Frontline police officers and staff are getting improved training on how to respond to non-contact sexual offences through a course designed with the help of the mother of murdered student Libby Squire.
The online learning module has already been completed by more than 2,000 officers and is being rolled out across England and Wales in response to a recommendation made by the Angiolini Inquiry, which looked into how the serving police officer and voyeur Wayne Couzens slipped through the net to go on and kidnap, rape and murder Sarah Everard in 2021.
“It’s so important that we encourage police officers to take non-contact offences seriously,” explained Lisa Squire, speaking to Sky News. “I’m really pleased to see it come together.”
A non-contact sexual offence is any sort of sexual gesture that is unwanted and not a contact. It includes upskirting, voyeurism and exposing yourself to others.
Ms Squire thinks Pawel Relowicz exposed himself to Libby months before he raped and killed her. During his trial, the jury heard Relowicz had a string of past non-contact sexual offences, including masturbating in public.
Data from 2022 shows the overwhelming majority of sexual exposure crimes and offenders do not come in contact with the police.
There is some evidence that greater levels of interaction with victims during sexual exposure may be a risk factor for offenders who move to contact sexual offending.
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“Before our daughter was abducted, raped and murdered I was aware of non-contact sexual offences but they were just things strange men did. Now when we look back on the offender (Relowicz) he had a prolific history of these offences. Some had been reported, some hadn’t. There is an escalation pattern,” Ms Squire said.
Ms Squire said prior to her daughter’s and Ms Everard’s death, attitudes to non-contact sexual offences were, “You’re just making a fuss”.
“We just accepted these things happened. But we didn’t talk about the escalation. It’s incredibly traumatic to a woman to be a victim,” she added.
An inquiry after Ms Everard’s death which looked into how a known voyeur like Couzens could slip through the net and commit more serious crimes criticised police attitudes.
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Its chair, Dame Angiolini, called for a step change in the way police respond to indecent exposure cases.
“Victims deserve to have their cases investigated properly each and every time. Attitudes towards the experience of those victimised by alleged incidents of exposure are not commensurate with the harm caused,” she said.
Jamie Daniels, detective chief superintendent at the College of Policing, said this was a real opportunity for change.
“We know that non-contact sex offences disproportionately affect women and girls and they’re also extremely underreported so that’s why we see these things as integral to how we improve trust,” he said.
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He added: “If we get that message right in terms of how we respond, we build trust, we have better outcomes for victims and we start to see the improvements the public rightly deserve.”
