Throughout 2024, the Guardian aims to report on every woman allegedly killed by a man, drawing on the work of campaigns such as Counting Dead Women, the Femicide Census and Killed Women.

In recent years, a woman has been killed by a man every three days in the UK on average, and yet most of their stories have gone unheard. The Guardian wants to help change that.

Continue reading...

The internet has made stalking easier to carry out – and harder to prove and prosecute. It took me four years to see my tormentor in court. At least now I can get on with healing

Being stalked can sometimes feel like having a wound that is trying to heal around a foreign object. Days, weeks, even months can go by without incident, but all it takes is one more instance of unwanted contact for the object to be twisted and all the healing to come undone. It can be hard – even for me, a poet who works with language and words every day – to fully articulate the impact of this experience. Being stalked warps not only your sense of self and time, but also your grasp on reality; simultaneously navigating the flawed criminal justice system while living in fear can make you feel as though you are losing your mind.

I was in a domestically abusive relationship in my early 20s, but am always hesitant to go into detail about my personal experiences with stalking and domestic abuse. I still feel the shame, compounded by societal stigma and misconceptions, but that is precisely why I want to talk about it – to help others avoid going through similar pain. People think abusers suddenly turn on their partners, but it’s often a gradual erosion of boundaries; they think it’s easy to leave, but, by the time you work up the courage, the pit is so deep that escape often feels impossible. They also think reporting abuse to the police is straightforward and justice is assured, but neither of these things could be further from the truth.

Continue reading...

Fawziyah Javed plummeted from Arthur’s Seat – and in her dying moments, told witnesses her husband pushed her. This harrowing documentary shows his trial – and her family’s unending suffering

Yasmin Javed is showing the camera childhood photos of her daughter Fawziyah, from beautiful baby to toddler who can hardly keep still to grinning child with huge shining eyes. “Sorry,” says Yasmin, gathering them up. “I can’t do any more.” Fawziyah, an only child, grew up, fulfilled her ambition to become a lawyer – there are graduation photos, too – and died two years ago at the age of 31, while 17 weeks pregnant with her first child. “The life I had, that’s gone, that’s finished,” says Yasmin, whose face and body seems carved out of grief. Even more than the photographs, the footage of the family holidays, the beaming selfies taken with friends and family, it is Yasmin’s stricken stillness that gives the measure of the loss.

The Push tells Fawziyah’s story as it follows the trial of the man accused of pushing her to her death from the rocky summit of Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh – her husband Kashif Anwar. “As the trial starts,” the film’s interviewer asks Yasmin, “what’s going through your mind?” “Hate,” says Yasmin, without heat. “Hatred for him.”

The Push: Murder on the Cliff is on Channel 4.

Continue reading...

Violence against women and girls should be seen for the public health emergency that it is, writes Kiran Dhami of the Women’s Resource Centre

Your article ( UK charities warn of ‘devastating’ council cuts to women’s services, 18 February ) quotes the CEO of the Coventry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre (Crasac) saying: “So we’ve just had to close the waiting list because [of] the knock-on effect of this [funding cut], as well as austerity. It’s not safe for clients or our staff any more.” It then goes on to report: “The council said in a statement that it was not cutting the service, but had decided not to renew its contract with Crasac because it was ‘not addressing increasing waiting lists’.”

The absurdity of the situation is plain when councils cite a lack of capacity to deliver a service as the reason for cutting funding, when their funding cuts are the reason for the service cuts in the first place. Women’s organisations were creaking under the pressure of increasing demand even before the pandemic, but it has got so much worse since. Refuges and rape crisis centres are lifesaving, not optional extras. We are calling for violence against women and girls to be seen as the public health emergency that it is in our Speaking Up for Women campaign . Maybe then, it will become the priority that it desperately needs to be, with the money to help tackle it, too.
Kiran Dhami
Head of policy, Women’s Resource Centre

Continue reading...

A new report shows that time after time, authorities fail to save women at risk. Our misogynistic systems need reform

• Julie Devey is co-founder and chair of Killed Women

In 2018, my daughter, Poppy Devey Waterhouse, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend just three days before she was going to move to her new flat to start her new life. Her bags were packed.

My world was, of course, torn apart by her murder. It was in the coming years that I realised just how many other lives and families are destroyed each year in the same way – all of us part of a club we wish with all our hearts we weren’t in.

Julie Devey is co-founder and chair of Killed Women

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here .

Continue reading...

Study of 302 cases in England and Wales shows majority of those killed had been ‘hiding in plain sight'

A review of 302 domestic homicides recorded in a four-year period has found that the majority of those killed had been “hiding in plain sight”, having made contact with the police, health services and other public agencies before their death.

Nicole Jacobs, the government’s independent domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales, said the findings highlighted an ongoing lack of “political will” at national level to learn from what were often avoidable deaths.

Continue reading...

The activist and writer of the Vagina Monologues has no intention of stopping her quest to end violence against women

The new book by V – the playwright formerly known as Eve Ensler – is called Reckoning . She says the word slowly, as if it’s falling downstairs, or perhaps, was pushed. During Covid, “I started to really think about what it means to reckon with things. To really face them.” Before the pandemic she’d never had the time – reckoning, she realised, requires a certain stillness. Across the world, she saw people doing the same, as inequities, cruelties, memories, were rising to the surface and forcing uncomfortable confrontations. “And then I thought, what are the things I’ve reckoned with? What are the things I’ve been doing over this lifetime? How do they connect?”

For years, Ensler was an obscure New York poet and playwright, battling addiction and working in a homeless shelter. Her life shifted in 1996, aged 35, when her play The Vagina Monologues became a theatrical phenomenon, now published in over 48 languages and performed in more than 140 countries by people such as Meryl Streep and Oprah Winfrey. Its success changed her in two ways. First, it gave her a new understanding of violence against women, its terrible universality, the realisation that we’re all in this together. Second, it gave her fame. Using the latter to confront the former, she launched V-Day , a global movement that’s raised millions to try to end violence against women; created a campaign which brings one billion women (the number of women estimated to be beaten or sexually assaulted during their lives) on to the streets each Valentine’s Day to protest against violence; and created City of Joy, a community built around survivors of rape and abuse in the Democratic Republic of Congo. From there, she took her place as an awkward feminist hero, sometimes scoffed at, often revered.

Continue reading...

About one in four women will experience partner violence, yet domestic violence still seems shrouded by myths and silence

The settlement came almost immediately. Cassandra Ventura, the R&B singer better known by the stage name Cassie, had filed her blockbuster lawsuit in federal court against the hip-hop mogul Sean Combs only a day before Combs, a rapper and producer, paid her to drop the suit. In her complaint, Ventura described a pattern of coercive control , abuse, drugging and sexual violence perpetrated against her by Combs throughout their more than 13-year relationship, which began in 2005, when Cassie was 19 and had just signed to the 37-year-old Combs’ Bad Boy Records, and ended in 2019.

The complaint alleges that Combs plied Ventura with drugs, such as ecstasy and ketamine; that he beat her, including in one incident in Los Angeles in 2009, after Combs saw Cassie talking to another business agent, which required her to recuperate for a week; that he raped her repeatedly, including an incident in which he hired male sex workers to gang-rape Ventura, which Combs filmed, and again in 2018, when he broke into her house and assaulted her after she attempted to leave the relationship; and that he controlled nearly all aspects of her life, including not only her career, which he allegedly leveraged to keep her silent, but also access to her own medical information and when she was allowed to see her family. Ventura also alleges that after she was romantically linked to another man, Combs told her that he would blow up the man’s car. A vehicle belonging to the rival exploded in a driveway shortly thereafter.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s Aid . In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org .

Continue reading...

UK’s 43 police forces have all referred domestic abuse victims to Home Office in last three years, finds watchdog

Victims of domestic abuse across the UK are being reported to immigration officials when they turn to the police for help, according to data published by an independent watchdog.

The UK’s 43 police forces have all referred victims or survivors of abuse to immigration enforcement in the last three years, prompting urgent calls for a reform of the system.

Continue reading...