Friends called police to raise concerns about Kamonnan Thiamphanit on evening before officers found body

Scotland Yard has referred itself to the police complaints watchdog after a woman was found dead at a house near Hyde Park the morning after it received several reports from friends concerned about her welfare.

A murder investigation was launched after police forced entry to a property in Stanhope Place, near Marble Arch, central London, at about 8.30am on Monday and found the body of Kamonnan Thiamphanit.

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Repealing ban would mean return of ‘one of the most pernicious forms of violence committed against women and children’

A team of UN experts has urged Gambian lawmakers not to repeal a ban on female genital mutilation, saying such a move would set a dangerous global precedent.

In a letter dated 8 April and made public on Thursday , the experts, led by Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said allowing the unchecked return of “one of the most pernicious forms of violence committed against women and children” would violate their right to freedom from torture.

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Some police in England and Wales now ask spouses to flag dangerous traits or mental health problems

Survivors of gun crime committed by violent and coercive partners have worked with police to create a groundbreaking scheme designed to stop more dangerous offenders being allowed licensed firearms.

The women have helped police frame a questionnaire that firearms officers put to the partners of people wanting a licence that will flag up issues such as a propensity to violence or mental health problems.

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Going public after I was attacked was hard, but it helped me overcome the shame that so many victims feel

A few weeks ago, I had a difficult conversation with my teenage daughter. It came out of something that happened to me more than a decade ago, and which changed the course of my life and work.

As a documentary photographer, I have travelled the world, taking portraits of survivors of trauma who shared their testimonies with me. It is a finely balanced exchange, in which they give me their trust, and my pictures attest to their resilience. But for many years, there was always a distance between us, created by the violence they had endured – a gulf I could not cross.

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Exclusive: Territory’s government calls for visit to listen to those thought to be living with consequences of forced fitting of IUDs

• ‘I was only a child’: women tell of trauma of forced contraception

The Danish health minister should “get on a plane and visit” some of the thousands of women thought to be living with the consequences of being forcibly fitted with the contraceptive coil as children, Greenland’s gender equality minister has said.

In an attempt to reduce the population of the former Danish colony, at least 4,500 women and girls are believed to have undergone the medical procedure, usually without their consent or knowledge, at the hands of Danish doctors between 1966 and 1970 alone.

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Christine Everett-Hickson, who was assaulted at a flat in Derbyshire, will be ‘missed beyond words’, loved ones say

The family of a 21-year-old woman who died at a flat in Derbyshire have said that she will be “missed beyond words”.

Derbyshire Constabulary said officers were called to reports that a woman had been assaulted at a home in Greenhill Lane, Riddings, at shortly after 1pm on 18 February.

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As a new wave of protests sweep Iran, the author explains why she has returned to drawing. Plus: an extract from her new collection of protest cartoons

When Marjane Satrapi began drawing again, depicting the violence recently enacted by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, she was so disturbed that she felt physical pain. “I get finger cramps when I have to draw them,” she shudders.

It is 24 years since Satrapi’s bestselling comic-book masterpiece, Persepolis , transformed western readers’ image of Iran. Her graphic memoir was told through the eyes of a cheeky, outspoken young girl growing up during and after the 1979 Islamic revolution, buying Kim Wilde cassettes on the black market, and trying to make sense of arrests, torture, the “morality police” and the carnage of the Iran-Iraq war, before being brutally uprooted to Europe, alone, aged 14, because her parents felt she would be safer there.

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Exclusive: Independent examination of rape prosecutions hears lawyers are ‘obsessed’ with credibility of victims and use victim-blaming language

• Analysis: CPS report makes for grim reading – and it’s only the start
  

Lawyers in the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales have trivialised teen sexual abuse, are “obsessed” about the credibility of rape victims and used victim-blaming language, according to a critical official examination into how the service deals with serious sexual crimes.

The report is the first major independent examination into how the CPS prosecutes rape since a promised overhaul of the criminal justice system. It warns of a reliance on “new myths” about modern sexual practices, and says mental health is still acting as a barrier to victims receiving justice.

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First academic deep dive shows arcane attitudes to victims of sexual offences are prevalent, but the study itself is cause for optimism

• CPS lawyers in England and Wales trivialise teen sexual abuse, report says

A major report on how the Crown Prosecution Service deals with rape cases makes for grim reading.

The first academic deep dive into CPS case files – alongside interviews with its staff, police officers and independent sexual violence advisers (ISVAs) – reveals bleak examples of prosecutors dismissing alleged crimes by younger suspects on younger victims, using victim-blaming language and raising eyebrows about non-conventional sexual practices.

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