MP Rachael Maskell says women don't trust police after Wayne Couzens

Ms Maskell told the Press: “I have dealt with so many cases in York of women’s voices not being heard – of women reporting instances of sexual assault and these not being taken forward; of women not feeling safe.

“Women clearly don’t trust the police any more. Are ‘low-level’ crimes even being reported any more, because women don’t have confidence in the police?”

The MP spoke out after a senior Metropolitan Police officer publicly apologised for the fact that Wayne Couzens was not arrested before he murdered York woman Sarah Everard in March 2021.

Court artist sketch of Wayne Couzens (Image: PA)

Couzens, who was a serving Met Police officer at the time, was supposed to be on duty working from home when he committed one of a series of flashing incidents before he kidnapped, raped and killed Ms Everard.

His victims have asked why he was not arrested for indecent exposure before – and whether 33-year-old Ms Everard’s life could have been saved.

As Couzens, 50, was this week jailed for 19 months for three flashing incidents between November 2020 and February 2021, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy said: “I am deeply sorry for everything that the victims of Wayne Couzens have had to go through.

“The hurt and trauma that I’ve read in their victim impact statements …should make every single one of us in policing hang our heads in shame.”

But Ms Maskell stressed that it was not only the Metropolitan Police that had a problem with the way reports of sexually-motivated crime were handled.

“We cannot ignore this in York,” she said. “I have serious concerns that even serious cases are not being addressed in the way that they should be.

“There is an entrenched issue with the police service where women victims have just not been heard.”

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In 2021, The Press reported how, in 2019, Malton butcher Pawel Relowicz was able to rape and murder 21-year-old Libby Squire – who he found when he was cruising the student area of Hull - even though he had committed a series of sexually-motivated crimes in the months beforehand.

Libby Squire, who was raped and murdered by Malton butcher Pawel Relowicz (Image: PA)

Humberside Police said there was no way of linking the frightening catalogue of at least nine offences perpetrated by Relowicz before he escalated to rape and murder.

Ms Maskell said it was vital that police began to take every case of a sexually-motivated crime seriously.

“If a perpetrator is not pulled up, then clearly it gives them the immunity to offend again,” she said.”

The MP said that, if anything, crimes of violence against women were on the increase.

In 2021, Ofsted reported that 97 per cent of more than 1,000 women surveyed said they had been sexually harassed at some point, she pointed out.

“That was not the case when I was young, I’m sure.”

She said that may partly be down to social media such as TikTok shifting the boundaries of what was acceptable behaviour.

But the police also urgently needed to address their culture and policies to make sure that women were listened to and taken seriously when they reported crime, she said.

Ms Maskell said the revelations about Couzens’ earlier sex offences must make Sarah Everard’s parents question whether more could have been done to avert their daughter’s death..

“The fact that her death may have changed the police might be of some comfort one day,” she said. “But they are not at that point yet, I’m sure.”