SARAH VINE: In memory of Sarah Everard and for the safety of all our daughters, Boris Johnson must put a lid on the sewer of online porn
As the mother of a bright, beautiful, kind, sweet, funny young woman with her whole life ahead of her, my heart breaks for Susan Everard.
In every syllable, every word of her statement this week to the court about the murder of her youngest daughter, Sarah, I felt the unending agony of a mother who has lost, in the most brutal and final of circumstances, that most wondrous of gifts, her precious little girl.
‘I yearn for her. I remember all the lovely things about her: she was caring, she was funny. She was clever, but she was good at practical things too. She was a beautiful dancer. She was a wonderful daughter.’
As the mother of a bright, beautiful, kind, sweet, funny young woman with her whole life ahead of her, my heart breaks for Susan Everard. Pictured: Sarah Everard
The heart shivers. It is almost too much. I can’t even begin to comprehend the agony she must feel, the infinite ocean of pain that engulfs her every time she opens her eyes in the morning and remembers that the nightmare is real.
Mrs Everard’s statement was not only heart-rending in its eloquence and honesty, it was also an act of supreme bravery. It must have taken incredible self-discipline to stand before the perpetrator of these crimes, the abomination of a human being that is Wayne Couzens, and resist the urge to hurl abuse at him, or to launch herself across the courtroom at him, to rip his wicked, piggy little eyes out of his thick head. I can’t say I would have had either the courage or the composure. But I’m glad she did. Because it brought Sarah back to life in a way that only a mother can. It made her real in a way she deserves to be, even though Couzens tried so hard to erase all trace of her.
As powerless as she may have been in life, duped into submission by the lies of an officer who shames his entire profession, aided and abetted by draconian Covid laws that – in my opinion – should never have existed in the first place, in death she is a symbol of every woman who ever suffered at the hands of a pervert like Couzens.
And her power gives all us women strength – as mothers, daughter, sisters, grandmothers – to finally take a stand against the misogyny that still dominates our police and other institutions. A misogyny that is so unconscious many don’t even realise they’re doing it.
Because when someone like Philip Allott, Police Commissioner for North Yorkshire, goes on the radio and says that it is up to women to ‘be streetwise about when they can be arrested and when they can’t be arrested’, and that Sarah ‘should never have submitted to that,’ you really get a sense of the scale of the problem. And, if what we are told about other officers, colleagues of Couzens, exchanging vile and abusing messages on a WhatsApp group are true, one can’t help thinking that this is just the tip of an iceberg.
I am not someone who believes in the inherent toxicity of the male of the species. And I don’t agree with Harriet Harman when she says that misogyny should be reclassified as a hate crime for the simple reason that, aside perhaps from encouraging the odd scaffolder to moderate his language, I very much doubt it would deter the real women-haters. But when you look beyond Sarah’s case, to the testimonies of young women and girls on platforms such as Everyone’s Invited (which saw a wave of confessions following Sarah’s death) you realise that something has gone very badly wrong in the way many some men see women.
When you read these accounts, there is little doubt what the common denominator is: misogyny. It is, I’m afraid, real. The question is, where does it come from.
Because when someone like Philip Allott, Police Commissioner for North Yorkshire, goes on the radio and says that it is up to women to ‘be streetwise about when they can be arrested and when they can’t be arrested’, and that Sarah ‘should never have submitted to that,’ you really get a sense of the scale of the problem
Ultimately, of course, all kinds of places. But in a civilised society such as Britain there is only one place that legitimises misogyny and, in so doing, converts thoughts into action: online porn. A world in which the sick scenarios such as the one carried out by Couzens are by no means unusual, and where the abuse of women during sex is commonplace.
A world where violence against women is not only normal, but where the desire to explore and indulge those urges is normalised. A place where a pervert like Couzens can not only feel at home, but be part of an online community of like-minded individuals.
And, of course, a place that is easily accessed via any number of electronic devices, free to view and totally unencumbered by any sort of censorship or law.
Couzens, who was an avid consumer of online porn, was the person who ultimately extinguished Sarah’s life. But the evil that emboldened him, that legitimised his actions in his twisted mind and that, in a thousand other ways, encourages a whole generation of men (and children: only recently the Children’s Commissioner Rachel D’Souza warned that online porn was ‘normalising’ sexual assault in schools) to treat women as objects on which to vent their frustrations, play out their fantasies or blame their inadequacies, that’s online porn. We as women can protest all we like. But until that changes, until someone has the strength and the courage to put a lid on that sewer, filth like Couzens will always crawl their way out to pollute our streets.
And no girl, no woman will ever truly be safe.
The Government has a chance to change that. It should do so. In memory of Sarah. In memory of so many victims. And for the future safety of all our daughters
The joint committee of the Commons and Lords, chaired by the MP Damian Collins, is due to report on the revised Online Safety Bill at the end of December. As it stands, there is no recommendation for a paywall, or any kind of barrier to entry.
Which means the culture that contributed to the death of Sarah will continue to embed in our young people as it has been doing for over a decade.
The Government has a chance to change that. It should do so. In memory of Sarah. In memory of so many victims. And for the future safety of all our daughters.
Why I must take issue with Carrie
I love Carrie – in person she’s nothing like the sexist stereotypes you’re always reading – and it is typically generous of her to lend her considerable influence to an event in support of LGBT rights at Tory conference.
But I am a little apprehensive about her allying herself with an organisation like Stonewall (co-organisers of the event), which, while highly respected – and rightly so – over the years for its work on gay rights has, of late, betrayed some rather less than tolerant views when it comes to women’s rights. Specifically, the organisation’s chief executive, Nancy Kelley, has said that so-called gender critical beliefs – such as the notion that women have the right to single-sex spaces for their own protection, or that mothers should not have to style themselves as ‘people who give birth’ or ‘chest-feeders’ – are as bad as anti-Semitism.
That is a grotesque and unfair demonisation of a group of people – myself included – who are only trying to have an open and honest debate about these deeply complex issues in order to protect the hard-won rights of not just a handful of trans women – but all women.
Getting to see my GP is close to impossible
My GP keeps sending me increasing hysterical texts. I need a blood test, a blood pressure check-up, a flu jab. Please can I ring the surgery and arrange these things. Delighted to – not least because I’ve been trying to get an appointment for ages for something else that’s been worrying me. Except every time I call I’m forced to listen to a long pre-recorded message about how busy they are and how I must only call in emergencies, and then I wait for ages while they fail to answer.
And when I try to make an appointment online I can’t because for some reason my password no longer works and I can’t reset it because – you guessed it – to do that I have to speak to them over the phone. At this rate I’ll end up like Spike Milligan. I told you I was ill…
All credit to the secondary school in Camberwell – Ark All Saints Academy – which has banned the use of street slang in classes. The usual suspects have attacked the move as elitist; but the truth, as any responsible parent or teacher knows, is that slang speak is not just about words – it’s about attitude.
A child who uses slang terminology such as ‘bare’ (for lots) or ‘long’ (boring, tedious) and the perennial ‘oh my days’ is deliberately challenging adult authority in front of his or her peers.
It’s intimidating, disrespectful and hugely disrupting – not just for teachers but also for those pupils who DO want to learn.
Only Gina Miller could troll a man the day after burying his own mother – and get away with it. ‘Anyone seen Boris Johnson?’ she tweeted on Tuesday, to which Boris’s sister, Rachel Johnson, simply replied ‘It was our mother’s funeral yesterday, Gina.’ How incredibly dignified of Rachel; and how crass of Miller, a woman whose hatred of Brexit renders her blind to all sense of decency.
I confess that having been initially shocked by the seemingly draconian restrictions placed on Britney Spears by her father Jamie Spears during his 13-year conservatorship, now that she is finally free I’m starting to wonder whether there wasn’t some truth in his concerns about her mental health. Her latest posts on Instagram – in which she poses stark naked with only a few emojis to hide her modesty – are not exactly reassuring. After all she’s been through, it would be awful to see her suffer a setback. Let’s hope I’m wrong.
‘Bringing Sajid Javid back may yet turn out to be one of Boris’s smartest moves. Last week he was one of the few voices of sanity in the whole Starmer/cervix row when, in response to the Labour leader’s assertion that it is transphobic to say only women have a cervix, he pointed out in no uncertain terms that this was a ‘total denial of scientific fact’. Now he has said care home workers who are not willing to get vaccinated should ‘get out and get another job’. Bravo.
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