Trigger warning: rape and sexual assault.
Kent Police are under fire for a sign that was put up in Maidstone police station listing rape and sexual assault as ‘non-emergencies’ that should be reported via an online form. As well as rape and sexual assault, other ‘non-emergency’ crimes included domestic abuse, hate crimes, missing persons, anti-social behaviour, and fraud.
The poster has gone viral on social media, with people calling it shocking, shameful and disgraceful. “This is what “prioritising ending violence against women and girls” looks like. Policing is broken,” shared the Women's Equality Party on Twitter, while one user wrote: “As a survivor I can tell you sitting alone while you relive your violation and document the detail on an online form is not the way to report rape. The survivor needs human support, comfort and guidance. Shame on you.”
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At this point – as a legal requirement, if nothing else – I should make it clear that the poster was part of the police's Click B4 U Call campaign, encouraging residents to use online reporting to free up call handlers where appropriate. The sign has since been taken down and replaced by one clarifying how best to report crimes to the police. But it's too little, too late. The message has been received loud and clear: if you are a girl or woman in Kent – if you are a girl or woman anywhere – your safety does not matter. Your right to be protected from sexual violence does not matter. You do not matter.
It also sends the message to violent and potentially violent men that their actions will bear no consequences. Rape and assault as many women as you like in our town, and get away with it. The so-called justice system does not apply here. Boys will be boys, after all.
I grew up in Maidstone and I know where this police station is. I could walk the streets surrounding it, right in the centre of town, blindfolded. I've walked them in sky-high stilettos and after many regrettable rounds of Jägerbombs and Goldschläger shots (no, the little bits of gold didn't get you ‘more drunk’, despite what you thought at 18), which is basically the same thing as being blindfolded. In my late teens, I spent countless nights out staggering from club to club, arm-in-arm with my best girlfriends, laughing and swaying and dancing very badly to even worse music on superglue-sticky floors. I've also been leered at, shouted at, cat-called, harassed, and made to feel scared and intimidated by countless uncomfortable situations and misogynistic comments from men in that town, as have my friends and all the women we know.
No matter how many rounds of cheap vodka, we never let each other stagger from club to club on our own. Always aware. Always on guard, not even consciously. “Text me when you get home,” always.
But I'm one of the lucky women. In Maidstone, the most common crimes are “violence and sexual offences”, with 5,721 cases during 2022 alone. In Kent as a whole, this number rises to 78,631.
“You had sex initially with you on your knees and him behind you. You then gave him oral sex, didn't you?"
Earlier this month, Wayne Couzens – the former Metropolitan police officer who is serving a whole-life term for the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard in March 2021 – was found guilty of three counts of indecent exposure in Kent. One of the victims, a McDonald's employee in Swanley, said that the police never contacted her or asked for a statement after she reported the crime. “If he had been held accountable when we had reported the crime,” she told the court, “we could have saved Sarah.”
This disregard for the safety of women and girls is bigger than just one county, and is indicative of the systemic misogyny that penetrates every area of society, including the institutions which are intended to keep us safe. It was only two days ago that the Casey report found the Met to be institutionally misogynistic, racist and homophobic.
Is it any wonder, then, that an investigation by UN Women last year found that of the 97% of women aged 18-24 who have been sexually harassed in the UK, only 4% report the incidents because they don't believe it will change anything, and 96% doubt the UK authorities' capacity to handle incidents of sexual harassment. According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), of the 618,000 women who are raped or sexually assaulted every year, just 16% report it to the police*.
When you consider that charging and conviction rates for rape in the UK are some of the lowest since records began – just 1 in 100 rapes recorded by the police in 2021 resulted in a charge that year, let alone a conviction – it is terrifying to think how many sexually violent men are free to walk our streets. The women they attack are not to blame for not coming forward; we so often hear this victim-blaming rhetoric in conversations concerning rape and male violence against women. Beyond the perpetrator, the blame lies with the institutions that allow men like this their continued freedom, and that do so little to bring justice to their victims.
That's why it's simply not good enough that Maidstone police have replaced the sign. It speaks volumes that it was ever made in the first place.
*Figures for year ending March 2020.
For more information about reporting and recovering from rape and sexual abuse, you can contact Rape Crisis.
If you have been sexually assaulted, you can find your nearest Sexual Assault Referral Centre here. You can also find support at your local GP, voluntary organisations such as Rape Crisis, Women's Aid, and Victim Support, and you can report it to the police (if you choose) here.
