When the cops closed ranks, women held them accountable

Hey there,

Before I get started this week, a quick note: this edition includes mentions of domestic abuse and sexual assault. If that’s not something you want to read right now, no worries – stay safe and I’ll see you next week. If you need help, I’ve included some resources at the bottom of this email.

With long-running investigations, it’s sometimes hard to know where to start.

I could begin this one in February 2023. In a block of flats-turned-set in Kings Cross, my former-Bureau colleague Sarah Haque nods encouragingly at Sonia* to continue. (Sonia’ is not her real name. Her name has been changed to protect her identity, for legal reasons and privacy.)

They’re surrounded by a documentary production crew and Sonia is telling the story of how she was psychologically, physically and sexually abused by her former boss, a police sergeant, for years. When she reported him, she recounts, the entire force turned on her. 

I could start earlier, in July 2022, when the FT Weekend Magazine published a 6-page spread by Sarah and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) featuring Sonia and other survivors of police-perpetrated domestic abuse (PPDA). Or even before that; a flurry of coverage in 2019 across The Times, The Observer, The Ferret, and the BBC by Alexandra Heal, the former Bureau reporter who originally broke the story: ‘Nowhere to Turn’. 

Or, instead, I could start at the beginning. 2018. Alex is finishing up her journalism degree, and has just heard from a friend that someone she knows was abused by a police officer. In her head, she turns over the questions all good journalists ask: Are there others? And, Can I prove it?

This is a TBIJ investigation that has echoed well beyond its first headline. With each new report, Alex, and then Sarah, uncovered the various ways the British police systematically closed ranks to protect their officers from allegations of domestic and sexual abuse. Their smoking gun? Data obtained from Freedom of Information requests.

Using FOI request responses from 37 of 48 national forces, Alex found that police officers and staff across the UK were reported for alleged domestic abuse almost 700 times in the three years up to April 2018. Just 3.9% in England and Wales ended in a conviction, significantly less than the conviction rate of the general population, which was 6.2%.

Later, Sarah found that of the 1,694 police officers and staff reported for domestic abuse from 2018-2023, 78% were still serving. And that over a span of six years, 259 police officers were accused of sexual offences multiple times. Two of them, astonishingly, faced more than 15 allegations each.

“FOIs are a very slow, tedious part of investigative work, but can yield otherwise hidden datasets,” Sarah told me when I caught up with her this week. “Alex’s pivotal investigation left the police vulnerable to more scrutiny. But they’ve been tricky. Some police forces are particular about the wording you use when filing, so you have to make sure you use the correct categorisations, for example.

“They technically have 20 working days to respond, but maybe a handful of forces actually meet this deadline. I’ve had forces respond to a request months, even a year, after I’d filed it. And that is after persistent follow-ups. There are a few forces who are notorious for not responding at all.”

The road to gathering FOI data is littered with booby traps: “You’re often taking a chance, hoping that a) the data exists, b) it’s easily retrievable and c) they deem it as within public interest. If it’s not readily accessible or if you’ve asked too many questions at once – and it would take the FOI officer more than the allocated 18 hours per request to get it – they will refuse.

“With certain documents, they may redact personal details, but give you the rest; with others they may withhold the whole thing. Often, they’ll cite data protection rules as a reason to not hand over datasets they consider sensitive or small enough that you might be able to identify individuals involved.”

But, Sarah insisted, while the data made for arresting, surprising hooks, it was the firsthand accounts from survivors that made the stories so powerful. “FOIs are excellent Trojan horses to smuggle in the more compelling aspect of journalism: people’s experiences. Statistics make for fresh, agenda-setting entry points into pieces, but PPDA coverage has always mattered thanks to the harrowing personal stories of the survivors who trusted the Bureau enough to share them.”

Based on Alex’s initial project and using accounts of 19 survivors of PPDA, the Centre for Women’s Justice filed a super-complaint in 2020 accusing forces across England and Wales of institutional sexism and mishandling of allegations of domestic abuse.

The response, published two years later, found “systemic weaknesses” in how police forces handled PPDA committed by officers and staff, and said victims were left at risk of harm. It included a list of recommendations and an action for the Independent Office for Police Conduct to carry out a targeted programme of oversight work in relation to police handling of PPDA. 

“FOI datasets give us a big-picture understanding of an institutional issue, but it is through survivors that we know how officers can turn specialised police training on their victims. It is through survivors like Sonia that we know that an officer forced his victim to make false sexual assault reports in order to discredit them as a serial alleger,” Sarah told me.

“Impact should also be measured in this way. There has been significant movement and bold press releases, but what do the women who are directly affected by PPDA say?”

“Being a survivor of PPDA and working with journalists at the Bureau and beyond has been extremely validating. The journalists I worked with showed genuine outrage for how I had been treated, and in showing me that reaction, it made me feel seen, heard and respected.

It allowed me to begin to recognise that I wasn’t the crazy one and that I had in fact been treated awfully. This, coupled with the public reaction to my story was extremely validating. It actually improved my mental health because it reinforced that I was not a weak woman who was a troublemaker, I was a victim and survivor of something horrific.

Having that power over your story – it allows you to reclaim a part of you again. Rather than when you tell the police; you give them your story, and then they take it away from you. [They] tell you that you can’t talk about it to anyone.

I have seen a difference in theory and on paper. The right things are being said. But the culture has remained entirely the same. I really thought it was changing, but it just isn’t.

What the force needs to embrace is actual accountability to the victims, and not worry so much about ‘how’ they look. Worry about how they are treating these women. Don’t worry about how the public perceives it.

If you treat women better, take accountability for wrongdoing, and apologise meaningfully, the public perception will follow. And the trust will grow. They’ll damage it more and more if they keep sticking a plaster on problems. It can’t all be fixed at once. It takes time. They need to be patient and do things right, not just try to get quick wins.”

More than 200 women have come forward to the Centre for Women’s Justice since they launched the super-complaint. Sarah told me that she still gets dozens of emails from survivors. They usually preface their stories with the same sentiment: I don’t want this to happen to anyone else.

Although progress has been slow, activists, support workers, lawyers and survivors have ceaselessly applied pressure to the police to enact real, meaningful change. At TBIJ we will continue to take their lead. 

Help is available:

• Refuge 
  Refuge supports women and children against domestic violence. You can access resources online or call the free 24-Hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247

• Women’s Aid
  Contact a support worker or a survivor online here.

• Rape Crisis 
  You can get confidential support and find your local Rape Crisis centre online here.

Until next week,