The lawyer leading the inquiry into the murder of Sarah Everard fears women are taking ‘drastic’ measures to feel safe, after a tripling in the number caught with a knife.
Lady Elish Angiolini spoke out after a survey of police forces revealed that 2,790 women were found with a blade in the year to April, up from less than 900 a decade earlier.
A girl as young as five was among those arrested, with under-18’s accounting for a fifth of all cases.
The survey revealed a spike in reports since the murder of Sarah Everard who was abducted and raped by a serving Metropolitan Police officer in 2021 while walking home near Clapham Common in south London after a night out.
Lady Angiolini led the inquiry into how killer PC Wayne Couzens was allowed to continue in the Met after a series of earlier incidents, while the second part of her report will examine ways of reducing violence against women.
She confirmed that she will be examining why women are arming themselves after the survey revealed that some areas have seen a near four-fold increase in arrests since Everard’s death.
‘The last thing we want to have is young women being criminalised as a result of the fear that they have,’ she told LBC.
‘What we have to do is find solutions to make the streets of this country as safe as possible so they don’t have to take such dramatic measures to feel safe.’
Lady Elish Angiolini – who led a report examine how Wayne Couzens was able to abduct, murder and rape Sarah Everard – said she will investigate why more women are carrying knives
A 13-year-old girl was found guilty of attempted murder this week after bringing this knife to school in Carmarthenshire and using it to stab two teachers and a fellow pupil
Research from the National Police Chiefs’ Council recorded over one million offences of violence against women and girls in 2022/23 – which is a whopping one in five of the police-recorded crimes that year.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told station she knows women may carry the blades out of fear of being attacked, but went on to say it is still a crime.
‘Do not carry a knife. It’s dangerous, illegal, and it will just make violence worse,’ she said.
It comes after alarming figures found that children as young as 10 are carrying weapons in Scotland.
The highest amount of incidents was recorded in London, where more than 1,300 women were caught with a blade.
West Midlands Police reported a 54 per cent rise, and West Mercia, Staffordshire and Norfolk all said the number of cases had doubled.
Cheshire Police reported seeing a four-fold in their area.
Knife crime campaigner Pastor Lorraine Jones added: ‘As long as [women] are not feeling protected and safe, sadly some will carry a knife.’
Pastor Lorraine Jones, Sir Keir Starmer and Idris Elba as they talk to the families of children who have been lost to knife crime
She won the Daily Mail’s Inspirational Woman of the Year award for her tireless community work in Brixton.
She was born in the London borough of Lambeth, and raised seven children there.
She had thought it the end of the world when one of her boys, Dwayne, was sent to a young offenders’ prison aged 15 after becoming caught up in gang culture. Dwayne had turned his life around after his release, but that world claimed his life nonetheless.
He died at the age of 20 after trying to stop another youngster being attacked. He suspected he would die young, too.
‘He said he wouldn’t make the age of 21 – four of his friends didn’t,’ says Lorraine. ‘I remember him saying ‘The streets aren’t safe’. I didn’t take him seriously, but he was right. He didn’t make 21.’
Dwayne’s death in 2014 galvanised her into action. She took over the running of his boxing club, turning it into not only a sporting venue but a community hub.
She has become a calm voice in her community, helping smooth the historically explosive relations between the police and locals.
It comes after a schoolgirl was found guilty of attempted murder this week after she tried to kill two teachers and a fellow pupil in a high school stabbing rampage.
Aged 13, the Ysgol Dyffryn Aman (Amman Valley School) pupil used a multitool knife to stab assistant headteacher Fiona Elias, 48, and additional needs teacher Liz Hopkin, 53, before attacking another pupil on April 24 last year.
The teachers had confronted her for trying to access a hallway at the Carmarthenshire school – and she responded with unjustifiable violence, stabbing Ms Elias in the arm and Ms Hopkin in the neck.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told LBC she knows women may carry the blades out of fear of being attacked, but went on to say it is still a crime
The ‘troubled’ and ‘unhappy’ girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was allegedly pushed to ‘breaking point’ after being bullied at school without any consequence for her tormentors, according to remarks reported to have been made by her father.
Swansea Crown Court heard that a fellow pupil had witnessed the girl being slapped on the back of the head four or five times by the year 10 pupil she went on to stab.
She had been kicked, punched and slapped by bullies at school up to four times a week, the trial heard, having moved from another school where she had also been bullied.
The would-be killer felt she had been unfairly put in detention by Ms Elias, the court heard, and the girl told the court she spent her time feeling ‘quite anxious, scared, all the time… during school, after school, 24/7’.
The teacher had suspended her for a week at the start of the school year after finding a knife in her bag – which she had been bringing into school every day.
But the girl’s father said he had warned the school, after finding the knife, that ‘if you don’t stop the bullying, something is going to go bad’.
