Sophie Linden interview: ‘This is not ok. We must stop abuse of women and girls’

When Sophie Linden asked her children how safe they feel on the streets, she was taken aback at their response. “My sons asked my daughter if she was ever harassed and she said, ‘errr yeah, every day’,” says Linden, 51, who is the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime in London, and whose children are all young adults. “We can see from the outpourings going on right now that this is the experience of many women and girls across the country and that is just not okay. I remember, growing up in Hackney, being told to walk down the middle of the road because it was safer; telling my parents I would be fine because I wanted to go out but hearing footsteps and worrying that someone was coming too close to me.

“This is why we have to keep challenging the situation and change what is happening — making sure we have services in place for victims, and women feel confident coming forward and looking at the behaviour of men and boys to try and stop abuse happening in the first place. It is important that we as policy makers understand what is happening because if we don’t we can’t tackle the problem.”

These conversations are happening in the wake of the tragic death of Sarah Everard, who disappeared walking home. “It is such a dreadful case,” says Linden. “It has struck a chord in the hearts of women and men. We know that violence against women on the streets happens and we need to make sure we learn any lessons that need to be learned.”

Sadiq Khan made addressing violence against women and girls a priority when he stood for election as Mayor in 2016. He has invested £60.7 million in tackling the problem and today is allocating £3 million to 42 grassroots organisations that support women and girls who have been the victims of violence. The new investment will fund helplines, legal support and counselling, and provide vulnerable victims with phones, travel cards, food and medical supplies. But Linden, who has been in her role since 2016, says throwing money at the problem is not enough. “We have made progress but we need to keep asking what would make women and girls’ lives safer and better? That requires a really good response to policing and thinking about what we do with perpetrators.”

She is not impressed by the Government’s announcement for safer streets, with more CCTV, street lighting and — the measure I am baffled by — undercover officers in pubs and clubs. “We know that lighting and CCTV can make a difference but in and of itself that is not going to be enough. We need to make sure that women feel confident to report violence and that the criminal justice system treats them properly. We’ll see, but it is sort of missing the point to only think about pubs and clubs, they generally take responsibility for what happens anyway.”

It is difficult for women to feel confident in the criminal justice system when a police Bill debated in the Commons yesterday proposed allowing 10-year sentences for damaging statues when the minimum term for some serious sexual offences is only four years and a Bill that allows police to stop protests on grounds including noise passed its second reading yesterday.

Linden continues: “All of this needs national co-ordination and focus. It isn’t about one-off gimmicks, kneejerk reactions and sticking-plaster policies. To be fair we have the domestic abuse Bill, which could be a landmark piece of legislation, but we need long-term sustainable investment, not one-off yearly money to police and services; that makes it difficult to plan.”

After the outcry over the police’s behaviour at a vigil for Sarah Everard at Clapham Common, how can women feel confident their complaints will be taken seriously by police? “Sadiq has been clear that what we saw was unacceptable,” says Linden. “I don’t think the commissioner should resign. There is work that the Met needs to do to rebuild trust and confidence, they understand that. Given what we’ve seen, some women will feel mindful about reporting. All I can say is if you are a victim of violence, report it to police, they are there to help you and they can’t deal with what isn’t being reported.”

In Linden’s experience, there are a number of reasons people don’t report crimes — during the pandemic there was a 45 per cent increase in calls to domestic violence helplines and about a 15 per cent increase in reports to the police. “That mismatch could be that they don’t want the police to be involved, it could be that they don’t feel confident there will be an appropriate response, it could be that they have reported it previously but they have had to wait for the case to get to court, and Covid has created a backlog in cases. We have to make sure we tackle each of these reasons. After Black Lives Matter it became clear that black women didn’t come forward because they weren’t sure of the response they would get and we have taken that forward.”

One statistic has driven the work Linden has done. “In 2016 a sexual violence assessment found that in every borough of London — there are 32 boroughs — 11 women a week were sexually assaulted and raped. That is just shocking.” Linden doesn’t know what that figure is now as they haven’t repeated the assessment but says they will.

Linden tells me about two strategies that have worked and are being expanded. One is trying to make sure they have services for victims and that women feel confident to come forward or even know what is abusive behaviour.

“Some young women are not viewing what has happened to them as unacceptable,” says Linden. “Last year I went to an amazing organisation that was supporting women and I asked a woman how she got to work there — I always ask that. She was asked to come translate for a woman who was getting services and as she was translating what had happened she realised it had happened to her. She was a victim of coercive control and she had not realised. That is not an unusual story.”

The second strategy is looking at the behaviour of men to try to stop abuse happening in the first place, and this includes prevention in schools. She said: “We have funded the Tender programme which looks at teaching boys and men, girls and women about healthy relationships, respect and consent and there is the Drive programme, which works with men who have been found guilty of domestic abuse and changing their behaviour. There is also a scheme tagging men coming out of prison for domestic abuse to make sure they don’t go where they are not meant to.”

She had not heard of Everyone’s Invited, the online campaign inviting users to post anonymous testimonies of sexual assault and harassment, with messages from girls as young as nine, but says talking about it is a good thing.

The way Linden and her colleagues have approached domestic abuse shows the effectiveness of the Mayor’s office working with the Government. “At the moment it isn’t joined up enough. When Covid hit, we expected domestic abuse to rise. What it took was for myself to go to the local government, because they work with refuges, the Home Office for the policing response, and the Ministry of Justice for victim support.”

They have had positive results working with TfL and with Night Czar Amy Lame on the Women’s Night Safety Charter, which 393 organisations including McDonald’s and Lambeth council have signed up to, where staff are trained to deal with incidents.

There have been improvements — for example the waiting time for rape crisis centres has gone down. “But do we meet all the demands of London through our victim services? No, we don’t.”

The fundamental point that Linden keeps coming back to is this. “It is not right that there are so many women and girls who do not feel safe on the streets and in their own homes. We have to keep thinking how to build on what we have done so we don’t have a situation where women and girls don’t feel safe.”