A Man Kills a Woman Every 2.8.Days in the UK
Michaela Whitton
October 21, 2015
(ANTIMEDIA) United Kingdom — In a case of white privilege personified, Oscar Pistorius is kicking back on his sofa today after serving less than a year in jail for the murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
Male violence against women is global — and a consequence of inequality. As the U.K. press goes into overdrive over the Pistorius case, the public should be reminded of Britain’s own harrowing figures.
Last week, a serious case review exposed a series of failings by West Mercia police, children’s services, and mental health teams over their dealings with pornography- obsessed Jamie Reynolds. Despite having been assessed as “a serious risk to others“ and having attacked numerous women previously, Reynolds went on to brutally murder 17-year-old Georgia Williams.
With the Reynold’s case painting a devastating and all too common picture of the lack of value placed on women’s lives, government cuts in the U.K. leave women high and dry. Meanwhile, repeated perpetrators like Reynolds slip through ever-expanding holes in the net of public services.
Women’s charity, Eaves, reported a 70% increase in demand for their services during the first six months of 2015. One support worker, who goes by Lynne, said:
“So many services have closed and other services, facing cuts, have to turn away complex cases that we then pick up. Gatekeeping has become ever more stringent and access to vital services that enable women to access their rights and facilitate their recovery such as housing, mental health, legal aid have all but disappeared. As a result we have to spend many more hours advocating for their rights and struggling to find somewhere to move women on.”
A Fair Deal for Women is an umbrella group of 11 British women’s rights charities pushing the government to address policies they claim aggravate existing inequality. Requesting a national strategy to tackle male violence against women, stark statistics back up their demands.
‣ 95% of women’s charities are facing cuts
‣ 100 women and 84 children are turned away from shelter every day
‣ 100% of charities that support Black and ethnic minority women are facing cuts
‣ 25% of women’s services are facing closure
The Counting Dead Women project has gone a step further to shine a light on the thread of misogyny weaving its way through British culture. The campaign began highlighting fatal male violence after seven women died in the first three days of 2012. Since then, determined to make sure the women are more than just faceless statistics, the campaign has documented the cases of hundreds of women suspected to have been killed by men during the last three years.
With most of these murders failing to receive a mention from national media, the figures released by the campaign should shock us all: 97 women in the U.K. have been killed by men this year — that’s one every 2.8 days.
http://theantimedia.org/a-man-kills-a-woman-every-2-8-days-in-the-uk
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