| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Attacks on Chiswick women in the mid-nineties | |
| Posted by: | Felicity Caborn | |
| Date/Time: | 27/12/25 10:42:00 |
| While I didn't live in Chiswick while these attacks were taking place, I would concur with Anita's view that the area, and London in general, feels a lot safer for women than it did at the end of the last century. There are a number of reasons why this might be the case - more CCTV, more sex offenders locked up due to improved DNA testing, Uber meaning a safe route home is always available, better street lighting, less public drunkeness and a greater awareness from men about behaviours that might make women feel unsafe at night. These factors seem to have combined to encourage more people, including lone women, to walk home after dark which in itself has made this feel more secure. Some men will point to the statistics on sex offences and claim that this makes women like me and Anita complacent and delusional but the rise in reports and convictions does not mean living in London has become more dangerous for women. The increase in offences since the nineties has been caused by many factors including the aforementioned DNA testing, proper attention being given to historic sex offences, tighter legal definition on consent and less of the kind of victim blaming that has crept into this thread. Violence against women and girls remains far too high and there is no room for complacency but we do need to recognise the progress being made and keep up pressure and not be distracted by false narratives about the nature of the problem. Around 0.2% of men end up being convicted of sex offences and the limited data that we have shows little difference in that number between ethnicities although the type of offending may differ. There are estimated to be about 600,000 asylum seekers and illegal immigrants in the country of which around 70% are in London. Inevitably some of them will be responsible for sex crimes but, as Philippa points out, any cases will inevitably be amplified in papers like the Daily Mail and Telegraph and then shared widely across social media. Even the BBC seems to have followed the path of giving promininet coverage to every sex crime involving a migrant while ignoring the much much larger proportion of those that do not. This has led to the simple minded or those who cleave to a narrative that suits their prejudices to talk about a migrant crime wave. Trump managed to get elected with similar rhetoric but, as with the US, the actual evidence shows that recent arrivals to the country are less likely to commit a criminal offence (if you exclude those related to immigration matters) than the rest of the population. While sexual offences have risen in London at the same time as the huge increase in the number of illegal workers since Brexit, the rises mirror those seen in other parts of the country. Despite most illegal workers being in London there has been no extra surge in sex crimes in the capital. My own experience suggests that women are most at risk not from men living on the margins of society but men in positions of power and responsiblity which too many seek to abuse. The horrors that are emerging from America about the activities of the very man who pushed the migrant crime lie the hardest should be a lesson to us here. When people spread falsehoods and say that they do so out of 'concern' for woment, we should be aware that is always the very last of their considerations. |