Here is the problem: the problem is power. Too much of it lies in the wrong hands, used to the wrong ends – male hands, used to serve male ends against female bodies. To challenge power you need to use power, which means women have to engage with powerful institutions when wrongs are done to us. Powerful institutions are made up of powerful men, and men, it turns out, are not always that concerned about preventing or punishing the abuse of women and girls. A man attacks you, you go to the police; the police force is over 70 per cent male (almost 80 per cent in senior ranks). Are the men there going to help you?
This week, six people were found guilty in relation to the grooming, rape and prostitution of girls in Rotherham. The Times first covered these abuses after one of the victims – who was given the pseudonym “Becky” – approached them, having despaired of being listened to by the police. She was 14 when Arshid Hussain began exploiting her. He was ten years her senior. The police would recover her when she ran away with him, but never identified the manifest violence in a 24-year-old man’s relationship with a child: “They failed even to question him,” said the QC for the prosecution. “No one in authority took the obvious step of locking him up.”
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