Verity Nevitt Co-founder, The Gemini Project
By revealing how many chances police missed to investigate Wayne Couzens over 20 years before his abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard, the Angiolini Inquiry highlighted the potentially deadly consequences of police devaluing so-called ‘low-level’ sexual offences like indecent exposure.
With charges being brought in less than 2% of rape reports, never mind more trivialised forms of harassment, survivors need a way to hold officers who fail them to account. That’s why we’re campaigning for the Gaia Principle, an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill, which would mean that an officer who can’t do their job can lose their job.
Among a number of other offences, including a serious assault on a teenage girl, the Angiolini Report revealed that Couzens indecently exposed himself to members of the public from his car in Dover in June 2015. Despite identifying Couzens as the suspect, Kent Police closed the case without investigation. This missed opportunity allowed him to continue working in the police, a position he’d go on to abuse when using his warrant card and handcuffs to kidnap Sarah Everard in March 2021.
This is the devastating result of police failing to adequately investigate indecent exposure. It is also an injustice to the victims, who see that it is not a crime that is taken seriously and often internalise this, downplaying the severity of their own experience which makes it even more difficult to access the support they need.
When working as an Independent Sexual Violence Advocate, I cannot tell you how many times I heard a survivor say “it could’ve been worse, at least it wasn’t rape”, as if care, attention, specialist support and an adequate police investigation should be reserved only for victims of select sex offences.
But indecent exposure comes with its unique trauma, the violating effects of which can have long-term impacts. Those who experience it deserve to be taken seriously. Too often officers dismiss the case and the survivor along with it – despite the fact it can often be a warning sign that more serious abuse may have taken place or be likely to take place in the future. People who commit indecent exposure are likely to go on to commit other sex offences. This was precisely th
