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Multiple emotions: Anna Marshall responds to Sarah Everard's death

Tuesday 16-03-2021 - 10:59
Tributes

TW Violence Against Women, Sexual Harassment, Mental Health

Anna Marshall, Opportunities Officer, explains the range of emotion she has felt in response to the news of Sarah Everard death.

I can’t separate my grief from my politics – just like my social media feed, it is all a mixed bag of emotions which will slip from dancing to Taylor Swift then crying at a photo to laughing at a meme to seeing another powerfully worded tweet and crying all over again – then rewind, then fast forward, then repeat ad infinitum.

I did not know Sarah Everard, so it makes me wince to risk falling into the trap of using her name as a political tool without her consent. I can therefore only speak of the emotions which her death has caused me to feel – and for which I was entirely unprepared to be de-railed by.

Optimism – When I first heard of her disappearance, I will admit I didn’t feel much. The news of her disappearance was scattered across my timeline, but intermingled was that of a man from my local area who was also missing. The man was found alive and well after two days, so in the distorted way that our human brains try to compute things, mine assumed that Sarah’s disappearance would follow this pattern and she would soon be home safe. 

Intrigue – A week passed and it emerged that Sarah had actually been a Durham Cuth’s Geography student – similar to many of my friends. A white woman who had attended Durham University, her face took on a new meaning and I began to process that this woman had probably been abducted.

Fear – If this woman had been abducted, this was a sharp reminder that through all the advances in our education and social attitudes, it was still completely possible to be kidnapped and murdered. And ultimately, there was nothing I could do to stop this happening to me or the people I love.

Betrayal – We found out that a police officer was arrested in connection with her disappearance. My friend had recently been dating a police officer without knowing (he had lied to her and said he did a different job). The police are supposed to be a force we trust, but wearing a uniform doesn’t prevent a man from lying – and here was a case of a man in uniform allegedly abducting someone he was supposed to protect

Community – My timeline became a flood of female support, with people comparing their own experiences and articulating just how much sexual harassment and abuse continues to this day. 

Grief – It was confirmed that Sarah had died. Less than a decade older than me, similar to many of my friends, with absolutely nothing we could do to stop the same thing happening to ourselves.

Hope – I learned that Durham student feminist groups were working to host a vigil in Sarah’s honour, groups which form part of our SU community. These students had already contacted the police, who had said the event was covid-safe and could therefore go ahead without concern. I therefore worked to offer my support and help them write their risk assessment, which I emailed to the University on Friday morning. The University was in support of the event, but there were a few details that Durham police were now interested in clarifying.

Anger – On Friday at 15:00 the police told us they couldn't support the event and would fine us £10k if we went ahead with it. The police representative told me “I have no issues for what you've got proposed in terms of your safety element. Where it's struggling is in the gathering section of the coronavirus legislation. The national police chiefs are of the opinion that this type of event will constitute a gathering and as such is unlawful". The National Police Chiefs’ Council decided to stop it, even though in Durham there weren't any safety concerns. I told the Durham police that this would only lead to uncontrollable events risking unnecessary conflict. 

Community – The police said the most we could do was set up a memorial location and allow people to go there to leave messages, but it couldn’t be seen as an event. The Womxn’s Association agreed to this approach. My housemate built a small wooden plaque because he said her photo deserved more respect than to be stuck to cardboard. We spoke to St Cuth’s JCR, and the University, and the SU management, and agreed we could put something in the entrance to the SU building. We set it up that evening, and when I returned to check on it the next day, more flowers and messages had already started to arrive.

Guilt – Watching Saturday night's events hit me quite hard; I have been a Legal Observer and have watched the Metropolitan Police manhandle and abuse people with a flexible approach to the law before. These women on the news were standing up to the police’s decision in a way that I had not. If I had made my opinion clearer, would the police have reacted differently? From my position of privilege, how much had I taken for granted in my dealings with the police the day before?

Sadness – A woman has died and we are fighting about it, after a year of reduced social contact. I reflected on the context of this alleged murder. Would the death have occurred if we hadn’t been forced into lockdown? How many young lives are being threatened as a consequence of lockdown? If we had a less wealth-orientated government, would lockdown have happened sooner and therefore have been over much quicker, with less deaths in the meantime? Domestic violence has increased during lockdown, but have we taken a broader step backwards in social justice? Is the feminist outcry sparked by this incident a symptom of the past year being a step backwards or forwards for women? In a time with so few answers, there is so little to fall back on.

Anger – Police manhandling women with flowers was a grotesque image to be flooding our twitter feeds on Sunday morning, but was entirely predictable considering the police’s mismanagement of the entire event. Durham SU had recently been mentioned in parliament as the first students’ union to be questioned about our freedom of speech policy – but now the same government which is championing free speech is taking bills through parliament which restrict the right to protest. This is government-led “cancel culture” on a larger and far more dangerous scale than any students’ union would be capable of. Yet the police have unlawfully banned protests before: the last time I was in London (even before the pandemic), they illegally declared a ban – with no later repercussion – on all gatherings. The right to protest is enshrined in International Human Rights Law, but this government is using coronavirus as a way to shut down opposition. It is for their safety, not ours. We did not want to put our students through the trauma of police oppression so we had to cancel our in-person vigil, but it had been a police officer who had allegedly caused this in the first place. 

Betrayal – Coronavirus has made this all so much more complicated, with no obvious route out, but once more I became angry that the police had said our vigil plans were covid safe, but then decided we couldn’t organise it. A vigil is a time of calm; even large-scale events such as the one in London can be safe – especially if we are allowed to plan them. The government abusing their power over the police force had directly caused this to happen. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill being pushed through parliament right now is an affront to civil democracy and our free speech will be lesser because of it.

Hope – Will the wider reaction be enough to spark change? Real change does not just happen. Change requires so much pain that it eventually becomes unbearable and sparks such outcry that society is forced to reform. This situation, this incident, is unbearable.

 

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Opportunities Officer

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Anna Marshall, Opportunities Officer, violence against women,

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