Campaigners seek clampdown on increasing harassment of women

One of the most discussed CCTV images to appear on the internet recently shows a man in a British supermarket slyly using a tiny camera on a long bracket to take a photograph up a woman’s skirt.

Although such acts are currently liable to prosecution as offences against public decency, there is now a move to go further and make them gender hate crimes.

A two-year survey in Nottingham in the Midlands found that harassment of females in public was endemic, with nine out of 10 women saying they had either experienced or witnessed harassment in public.

TOMORROW'S RAPIST

Blacks and minority ethnic groups expressed particular vulnerability.

The commonest forms of misogynistic behaviour were men whistling at women and using sexually explicit language, with fewer but more serious incidents involving groping and indecent exposure by the offender.

Police Superintendent Mark Khan backed tougher policies, saying, “Today’s flasher is tomorrow’s rapist.”

The survey showed that the commonest locations for harassment were night clubs, bars and public transport, and women dealt with the problem by walking away, ignoring the offender or making a verbal response, including laughing.

HATE CRIME

Mr Sam Smethers, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, which campaigns for women’s rights, said technological advances meant women were experiencing sexual harassment in new ways and legislation needed to respond.

In May 2016, Nottinghamshire police became the first force in the UK to record public harassment of women as a hate crime of misogyny (defined as “contempt for or prejudice against women.”) Since then, other forces, including North Yorkshire, Avon and Somerset and Northamptonshire, have introduced similar schemes.

The civil society alliance, Citizens UK, along with the Fawcett Society and senior Jewish and Muslim faith leaders, have co-signed a letter urging the National Police Chiefs Council to make harassment a gender hate crime across the country.

WOLF WHISTLING

The Nottingham campaign was initially mocked in some parts of the media as “arrests for wolf whistling,” and Supt Khan acknowledged that a nationwide crackdown would be denounced, especially by a hard core of men.

However, Nottingham women’s campaigner Helen Voce explained, “The primary object is not to secure hundreds of prosecutions but to let people know this behaviour is unacceptable and will no longer be tolerated.”

* * *

When a great-grandmother heard an intruder enter her flat, she reached for the nearest weapon — a slender, wooden back-scratcher, a gift from a grand-daughter, and chased the would-be burglar out into the street.

The police praised Joyce Ross, aged 73, from Newcastle upon Tyne, for acting “with great courage and composure.”

The thief got away with her handbag and Joyce received a small cut to her head in a brief struggle with the man. But she said, “He obviously thought I was an easy target but now he knows I’m not.” Police are searching for the miscreant, who they describe as white, thin and 6ft 2in tall.

* * *

My note last week about some students at Durham University being outraged because they had to go to lectures at 8am infuriated a long-time Kenya resident now domiciled in Glasgow.

Wrote John: “This just shows how lazy Britain has become. The poor dears should see a bit of the world — Kenya perhaps, where the streets are filled with fast-walking pedestrians from around 6am, or Tokyo, where youngsters march two by two in perfect formation to early morning classes.”

In many schools in Vietnam, students have to be in the grounds at 6.30am ready for classes at 7am.

Said my correspondent, “I hope some of your young Kenya readers put the UK undergraduates right.”

* * *

Three lazy students knew they would fail the big exam, so they dirtied themselves all over and told their headmaster, “Coming to school, we saw a wedding party whose car had broken down so we stopped and fixed it, which is why we are late and dirty.”

Very well, the head said, they could take the exam in three days’ time.

Three days later, after studying hard, the students were confident of passing, but the head was no fool. He put the trio in separate rooms, gave them an exam paper with just four questions and said he expected identical answers.

The questions were: 1. Who got married? 2. Which church was hosting the wedding? 3. What colour was the bridegroom’s suit? 4. What type of car had broken down?

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