‘Report Showing Police Officers Accused of Domestic Abuse Have Been Promoted Shows Little has Changed Since Sarah Everard Murder’

On Wednesday, MP Nadia Whittome tweeted about a new report from the Centre for Women’s Justice that found “male police officers accused of domestic violence have been promoted and even used their positions to enact revenge against accusers”.

The report is horrifying, but not surprising.

After all, why wouldn’t they act with impunity? What is stopping them?  The police system was designed to believe and protect police and not their victims. 

Cliff Mitchell, who was jailed for 13 years in May for multiple counts of rape, including three of a child under the age of 13, was vetted and hired by the Metropolitan Police despite being the subject of an earlier rape investigation in 2017.

While serving as a PC he used his authority to continue the abuse before being arrested in 2023. The earlier case was then reinvestigated and the 24-year-old was charged with an additional three counts of rape of a child under 13 and three counts of rape.

Mitchell managed to secure a job at the Met having applied after Wayne Couzens was sentenced to a full life order for abducting, raping and murdering Sarah Everard in March of 2021.  

Sarah’s murder is constantly held up as a watershed moment for women’s safety and misogyny in policing – but it was nothing of the sort. 

We were told that violence against women and girls was to be recognised as as much of a threat as terrorism, drugs and gangs.

Sarah’s murder also led to the Casey Review and the Angiolini Review both of which exposed shocking levels of violence towards women at the hands of police. Or should I say shocking to me and to most of the general public.  

You know who weren’t shocked, The Centre for Women’s Justice.

The Centre filed their police super-complaint into the failure to address police perpetrated domestic abuse in March 2020, a year before Sarah’s murder.

In January 2023, the Centre issued a 12-point plan of what must change to effectively tackle police perpetrated domestic abuse and restore women’s trust in policing. It was largely ignored. As were calls for a statutory review into misogyny in policing.  

And now, nearly five years on from their super-complaint, the Centre have issued a new report that details despite promises from police chiefs, despite millions being spent on the Casey and Angiolini Reviews detailing route maps to reform the institutionally misogynistic systems of policing in England and Wales, little progress has been made. 

The report, based on testimony from over 200 women who allege attacks on them by their police officer partner, reveals just how little has changed. Almost half of the victims are also employed in policing. 

And while press conferences were held by the NPCC and the IOPC – and more than I can count by the combination of former Commissioner Cressida Dick and head of the “New” Met Mark Rowley – telling us how they accept that trust is broken and must prove to women that our lives and safety are a priority, police officers accused of domestic violence and rape were not suspended. 

They were promoted to rape and sexual assault teams.  

There is no better way to mock the women suffering at the hands of these men, and the women, like me campaigning and protesting for police reform, than to publicly state that reform is being implemented whilst literally subjecting women that are brave enough to report their own sexual assaults to these predators. 

This isn’t just a nose tap to your staff that you don’t believe women, it is a free pass to openly abuse your partner and children. It is a celebration of police impunity and state sanctioned domestic violence.  

I’ve spent the last three and a half years fighting, screaming and campaigning to make women and policing safer, but the opposite may well have occurred.

By bringing so much attention and focus to the door of Scotland Yard, I fully believed that we were collectively going to impact the way police listened to rape complainants, the way domestic violence was handled, and help to eradicate misogyny in policing. 

But, actually, police chiefs were mocking women like me by actively awarding men known to be perpetrators of abuse with more access to vulnerable women and more power.

In its coverage of the report on Wednesday, The Guardian noted how one victim’s alleged abuser was promoted to the rank of chief inspector, despite having two separate rape allegations against him from two women; another male officer with two separate allegations from two women was later placed in his force’s anti-corruption department and in another case, it is alleged that an abuser helps lead his force’s efforts protecting women against violence. His victim, who was also a police officer, was placed on “compassionate leave” while her alleged attacker continued to work, the newspaper noted. She has now left that force.

Guess who else has been promoted?  One of the officers who manhandled and placed Patsy Stevenson under an unlawful arrest at the Sarah Everard Vigil which was unlawfully prevented from taking place by the same Metropolitan Police. 

Jane Connors who was Gold Star command over those unlawful decisions has also been promoted to Scotland.  

Harriet Wistrich, Director of the Centre for Women’s Justice, stated in its report: “There are entrenched cultures within policing that are resistant to change and without energetic intervention they will continue to harbour misogyny and cover up wrongdoing. The police and those investigating and recommending change must listen to the voices of victim/survivors in order to understand the extent of harm and failure, if they ever hope to restore trust.”

Wistrich added that while the Centre’s report proposes a series of recommendations for reform “it may be that something more radical needs to happen to the institution of policing to tackle the scale of problems we have seen from the ground”.

The NPCC, IOPC and HMICFRS (His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services) will all pay lip service to this report, just like they did with the Casey Review. And the Angiolini Review.

Four years ago, I believed that women’s safety mattered to policing, I’m no longer that naive.