By Aneeta Prem, safeguarding and human rights campaigner
Four years on from the night Sarah Everard did not make it home, a major public inquiry has confirmed what many women already knew.
Sexually motivated crimes against women in public are still not treated as urgent threats. Prevention is described as a priority, yet judged to be fragmented and under resourced. The basic structures that should have stopped a dangerous man with a warrant card from approaching her were not in place across all police forces.
My work sits in the space where private grief meets public systems. I founded Freedom Charity to protect children and young people from forced marriage, what I call dishounour based abuse, and female genital mutilation. I have spent many years working on violence against women and girls and training police, the legal profession, teachers and health workers to recognise danger earlier and act sooner.
Seen from that experience, Sarah’s story is not only about one horrific crime. It is a timeline of missed chances and slow reform that every institution claiming to protect women must confront.
On the evening of 3 March 2021, thirty three year old marketing executive Sarah Everard left a friend’s house near Clapham Common in south London and began walking home to Brixton Hill.
She chose well lit roads. She wore trainers so she could walk quickly. She spoke to her boyfriend on the phone while she walked. She did the things women are routinely told will help keep them safer.
At about 9.30 pm she was stopped on the South Circular Road by off duty Metropolitan Police constable Wayne Couzens. He showed his warrant card, identified himself as a police officer and handcuffed her. He presented the encounter as a Covid enforcement arrest.
He placed her in a hired car and drove her out of London towards Kent. In the early hours of 4 March he raped and strangled her. He later burned her body and left her remains in woodland near Ashford in Kent.
Sarah was reported missing and a large scale search began. On 9 March Couzens was arrested at his home in Deal, Kent, first on suspicion of kidnap and then of murder. On 10 March human remains were found in woodland near Ashford and later identified as Sarah.
Couzens went on to plead guilty to kidnap, rape and murder. On 30 September 2021, at the Old Bailey, he received a whole life order. The sentencing judge highlighted that he had used his position as a police officer, and the powers that came with it, to kidnap, rape and murder a woman he had deliberately targeted.
After the criminal case ended, it emerged that there had been earlier reports of indecent exposure and other sexual behaviour linked to Couzens that had not led to effective action.
“In simple terms, Sarah Everard did what women are told to do. It was the system around her that failed.”
Public shock at Sarah’s murder was immediate and international. In July 2021 the Government announced an independent inquiry, chaired by Dame Elish Angiolini KC, to examine how an off duty Metropolitan Police officer had been able to abduct, rape and murder a member of the public and whether opportunities to stop him had been missed.
The inquiry was given two main strands of work.
Part 1 of The Angiolini Inquiry was published on 29 February 2024. It found that:
The report made sixteen recommendations. Key proposals included:
In March 2024 ministers told Parliament that the Government accepted all of the recommendations that required government action.
On 2 December 2025 the inquiry published a major Part 2 report on sexual offences against women and girls in public places, including streets, parks and public transport.
Its conclusions were stark.
Taken together, the findings show that four years after a serving police officer abducted a woman off the street, there is still no consistent national framework for dealing with sexual offences against women in public spaces.
At the front of the women’s safety report is a statement from Sarah’s mother, Susan Everard.
She writes about living with sadness, rage, panic, guilt and numbness. She describes being haunted by thoughts of what her daughter went through in her last hours. She lists the ordinary joys that have been taken from the family: the wedding that will never happen, the grandchildren they will never meet, the future family gatherings where Sarah will always be missing.
She also writes that the inquiry shows how much work still needs to be done to prevent sexually motivated crimes against women in public spaces, and says that Sarah’s death must stand for every woman who has been targeted and every woman who is now at risk.
It is unusual for a mother’s grief to sit directly alongside technical analysis of vetting, data and crime policy. In this case, it would be wrong to separate them.
Read the timeline of Sarah’s murder alongside the timeline of the inquiry and a clear pattern appears.
The inquiry sets out allegations of indecent exposure against Couzens in 2015 and in the days before Sarah’s murder, and how those incidents were handled. These were moments when a different response might have changed what followed.
In my work on forced marriage and dishounour based abuse, I see the same dynamic. Incidents that appear minor when viewed in isolation often look very different when they are placed on a longer timeline of behaviour.
By early 2024 the country had a detailed list of actions from Part 1 of the inquiry: treat indecent exposure as a serious warning sign, review complaints against officers, strengthen vetting, share information more effectively.
By late 2025, the Part 2 report shows that more than a quarter of forces still lack a basic sexual offences policy. Prevention work is still described as fragmented and short term. The core principle that people with certain sexual offence backgrounds should not be in policing had still not been fully embedded.
When women say they do not feel safe, they are not only reacting to one crime. They are asking whether their own force has even the most basic safeguards in place.
Polling carried out for the End Violence Against Women Coalition in 2021 found that around 47 per cent of women and 40 per cent of men said their trust in the police had fallen after the details of Sarah’s rape and murder became public in court.
A later briefing for Parliament reported that more than half of adults in England and Wales now say they have little or not very much confidence in the police to tackle local crime, compared with under two fifths five years earlier.
The Victims’ Commissioner’s 2025 survey of rape and sexual assault victims found that a large proportion did not report to the police at all, often because they believed they would not be taken seriously or kept safe.
For any woman reading these findings, the question is simple. If this is the picture when a case is under intense public scrutiny, what happens in the cases that never reach the news?
Through Freedom Charity I have spent many years working with children and families in situations where the state has been slow to recognise risk: forced marriage, dishounour based abuse, FGM and domestic abuse. I have also spent many hours in rooms with professionals from policing, the legal profession, schools, health and social care, trying to close that gap.
Seen from that experience, three lessons from the Angiolini work stand out.
Indecent exposure is often described as a low level offence. The inquiry shows in detail that exposure allegations against Wayne Couzens were not treated with urgency, despite what we know about links between such behaviour and more serious sexual offending.
In training, the shift often comes when we draw a homicide timeline and place so called minor incidents on it. People see at once that they are not minor at all.
Vetting, professional standards, misconduct procedures, criminal investigations and employment processes all operate with different thresholds and rules. When information is not shared properly between them, patterns of behaviour are broken up into separate pieces. No one sees the whole picture until it is too late.
Instead of systems changing, women are told to change their own behaviour. They are told to adjust their routes, their routines and their clothing. They are told to trust institutions that their own data shows are not yet safe for them.
The inquiry has put formal language around what survivors, families and campaigners have been saying for many years.
If this is to be more than another lessons learned document, several changes are essential.
National guidance should treat indecent exposure, stalking and street harassment as priority offences, not nuisances. The Angiolini recommendations on how these offences are investigated and prosecuted need to be implemented in full in every police force.
There should be clear public standards that prevent people with certain patterns of sexual or domestic abuse from joining or remaining in the police. Allegations of serious sexual misconduct by officers should be investigated independently, and officers facing those allegations should be moved out of public facing roles while investigations are ongoing.
Every force should have a clear sexual offences and VAWG policy, specialist teams and named lines of accountability. Inspectors should treat repeated failures in this area as seriously as failures in counter terrorism or organised crime. A situation where a significant minority of forces still lack basic sexual offence policies does not fit with the claim that violence against women and girls is a national priority.
Trust can be measured. Forces and national bodies should track women’s confidence in the police and in the handling of sexual and domestic abuse. Where confidence is low or falling, that should trigger scrutiny, support and, where necessary, changes in leadership and practice.
Prevention cannot depend only on short projects. It requires sustained investment in education for boys and men on consent and equality, in specialist support services for survivors, and in community work that challenges harmful attitudes before they become abuse. The inquiry is clear that current efforts are fragmented and short term. That has to change if lives are to be saved.
I am writing as someone who has spent many years alongside survivors and alongside professionals who are trying to protect them.
In classrooms I have watched children realise that what they have been told is honour is in fact abuse. In training sessions I have watched police officers and legal professionals look again at a so called minor incident once it is placed on a homicide timeline. In living rooms I have sat with families after the worst has already happened.
“My test for any reform is simple: will it reduce the number of mothers who have to write statements to inquiries, and increase the number of daughters who get home?”
Sarah Everard’s name is now part of the public record. The Angiolini Inquiry has given us the dates, the decisions and the warnings. If this timeline is to mean anything, it has to change what happens next.
For editors, producers and researchers who need someone to explain what all this means, this is the work I do every day: joining up the dots between individual cases, inquiry findings and the reality of women’s lives, in language that the public can understand and act on.
The timelines are written. What we do with them now is a choice.
Aneeta Prem is a safeguarding and human rights campaigner, founder of Freedom Charity and Chief Executive of Trigeminal Neuralgia Association UK. She has worked for many years on forced marriage, dishounour based abuse, female genital mutilation and violence against women and girls, training police, the legal profession, teachers and health workers across the UK. Aneeta regularly contributes to national conversations on policing, women’s safety and human rights.
The Gambia’s Supreme Court is hearing a case that could weaken the ban on FGM. This clear explainer shows why it matters for child protection worldwide.
When families watch, follow and report: the hidden stalking dynamic behind forced marriage and dishonour abuse
How AI nudification is turning everyday photos into a new form of sexual abuse against children Two strong alternatives, depending on outlet tone: How AI nudification apps are normalising sexual abuse and putting children at risk
Capacity, Consent and Dishonour Abuse: Why “no capacity means no consent” is the safeguard the world is still failing to apply
Female genital mutilation in the UK: what we don’t say out loud. Female genital mutilation is not “a problem elsewhere”. It is child abuse happening in the UK and worldwide, and girls need us to name it.
Balochistan Child Marriages Restraint Act 2025 Provincial law: minimum marriage age 18. Cognisable, non-bailable, non-compoundable offences. Forced marriage is child abuse. The shame lies with the perpetrator, not the child.