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What Happened To Sarah Everard Is A Symptom
There’s something rotten in our culture and we need to change it.
Were you also taught to trust men in uniforms?
If you live in the U.K. you’ve probably heard what happened to Sarah Everard. The 33-year old Londoner was walking home alone on March 3rd, but she never arrived. A week later her body was found, stuffed into a large builder’s bag and dumped in Kent woodland. A Metropolitan Police officer has been apprehended for her kidnap and murder.
Plot twist: At the vigil held for Everard on Saturday — near my former home in Clapton — members of the Metropolitan Police descended on the mourners gathered. Abundant footage has been captured of Met Police officers pinning women to the ground, apparently in an effort to enforce Covid-19 safety measures.
You can see how that hasn’t gone down well.
The outpouring of public grief on social media has, quite naturally, been shot through with threads of outrage, and opened up for all sorts of important discussions about police brutality and, sweepingly, male violence towards women.
And just as the case was when #metoo was trending, and when #blacklivesmatter took wing, there are those men who feel called to insert themselves into the conversation, not to express solidarity or sadness that we still live…
