Latest news with #womensafety
BBC News
11 hours ago
- BBC News
Met to step up women's safety patrols this summer
The Met Police is women's safety patrols this summer at music force says that as part of their crackdown on violent offenders, officers will be making more of a visible presence at 51 large-scale concerts in patrols kicked off at the Beyoncé concert in Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on June 5, the first of 19 more concerts where the Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) patrols will take say that at the Beyoncé concert they removed individuals for stalking and threatening behaviour, and arrested a man for upskirting who remains on police bail while enquiries initiative is part of the Met's V100 project which uses data to track and target the most harmful offenders. The level of risk is assessed using crime reports alongside a tool which measures the seriousness of harm to victims, known as the Cambridge Crime Harm assistant commissioner Ben Russell, who leads the Met's V100 initiative and is also the lead officer for concerts this summer, said: "Every woman and girl has the right to feel safe, whether walking home, using public transport, or enjoying a night out at a concert. Yet too many still don't. The Met is determined to change that."This summer we are working closer than ever with stadium management and major event organisers to help keep the public safe. "Dedicated VAWG patrols are taking place at a number of concerts throughout the summer, with officers trained to spot predatory men in crowds and taken action to prevent violence before it happens."Deputy mayor for policing and crime, Kaya Comer-Schwartz, said: "Women and girls deserve to be safe and feel safe wherever they are in the capital and I welcome this action by the Met at summer concerts to prevent violent behaviour, support those in need and take swift action against perpetrators." For more on this, Deputy assistant commissioner Ben Russell, who leads the Met's V100 initiative will be speaking to Riz Lateef on BBC London's breakfast show at 07:20 BST on 20 June.
The Guardian
10-06-2025
- The Guardian
The misogyny of the metaverse: is Mark Zuckerberg's dream world a no-go area for women?
Everybody knows that young women are not safe. They are not safe in the street, where 86% of those aged 18 to 24 have experienced sexual harassment. They are not safe at school, where 79% of young people told Ofsted that sexual assault was common in their friendship groups and almost a third of 16- to 18-year-old girls report experiencing 'unwanted sexual touching'. They are not safe in swimming pools or parks, or at the beach. They are not even safe online, with the children's safety charity the NSPCC reporting that social media sites are 'failing to protect girls from harm at every stage'. This will come as no surprise to any woman who has ever used social media. But it is particularly relevant as Meta, the operator of some of the biggest social platforms on the internet, is busily engaged in constructing a whole new world. The company is pumping billions of dollars a year into building its metaverse, a virtual world that it hopes will become the future not just of socialising, but of education, business, shopping and live events. This raises a simple question: if Meta has utterly failed to keep women and girls safe in its existing online spaces, why should we trust it with the future? Mark Zuckerberg has grandly promised: 'In the metaverse, you'll be able to do almost anything you can imagine.' It's the sort of promise that might sound intensely appealing to some men and terrifying to most women. Indeed, the deeply immersive nature of the metaverse will make the harassment and abuse so many of us endure daily in text-based form on social media feel 100 times more real and will simultaneously make moderation 100 times more difficult. The result is a perfect storm. And I am speaking from experience, not idly speculating: I spent days in the metaverse researching my book, The New Age of Sexism. There is no single definition of the metaverse, but most people use the term to describe a shared world in which virtual and augmented technologies allow users (represented by avatars) to interact with people, objects and environments. Most of Meta's virtual world is accessible only to those who pay for the company's Quest headsets, but a limited number of metaverse spaces can be accessed by any device connected to the internet. Advanced technology such as 3D positional audio, hand tracking and haptic feedback (when controllers use various vibrations to coincide with actions you take) combine to make virtual worlds feel real. Your avatar moves, speaks and gestures when you do, allowing users to interact verbally and physically. Less than two hours after I first entered the metaverse, I saw a woman's avatar being sexually assaulted. When I approached her to ask her about the experience, she confirmed: 'He came up to me and grabbed my ass.' 'Does that happen a lot?' I asked. 'All the time,' she replied, wearily. I used my haptic controller to 'pick up' a bright-yellow marker and moved towards a giant blackboard. 'HAVE YOU BEEN ASSAULTED IN THE METAVERSE?' I wrote. The response was near instantaneous. 'Yeah, many times,' someone shouted. 'I think everybody's been assaulted in the damn metaverse,' one woman replied immediately, in a US accent. 'Unfortunately, it is too common,' a British woman added, nodding. Both women told me they had been assaulted multiple times. During my time in the metaverse, sexual harassment and unwanted sexual comments were almost constant. I heard one player shout: 'I'm dragging my balls all over your mother's face,' to another and witnessed male players making claims about 'beating off', as well as comments about 'gang bangs'. My virtual breasts were commented on repeatedly. I did not witness any action taken in response – whether by a moderator or by another player. A damning TechCrunch report from 2022 found that human moderators were available only in the main plaza of Meta's metaverse game Horizon Worlds – and that they seemed more engaged in giving information on how to take a selfie than moderating user behaviour. More worryingly still, I visited worlds where I saw what appeared to be young children frequently experiencing attention from adult men they did not know. In one virtual karaoke-style club, the bodies of the singers on stage were those of young women in their early 20s. But based on their voices, I would estimate that many of the girls behind the avatars were perhaps nine or 10 years old. Conversely, the voices of the men commenting on them from the audience, shouting out to them and following them offstage were often unmistakably those of adults. It is particularly incumbent on Meta to solve this problem. Of course, there are other companies, from Roblox to Microsoft, building user-generated virtual-reality gaming platforms and virtual co-working spaces. But, according to NSPCC research, while 150 apps, games and websites were used to groom children online between 2017 and 2023, where the means of communication was known, 47% of online grooming offences took place on products owned by Meta. These are not isolated incidents or cherry-picked horror stories. Research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that users were exposed to abusive behaviour every seven minutes in the metaverse. During 11 and a half hours recording user behaviour, the report identified 100 potential violations of Meta's policies. This included graphic sexual content, bullying, abuse, grooming and threats of violence. In a separate report, the CCDH found repeated instances of children being subjected to sexually explicit abuse and harassment, including an adult asking a young user: 'Do you have a cock in your mouth?' and another adult shouting: 'I don't want to cum on you,' to a group of underage girls who explicitly told him they were minors. Since its inception, Meta's virtual world has been plagued with reports of abuse. Users have reported being virtually groped, assaulted and raped. Researchers have also described being virtually stalked in the metaverse by other players, who tail them insistently, refuse to leave them alone and even follow them into different rooms or worlds. In December 2021, a beta tester of the metaverse wrote in the official Facebook group of the Horizon platform: 'Not only was I groped last night, but there were other people there who supported this behaviour.' What was even more revealing than the virtual assault itself was Meta's response. Vivek Sharma, then vice-president of Horizon at Meta, responded to the incident by telling the Verge it was 'absolutely unfortunate'. After Meta reviewed the incident, he claimed, it determined that the beta tester didn't use the safety features built into Horizon Worlds, including the ability to block someone from interacting with you. 'That's good feedback still for us because I want to make [the blocking feature] trivially easy and findable,' he continued. This response was revealing. First, the euphemistic description of the event as 'unfortunate', which made it sound on a par with poor sound quality. Second, the immediate shifting of the blame and responsibility on to the person who experienced the abuse – 'she should have been using certain tools to prevent it' – rather than an acknowledgment that it should have been prevented from happening in the first place. And, finally, most importantly, the description of a woman being abused online as 'good feedback'. Much subsequent discourse has focused on the question of whether or not a sexual assault or rape carried out in virtual reality should be described as such; whether it might have an impact on the victims similar to a real‑life assault. But this misses the point. First, it is worth noting that the experience of being sexually harassed, assaulted or raped in the metaverse has had a profound and distressing impact on many victims. When it was revealed in 2024 that British police were investigating the virtual gang-rape of a girl below the age of 16 in the metaverse, a senior officer familiar with the case told the media: 'This child experienced psychological trauma similar to that of someone who has been physically raped'. Second, technology to make the metaverse feel physically real is developing at pace. You can already buy full-body suits that promise to 'enhance your VR experience with elaborate haptic sensations'. They have sleeves, gloves and vests with dozens of different feedback points. Wearable haptic technology will bring the experience of being virtually assaulted much closer to the physical sensation of real-life victimisation. All the more reason to tackle it now, regardless of how 'realistic' it is or isn't, rather than waiting for things to get worse. But most importantly, regardless of how similar to or different from physical offline harms these forms of abuse are, what matters is that they are abusive, distressing, intimidating, degrading and offensive and that they negatively affect victims. And, as we have already seen with social media, the proliferation of such abuse will prevent women and girls from being able to fully use and benefit from new forms of technology. If Zuckerberg's vision comes to fruition and the boardrooms, classrooms, operating theatres, lecture halls and meeting spaces of tomorrow exist in virtual reality, then closing those spaces off from women, girls and other marginalised groups, because of the tolerance of various forms of prejudice and abuse in the metaverse, will be devastating. If we allow this now, when the metaverse is (relatively speaking) in its infancy, we are baking inequality into the building blocks of this new world. At the time of the aforementioned virtual-reality rape of an underage girl, Meta said in a statement: 'The kind of behaviour described has no place on our platform, which is why for all users we have an automatic protection called personal boundary, which keeps people you don't know a few feet away from you.' In another incident, when a researcher experienced a virtual assault, Meta's comment to the press was: 'We want everyone using our services to have a good experience and easily find the tools that can help prevent situations like these and so we can investigate and take action.' The focus always seems to be on users finding and switching on tools to prevent harassment or reporting abuse when it does happen. It is not on preventing abuse and taking serious action against abusers. But in the CCDH research that identified 100 potential violations of Meta's VR policies, just 51 of the incidents could be reported to Meta using a web form created by the platform for this purpose, because the platform refuses to examine policy violations if it cannot match them to a predefined category or username in its database. Worse, not one of those 51 reports of policy violation (including sexual harassment and grooming of minors) was acknowledged by Meta and as a result no action was taken. It's not much good pointing to your complaints system as the solution to abuse if you don't respond to complaints. Meta's safety features will no doubt continue to evolve and adapt – but, once again, in a repeat of what we have already seen happen on social media, women and girls will be the canaries in the coalmines, their abuse and suffering providing companies with useful data points with which to tweak their products and increase their profits. Teenage girls' trauma: a convenient building material. There is something incredibly depressing about all this. If we are really talking about reinventing the world here, couldn't we push the boat out a little? Couldn't we dare to dream of a virtual world in which those who so often face abuse are safe by design – with the prevention and eradication of abuse built in – instead of being tasked with the responsibility of protecting themselves when the abuse inevitably arises? None of this is whining or asking too much. Don't be fooled into thinking that we are all lucky to be using Meta's tools for nothing. We are paying for them in the tracking and harvesting of our data, our content, our photographs, our ideas and, as the metaverse develops, our hand and even eye movements. All of it can be scraped and used to train enormously powerful AI tools and predictive behavioural algorithms, access to which can then be sold to companies at gargantuan prices to help them forecast how we as consumers behave. It is not an exaggeration to say that we already pay Meta a very high price for using its platforms. And if the metaverse really does become as widely adopted and as ubiquitous in the fundamental operation of our day-to-day lives as Zuckerberg hopes, there won't be an easy way to opt out. We can't let tech companies off the hook because they claim the problem is too big or too unwieldy to tackle. We wouldn't accept similar excuses for dodging regulation from international food companies, or real-life venues. And the government should be prepared to act in similar ways here, introducing regulation to require proved safety standards at the design stage, before products are rolled out to the public. 'Hold on, just building the future here,' Horizon Worlds tells me as I wait to access the metaverse. As we battle to eradicate the endemic harassment and abuse that women and girls face in real-world settings, the metaverse presents a risk of slipping backwards. We are sleepwalking into virtual spaces where men's entitlement to women's bodies is once again widespread and normalised with near total impunity. The Guardian invited Meta to reply to this article, but the company did not respond. The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution Is Reinventing Misogyny by Laura Bates is published by Simon & Schuster (£20). To support the Guardian, buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply
Telegraph
08-06-2025
- Telegraph
Indecent exposure prosecutions fall despite Sarah Everard murder
Thousands of sex offenders accused of indecent exposure are avoiding prosecution despite a crackdown pledge by police after the rape and murder of Sarah Everard. Police are catching and prosecuting fewer offenders for indecent exposure since Ms Everard was killed, despite a big increase in the number of offences being reported to police by victims, a Telegraph investigation has found. The proportion of indecent exposure offences resulting in a charge has halved since 2014/15 from one in five to just one in 10 (10.2 per cent) despite the number of reported crimes increasing by 160 per cent from 6,000 to 16,000 in the same period. A Government-commissioned report found Wayne Couzens, the serving Metropolitan Police officer who murdered Ms Everard, could have been stopped before her death in 2021 if police had carried out a 'more thorough and committed' investigation into reports of his alleged indecent exposure. But since Ms Everard's murder, which shocked the nation and led to Government and police chiefs pledging to do more to protect women and girls from violence, the charge rate has fallen from 12 per cent. In the same period, the number of offences reported has increased by 40 per cent from 11,400 to 16,000. Ministers, police, judges and women's groups all acknowledge that indecent exposure is a precursor crime that can escalate into more serious 'contact' sexual offences including rape if action is not taken. Couzens, now 52 and serving a whole-life term in prison, was reported eight times to police for indecent exposure before he raped and killed Ms Everard. But 'lamentable and repeated failures' to act on the allegations meant he escaped prosecution until after he was jailed for life for her murder, the official report into the scandal found. The Telegraph investigation has found that even when offenders are prosecuted, official data show perpetrators of indecent exposure are getting more lenient sentences. The proportion of offenders convicted of indecent exposure who are jailed for more than six months has fallen from 60.9 per cent in 2019 to 39 per cent in 2024, the Telegraph analysis shows. Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, admitted too many victims were being let down and pledged a 'fundamental review' of how police respond to indecent exposure and voyeurism, which is also seen as a precursor offence. She said: ' Violence against women and girls is a national emergency, and I know the devastating impact exposure and voyeurism can have on victims, who are too often being let down. 'We are working with the police to fundamentally review the way they respond to these offences and have supported the development of new training for officers. As part of our mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, we will be setting out a new strategy in the summer to keep more women safe.' Kieran Mullan, the shadow justice minister, who set up a group with the parents of Ms Everard to campaign for tougher sentencing, said: 'These offences can be deeply traumatic and we also know more and more about how they can be a first step to the most serious crimes. 'That's why prosecuting people is so important, so they are on the radar of the criminal justice system. The Government needs to rapidly understand why this isn't happening to such a concerning extent.' Responding to the Telegraph findings, police chiefs admitted they had to improve their response to the crime. Asst Chief Const Tom Harding, the director of operational standards at the College of Policing, said sexual exposure was a 'serious and distressing crime that can have a profound impact on victims'. He said: 'While we are seeing increased reporting of these offences, reflecting growing public awareness and confidence in coming forward, we recognise the need to improve the quality and consistency of investigations and outcomes.' Mr Harding said the College of Policing has launched national training for police on 'non-contact' sexual offences, as recommended in an official report by Lady Elish Angiolini. So far, 40,000 officers have completed it. He said: 'We are committed to ensuring that all victims of non-contact sexual offences are supported and offenders are brought to justice. This work is part of a broader effort across policing to tackle violence against women and girls and rebuild public trust and confidence.' The Telegraph analysis shows that police do not proceed with indecent exposure investigations in 46 per cent of cases because they claim there are 'evidential difficulties', often because the victim does not support a prosecution. This can be driven by victims' anxieties over appearing in court where they have to confront their perpetrator and relive the experience, as well as humiliation associated with the crime. However, Zoe Billingham, a former HM inspector of police, said this was no excuse for police not to proceed with an evidence-led prosecution without the support of the victim by using CCTV, phone data and other witnesses to place and identify the perpetrator at the scene of the crime. She said: 'That's been the traditional excuse for not pursuing a whole range of crimes, not least domestic abuse, but if there is other evidence – CCTV, other witness evidence, they can do an evidence-led prosecution that doesn't require the victims to provide evidence or make a statement. 'Only 10 per cent resulting in a charge when people have taken the time and trouble to report these crimes is really poor and indicative of the culture change that is needed in ensuring that all frontline officers recognise the importance of these crimes.'
BBC News
05-06-2025
- BBC News
More street lights and cameras to make towns safer for Herefordshire women
Street lights and CCTV cameras have been installed in areas highlighted as giving cause for concern over women's new equipment focuses on routes in Ross-on-Wye and Leominster, in Herefordshire. that women take home at high-risk areas were identified as giving cause for concern after police looked at crime statistics and Julie Watson, from Herefordshire Police, said keeping women and girls safe was a "key priority" for the West Mercia force and the new lights and cameras would help to achieve this. Some areas in the towns had suffered from antisocial behaviour, particularly towards women and girls, Herefordshire councillor Carole Gandy said, but they were now "much safer places".Funding came from the West Mercia police and crime commissioner John Campion and the two town councils. Mr Campion said police listened to the community to "target our resources where they would make the most difference". Follow BBC Hereford & Worcester on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Telegraph
04-06-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
Male criminals can self-identify as women in mental health hospitals
NHS mental health hospitals are allowing male criminals to self-identify as women, NHS documents have revealed. Trusts in London are permitting transgender women to use female-only spaces despite acknowledging their presence as a 'risk to a particular gender' and potentially 'very distressing for other patients on a single-sex ward'. Campaigners have accused the NHS of endangering the welfare of the 'most vulnerable women' by allowing transgender women, who were born male, on female wards. A women's rights group used Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to obtain sex and gender policies at NHS mental health trusts in London. The recently disclosed documents found mental health trusts raising concerns over the guidance that forensic patients should use single-sex female spaces if they identified as women. Forensic patients are those referred to the NHS from court or prison for committing offences, or considered a potential risk to themselves or others because of a mental health disorder. Under the current NHS guidelines published in 2019, transgender people should be accommodated according to the way they dress, their name and pronouns, which 'may not always accord with the physical sex appearance of the chest or genitalia'. This also 'applies to toilet and bathing facilities', with the exception of pre-operative transgender people sharing open shower facilities. Policy at West London NHS Trust, which runs the high-security Broadmoor Hospital, abides by these guidelines, stating: 'A trans man or a trans woman must be admitted on to a ward in accordance with their presenting gender, if this is their preference.' It added: 'Patients should be addressed respectfully, using the pronouns of their acquired gender.' The trust cited an example of a transgender patient in a manic state getting undressed in front of women and revealing their genitals. It said: 'A patient with bipolar (who happens also to be trans) who is in a manic state and who does not have capacity may be disinhibited and at risk of disrobing in public. 'Depending on where they are in their transition, it may be more appropriate for them to be admitted to a ward that is in line with their birth gender … while they are acutely unwell and at risk of 'outing' themselves.' The policy document added: 'Once they have recovered and have regained capacity it would be essential to have a conversation with the patient around where they would be most comfortably accommodated, and to arrange a move to a ward in accordance with their correct gender.' Both trusts note that there may be circumstances where it is lawful to exclude a patient, transgender or otherwise, from a single-sex ward if it constitutes 'proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim' such as harm reduction. At Central and North Western London, a policy document said that 'further consideration may be needed as to how best to manage a trans individual' in some cases, such as when 'a sexually disinhibited pre-operative transsexual individual may be very distressing for other patients on a single-sex ward'. In such a 'rare occasion', the policy recommends the individual 'be transferred to a single room and consideration made to their temporary use of a disabled toilet should individual toilets not be available'. The trust said it 'respects an individual's right to self-identify as male or female ', and made clear that transgender women could access women's lavatories. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, the equalities watchdog, has issued interim guidance advising it should be 'compulsory' for workplaces to provide single-sex lavatories, though trans women should not be left with no facilities to use. The NHS is currently reviewing its guidelines on same-sex accommodation in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on biological sex. Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at the human rights charity Sex Matters, said: 'It's deeply disturbing that the safety and welfare of some of the most vulnerable women in London – those in the care of state mental health services – are being so seriously compromised by NHS trusts. 'The Supreme Court judgment was crystal-clear that single-sex services must be run on the basis of biological sex. 'There is no excuse for a dangerous 'case-by-case' approach that deems some men safe to be housed in women's accommodation. 'These NHS trusts are missing the point: no male patient should ever be allowed in female accommodation under any circumstances. His claimed identity, history of sexual behaviour and whether he has had surgery to remove body parts are all irrelevant. So is the state of his mental and physical health. 'Safety and dignity of women' 'If health care managers cannot understand why this matters so much in mental health services, then they are not fit to run NHS trusts or to have female patients in their care.' A campaigner involved in the audit told The Times that it was 'scary to think' that the gender identity of violent criminals could 'override the safety and dignity of women'. They added: 'NHS trusts are playing Russian roulette with women's safety. The Supreme Court ruling clarified that single-sex spaces must be single sex, and it is vital that this is now enforced nationally across all hospitals.' An NHS spokesman said: 'The NHS is working through the implications of the Supreme Court ruling, and we absolutely recognise the need for revised guidance. It's important that we wait for the Equality and Human Rights Commission to publish its statutory guidance before final decisions about future policy are taken. 'In the meantime, we are working closely with Government to ensure we can provide updated guidance for the health service as soon as possible.'
