Category Archives: Violence against women and girls

Family of woman found dead in car in London accuses police of failing to protect her

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Exclusive: Sister says Harshita Brella reported abuse but ‘police processes made her feel more scared and alone’

The family of a woman found dead in a car boot in east London have accused police of not doing enough to protect her, saying she had filed a complaint alleging domestic abuse by her husband weeks before.

The body of Harshita Brella, a 24-year-old Indian citizen who was living in Northamptonshire, was discovered last Thursday in a car in Ilford. Police have named her husband, Pankaj Lamba, as the main suspect for the killing. Officers believe he has fled the country.

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Saoirse Ronan ‘absolutely right’ about women’s safety fears, says Gladiator combat trainer

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Paul Biddiss, who trained Paul Mescal and Day of the Jackal star Eddie Redmayne, says streetwise women are more aware of surveillance and harder to follow

He has trained would-be assassins and marshalled invading hordes, Napoleonic forces and Roman regiments, but movie military adviser Paul Biddiss found himself in the midst of his biggest Hollywood skirmish last month when the actor Saoirse Ronan made a powerful intervention about women’s personal safety.

Ronan, a guest on Graham Norton’s BBC chatshow sofa, sparked a nationwide debate about women’s security fears when she interrupted fellow actors as they discussed techniques that Biddiss had taught the casts of both Gladiator II and the new drama series The Day of the Jackal.

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News live: Birmingham says Australia could learn lessons from ‘disrupter’ Trump in making government more efficient

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Follow today’s news live

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers will today announce funding of $900m for states and territories through a new national productivity fund to boost competition and productivity across the economy.

Launching the plan in a speech to the Australian Business Economists in Sydney, Chalmers is hoping the plan will will incentivise states to achieve productivity gains through pro-competitive policies such as streamlining commercial planning and zoning, and removing barriers to the uptake of modern construction methods.

In March this year, on behalf of the Council on Federal Financial Relations, I asked the Productivity Commission to model the potential impacts of a revitalised NCP.

Its final report landed this month and the benefits on offer are substantial, if not staggering. The PC found a revitalised NCP could boost GDP by up to $45bn a year and reduce prices by 1.45 percentage points. That GDP boost represents about $5,000 per household, per year.

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Police ‘should have done more’ to save Melbourne woman stabbed to death by ex-partner in front of children

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Family violence unit officers missed opportunities to protect Noeline Dalzell before James Fairhall murdered her, Victoria’s coroner says

Police missed an opportunity to protect a woman who was stabbed to death by her ex-partner in front of their three children, Victoria’s state coroner has found.

Noeline Dalzell was murdered by James Fairhall at her home in Melbourne’s south-east in February 2020, three months after he was released from custody for breaching a family violence intervention order.

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PSNI ‘failed’ family of woman whose suspected murder it treated as suicide

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Ombudsman’s report on death of Katie Simpson, 21, adds to concerns at levels of gender-based violence in Northern Ireland

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) “failed” the family of a 21-year-old woman after her death two years ago in Derry, initially treating it as suicide rather than a suspected murder, the police watchdog has said.

The report by the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland comes amid renewed concerns that gender-based violence is not being taken seriously enough in the region with the highest rate of femicide per capita of all nations in the UK and in the island of Ireland.

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‘Was I drugged and raped? I’ll never know’: partners of accused share fears at Pelicot trial

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Some ex-girlfriends of accused men tell court of burden of not knowing if they had been sedated and molested in past

Giving evidence in Avignon’s criminal court, a softly spoken woman in her 30s pondered the question if the medication she took as part of managing her multiple sclerosis might have allowed her ex-partner, Cédric G, to sexually abuse her without her knowledge. She described their relationship as “lies, from start to finish”.

Cédric G, 50, a software technician who used to run a record shop in Avignon, looked on from behind the glass-screened dock in the court. He is one of 51 men on trial over the rape of Gisèle Pelicot, whose then husband, Dominique Pelicot, crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into her food and invited dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious over a nine-year period from 2011 to 2020 in the village of Mazan in Provence.

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UK asylum system retraumatises women fleeing sexual abuse, says report

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Women have had to share bedrooms with unrelated men and some have faced further sexual violence, charities say

The UK asylum system is retraumatising women and girls who have fled rape and sexual abuse and putting them at risk of further harm, leading charities have said.

Sexual violence and abuse is often a major driver for women to leave their country of origin, as well as a common experience on their journey to the UK, but when they get here they are failed, according to Rape Crisis England and Wales (RCEW) and Imkaan.

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Iran arrests woman who stripped in protest at ‘abusive’ dress code policing

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Amnesty International calls on authorities to release student, who reportedly had a violent confrontation with Basij paramilitaries

Amnesty International has called on authorities in Iran to “immediately and unconditionally” release a female student who was arrested after stripping to her underwear in what the organisation described as a public protest against harassment relating to the country’s strict dress code.

The incident took place after the woman, who has not been identified, reportedly had a confrontation with members of the Basij paramilitary force who ripped her headscarf and tore at her clothes inside Tehran’s prestigious Islamic Azad University.

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Gisèle Pelicot lawyers: trial exposes ‘profound problem’ in attitudes to sexual violence

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Dozens of accused deny rape, despite video evidence showing unconscious Gisèle Pelicot snoring loudly

Taking the stand in France’s biggest ever rape trial, Patrice N, 55, an electrician from the southern town of Carpentras, said he was a “jovial” guy and a fun dad who once trained youth football teams and had a “great respect for women”.

He denied the charges of rape, claiming rape had never been his intention. “To my mind, it was a game,” he told the court.

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Man found guilty of rape and manslaughter of woman on London park bench

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Mohamed Iidow attacked Natalie Shotter after she apparently passed out in park in Southall after night out

A man has been convicted of the rape and manslaughter of a woman while she lay unconscious on a park bench in west London after a night out.

Natalie Shotter, 37, an NHS worker, was attacked after apparently passing out in Southall in July 2021. Mohamed Iidow orally raped her “until she died”, his trial heard.

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Interpol campaign to identify remains of women in Europe expands to 46 cases

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Police forces in France, Italy and Spain join cold-case initiative after launch last year of Operation Identify Me

Police have expanded a cold-case campaign aimed at identifying dozens of women who were murdered or who died in suspicious circumstances across Europe, taking in three new countries and more than doubling the number of cases.

The international policing organisation Interpol said on Tuesday that forces from France, Italy and Spain had joined those in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, which last year launched Operation Identify Me to help name 22 female victims.

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Dutch court fines man in first conviction under new sexual harassment law

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Man in Rotterdam faces €100 penalty after law introduced across Netherlands to tackle harassment in public spaces

A court in the Netherlands has fined a man for harassing and intimidating a woman on a street in Rotterdam, in the first conviction under a new law tackling sexual harassment in public spaces.

The 33-year-old man was fined €100 (£84) by a court in Rotterdam on Wednesday, months after he was accused of grabbing a woman on the street by the hips and holding her. The court set out an additional fine of €180 if he is caught reoffending.

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British army to investigate conduct of troops in Kenya amid rape and murder claims

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Defence secretary to meet family of woman allegedly killed by soldier, as ITV airs documentary alleging fresh abuses

The army is to launch an inquiry into the behaviour of British troops posted to a military base in Kenya, after multiple allegations of serious abuses committed by soldiers, including rape and murder.

The inquiry is to examine the conduct of military personnel posted to the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK). It is where the soldier alleged to have murdered a Kenyan woman, Agnes Wanjiru, was posted at the time of her death in 2012.

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Harrods chief apologises for failing colleagues over Fayed allegations

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Michael Ward says former Harrods owner ‘presided over a toxic culture’, describing it as ‘shameful period’

The managing director of Harrods has apologised and said the business “failed our colleagues” following sexual misconduct allegations against the department store’s former owner, Mohamed Al Fayed.

In a statement, Michael Ward said it is clear Fayed “presided over a toxic culture of secrecy, intimidation, fear of repercussion and sexual misconduct”.

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Harrods investigating if any current staff were involved in Fayed’s alleged abuse

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Exclusive: store issues new statement as lawyers describe redress scheme it has set up as attempted ‘whitewash’

Harrods is investigating whether any of its current staff were “directly or indirectly involved” in the alleged sexual abuse of women by its former owner Mohamed Al Fayed.

With more than 100 women having come forward to allege being raped or assaulted by the Egyptian tycoon, the luxury store said it had launched a review and was in direct contact with Scotland Yard.

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One in 20 Australian adults found to have suffered reproductive coercion and abuse

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Australian Study of Health and Relationships finds 3.9% of women aged 16-69 had experienced contraceptive interference and 4.9% forced abortion

One in 20 Australian adults have experienced reproductive coercion and abuse.

That is among the findings of the Australian Study of Health and Relationships (ASHR), released this week, the first time researchers in Australia have estimated the national prevalence of behaviour used to control a person’s reproductive autonomy.

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‘Not all men, but a lot of them’: will Gisele Pelicot rape trial finally change France’s attitude to sexual abuse?

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The horrifying details of the case that shook the country, and the local mayor’s reaction, show a refusal to confront abuse

As the horror of how Dominique Pelicot drugged his wife, Gisèle, and allowed at least 83 men to rape her continued to unfold in a French courtroom last week, it was hard to see how the case “could have been worse” as one local official suggested.

Louis Bonnet, mayor of Mazan, the southern French town of 6,000 ­people where the Pelicots and a ­number of the alleged rapists lived, who added that “no one was killed”, later apologised and admitted his words were not “entirely appropriate”.

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Dominique Pélicot tells French trial: ‘I am a rapist,’ as he returns to dock

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Pélicot’s testimony set to be decisive for 50 other men accused of raping his then wife Gisèle over nine-year period

A 71-year-old French man accused of drugging his wife so that he and dozens of strangers could sexually assault her at her home has told a court that he admitted the charges and was a rapist.

“I am a rapist, like the others in this room,” Dominique Pélicot said, quietly and calmly, as he looked across the courtroom at the 50 other men who are also on trial accused of raping his wife in her own bed while she was drugged and in a state akin to a “deep coma”.

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Father who is convicted rapist stripped of parental responsibility for daughter

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Mother hopes case will ‘shine a light’ on family courts and Cafcass

A convicted rapist who was previously allowed to have unsupervised time with his child has been stripped of his parental responsibility.

Kristoffer White, who has been described as a “danger to women and children”, failed to turn up to court last week for a hearing, attended by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), to determine the involvement he could have in his daughter’s life.

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Thousands attend funeral of runner Rebecca Cheptegei who was set on fire by partner

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Mourners in Uganda pay respects to Olympic athlete whose death prompted renewed calls for more protection for women in sport

Thousands of mourners in Uganda paid their respects on Saturday to Rebecca Cheptegei, the Olympic athlete who died last week in Kenya after her partner set her on fire. The military funeral took place in a remote town near the Kenyan border.

Military officers played a prominent role in the funeral because Cheptegei held the rank of sergeant in Uganda’s army, said military spokesperson Brig Felix Kulayigye, adding that she deserved a “gun salute that befits her rank”.

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