c or find the police and they'll arrest you, I'll phone children's services, they'll take the kids away. So the state will have been used as a weapon. In a good percentage of cases. So people are anxious. They're fearful. They're fearful about not being believed."
She said a good outcome in terms of time for a rape complaint would two years from beginning to end.
"That's imagining that all of the things I've done right and you have a compassionate officer that believes you that listened to that that's with all the things being done, right. That process will take nearly that long,
"If somebody is saying I have experienced abuse and depression, and has taken steps to ensure their own safety, what they want is their own safety. They want their own peace of mind. They want to be able to live their lives without constrained by a and other and when the state the systems of the state become part of what is preventing them from moving on living, living full and free lives.
Her worry is that continued finger pointing at the police will put survivors off making reports.
"I get a little bit anxious about the critique of the police because we don't have any other justice accountability system right now and we would hope that survivors would feel able to get or people who've experienced at home would be able to have the confidence to go and get some help and would be able to say 'this was done, I was transgressed against' and our justice system to deal with it really well. But actually, they're not even going to go if all we do is send messages that say this lot are untrustworthy.
"It has to be a collaborative endeavour. This is a massive problem and it isn't just a women's issue. Some people who are using harmful behaviour should be should be stopping and if the world around them and the narrative changes...Wayne Couzens isn't going to stop, but actually, there's quite a lot of chaps that will stop sharing those memes and then Wayne Couzens is easier to see."
A headteacher
Chris Parry is headteacher of Lewis School in Pengam and a NAHT union rep at the last single sex school in Wales
"It's something we have been talking about for a long time. In some areas, you can see a difference in social positions over times, if we look at smoking for example, when I started teaching it was something everyone did and now the public health message has made a difference and we see fewer kids smoking. The same when it comes to homophobia, in the mid 1990s schools were quite homophobic places for kids but now we have a Pride event every year and we have openly gay students.
"So progress can be made. I sit and chat about misogyny and attitudes to women and sometimes I don't think that much progress has been made.
"Since Me Too and Everyone's Invited it's very much risen to the top of the agenda, it's something everyone is talking about"
Mr Parry's school took part in the #149challenge in 2020 to mark the 149 women killed by men in the UK.
"Should we be doing more? Absolutely. I think with all these things, I don't want it to be a token event. They should be going on through the year
"When I read the accounts on Everyone's Invite, it's heartbreaking. As an educator in this school, we don't see girls so it's not in our faces all the time. When we talk to the boys you see a whole range of responses. We see horror and people really questioning the issue. We see some who think it is overblown and some who just want to play football.
"I think there's a lot of places in the curriculum where we can deliver some of this change but we definitely need a coordinated response and a national strategy.
"There is an urgency because we don't want another generation to come and go and then evaluate it. There's a lot of people who can give good advice to schools and schools are addressing this in their own way and to their own degrees and for me that's a particular issue. It's a really challenging area to address so we want to follow the best advice.
"My worry is that when we talk about it, we're talking about a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem. When I read a piece about the online trolling of women and how the Facebook executive was saying that they know they are causing harm, what exactly is going on and how much of this is getting through to kids and I don't think anybody knows. I think that's something that really has to be evaluated because I am looking at the boys in school and I think they have their devices in their pockets 24/7 and I don't know what they read."
A prosecutor
Janine Davies is senior district Crown Prosecutor and head of the All Wales Rape and Serious Sexual Offence unit
She accepts there is an issue before a charge is issued with victims deciding not to support a prosecution.
“Once we've charged an offender there are not many victims who disengage but pre-charge we have a high incidence of victims not supporting the prosecution.
“What we need to do, and we are committed to providing further support to victims so they feel that they can come forward and our support needs to be from the very start of the investigation right through the investigation process and the prosecution, because it is an issue”.
Cases are taking too long too, partly due to the world having changed and mobile phones needing to be checked and social media searched, but even when that work is being carried out in a timely way, she says victims need to be kept informed.
“What is important is that we support the victims throughout the investigation process, because victims can make a complaint to the police and unless there is communication with that victim, they can feel it’s gone into a black hole.
“We recognise that we need to improve the quality of investigations and also the timeliness of investigations. The CPS and police are working really closely together now to try and address both of those issues. So we're encouraging early engagement with the CPS at an early stage of the investigation. So rather than the police going ahead and carrying out a full investigation, and when they feel it's ready, submitting it to the Crown Prosecution for charge, actually engaging the Crown Prosecution Service earlier so that we can identify, perhaps lines of inquiry that we feel need to be undertaken that the police might not have thought about. We can look at the legal issues in the case and the types of defences that might be put forward so that we can address those as part of the investigation.”
All police forces received guidance in June about future working, Wales had begun that process six months earlier. Asked if the process was working, she said it was too early to say but in November double the amount of early referrals were made than in the previous month.
She accepts that there are cases where trials are taking years to appear in court but says as well as early advice to police, they record a victim’s testimony and cross examination so they don’t have to physically be in court for a trial, and their version of events is taken down before time has passed. Also in Wales, during October five remote evidence sites opened. Non-court buildings where a victim or witness can go give evidence without the trauma of the court building or fear or seeing their attacker.
She also agreed there have been staffing issues but says in the last few months there has been a change and more funding made available from UK Government.
Asked if she was confident that if a complainant made a complaint today the infrastructure is in place that they would get the conclusion they should, Ms Davies said she was.
“I am confident that there is a real appetite within all agencies in the criminal justice system to get this right and that the resources are being put into the system at all levels whether it be police resourcing, CPS, etc. Yes, I am confident that if someone came forward, they would be supported and the matter would be investigated and considered properly.”
“If I had a magic wand is changing the perception of society of what rape is, you know, we are very lucky in tha we don't get many cases where women are dragged down dark alleys and subjected to a sexual assault by a stranger. Rape is about consent and rape can occur in relationships with acquaintances with family members and it's all to do with consent. But I think we still have to change the perception that it's not about a woman being dragged down an alley and forced to have sex.
“Now we are getting the resources we need because the teams we have prosecuting these cases are really dedicated and committed people who want to see offenders brought to justice and it's been frustrating for them over the years, but I think now is the time where they feel everybody's on board. Everybody's trying to work together. And I do think we can change things in the future.”
Wales' police forces
Gwent were asked to provide an officer for an interview, that was declined, but Detective superintendent Martin Price, the head of Gwent Police’s public protection unit, issued a statement.
“Gwent Police takes all allegations of sexual assault and rape extremely seriously. Any report of sexual assault and rape is investigated thoroughly by our officers. We’re committed to supporting victims of sexual assault and rape, ensuring that they firstly feel confident in reporting a crime to us.
“We also work closely with partner agencies who can provide additional support to victims, especially in situations when a victim may feel unable to make a report directly to the police.
“We will continue to work hard to ensure that our response to victims remains at the heart of all we do as a police force.
“Gwent Police has a strong record of achieving a criminal justice outcome for victims of sexual assault and rape, and is one of the best-performing forces in Wales and England in this area. We would urge anyone who believes they are a victim of this type of crime to come forward in the knowledge that we will support them and treat them with care and respect.”
Dyfed Powys Police said: “Protecting vulnerable people is a priority for Dyfed-Powys Police, we are committed to providing a service to victims by placing them at the centre of any investigation. We encourage victims to come forward to report incidents of this nature so we can thoroughly investigate the crimes whilst ensuring that all victims have the opportunity to be referred for specialist support.
“Investigations of this nature are complex which explains the number of outstanding crimes. It’s essential that we conduct a thorough investigation whilst we make every effort to undertake the investigation in a timely manner however there are times when this process may take longer. We appreciate this can be difficult for victims, and we strive to keep this to a minimum without compromising the investigation.
"Our outcomes in court are good with a high percentage of offenders pleading guilty or being found guilty following a trial.”
North Wales Police and South Wales Police did not respond.
A charity volunteer
Gauri Taylor-Nayar is a volunteer with the Ask Me scheme
The idea of the scheme is to give a better response to survivors but also to be proactive in finding ways to challenge unhelpful myths, attitudes and stereotypes that enable and normalise abuse.
"When a man pats a woman on the bum, for him, it's a two second job, isn't it? But it is with her for the rest of her life. She will never forget that feeling of her privacy being invaded.
"The women that I deal and the things that have happened that trigger them and then have an impact on their behaviour, which creates a vicious cycle of trauma and then what do we do? We start normalising it because that's how we get out of these things. Starting with 'Oh, he only patted me on the bum'."
"This fear is manifested in the only way they know how, "The only way they know how is sheer brawn, it's like whack a mole. You're blaming them for this which is rightly so, they're being naughty and horrid but we can't blame them and not involve them in it.
"If you take the hammer off them, the hammer the use to whop us, and say 'no, you don't have to do this'.
"If you're scared of me, if it's fear of you don't understand who I am. If you don't understand my Goddess, then talk to me about it. And listen to understand, don't just listen to reply.
"It's not just gender, it's societal, it's in every society, every culture, every single country in the world has this problem. It's ingrained into our very being.
"One of the questions that we ask is, 'Will men and women ever understand each other?' The answer is, the fact is no. We will never understand each other because we cannot and that is the difference. But until we come to a meeting place where we can both exist from that line of respect and it is about respect. It is the fact that you are different it is the fact that you do these things I don't understand but let's celebrate that, it's all about power."
Asked what it will take to change, she said says it is fairly simple. People need to call it out when they see something wrong.
She tells a story of a Whitney Houston concert where the audience were chanting, and it transpired they were chanting for her to reveal her breasts.
"So we ask those kind of questions to men. What would you do if you were the man standing next to the man shouting? Yeah, what would you do? Nine times out of ten they would walk away. They wouldn't challenge, because men are afraid of men.
"They're afraid of the power of the violence and how violence can kill. Men are scared women will laugh at them, women are scared that men will kill them. There's a huge difference isn't that that difference that we have to balance out. We have to understand what that is and we have to stand that we are accountable for how we use those differences.
"We need to invest in education, at the lowest level levels. I cannot understand why the police or all the other governments and everyone seems to remove that education in schools. I don't understand it. Are they trying to educate these children, or they're just education for academia or to become good citizens in the world.
"We need to change the outlook, we need to change the spectacles society wears because they're not the right number for your eyes, the right prescription. It's a very false economy that says 'this is what we expect from people in society you have to be powerful, successful, you have to be white, you have to be male, you have to be this and then you will be a leader in the society.
"Actually, that's not true that we know it's not true. The spectacles are the wrong. That's the wrong prescription. We need to change to go back down to the very, very basic. We all have the right to say no".
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