In January 2023, the women’s charity Refuge dumped 1,071 plastic apples, all painted to look rotten, outside the Met’s New Scotland Yard headquarters to highlight the scale of the allegations of abuse involving police officers following the high-profile sentencing of serial abuser and serving Met officer David Carrick. At the time, the Met had been reviewing previous allegations of violence against women and girls made against 1,071 police officers and staff members.

A year later, 53% of women surveyed by Refuge and YouGov said that the police had made not much or no progress in addressing problems of sexism and misogyny among police officers over the last year. If anything, some women say, we’ve been given even more reasons not to trust the police over the past 12 months.

The Casey Review, published in March, found that survivors of rape, sexual abuse and domestic abuse faced a lack of support and poor police responses within the Met. In September, it was found that only 24% of police officers accused of violence against women and girls between 2022 and 2023 were suspended while under investigation, leaving potential perpetrators unchecked in positions of power.

“This is not just a problem within the Met but an issue with police forces throughout the country,” Ellen Miller, interim CEO of Refuge, tells Stylist. “The police are not doing enough to keep women and girls safe by implementing measures needed to eradicate the endemic misogyny within the force at large.”

The very people women are told to call when in danger have become, in many cases, the people they no longer trust. Only last year, polling revealed that 55% of women have little or no trust at all in the police’s ability to keep women safe. 

“High profile cases of police-perpetrated violence against women has blown the lid off the scale of abusers in policing, causing a steep decline in public trust and confidence in the institution,” Andrea Simon, director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, tells Stylist.

In 2020, two police officers took photos of murdered sisters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, and shared the photos on WhatsApp groups, referring to the women as “two dead birds full of stab wounds”. They were later jailed for misconduct in a public office.

A year later, in 2021, 33-year-old Sarah Everard disappeared while walking home in London. It was later found she was abducted, raped and murdered by police officer Wayne Couzens.

In February 2023, ex-Met policeman David Carrick pleaded guilty to 85 serious offences, including 48 rapes across 17 years. In the same month, Darren Coathup admitted targeting women who had reported domestic abuse for “his own sexual purposes” and was sentenced to two years in prison.

Last March, 1,500 British police officers were accused of violent offences against women and girls between October 2021 and April 2022. And only this past week, reports of police mistreatment of a naked victim of assault were revealed.

The list goes on and on. A Met officer was charged with raping a woman at knifepoint. A former police detective was found guilty of raping a child. A Black woman was arrested in front of her child after wrongly being accused of not paying a bus fare. 

While police authorities have previously dismissed these incidents as rare behaviour by “bad apples”, reports point to institutional misogyny ingrained in the work culture that influences the behaviour of all employees. It’s difficult for women to believe in these institutions when there are so many news stories of bad behaviour, and what appears to be a lack of action from governing bodies.  

“Despite [these high-profile cases], there are still enormous challenges with the systems holding police officers to account for abusing their power to target women,” says Simon. “Addressing the racist and misogynistic cultures within policing that has enabled this abuse must be a priority for every force.”

It’s not the high-profile cases alone that have led to women losing trust in the police. Countless women have come forward over the years to talk about instances when they’ve felt ignored, dismissed, demeaned and even abused by police officers. The Police Me Too website includes hundreds of accounts from women who have experienced this kind of behaviour.

Three-quarters of rape survivors say the police response damaged their mental health – that reporting rape to the police often causes significant harm over and above the sexual assault itself. Over half of surveyed domestic abuse victims said they had to report domestic abuse twice to the police before they felt appropriate action was taken.

Miller says that when women report domestic abuse, they are being judged or ignored instead of protected. “Immediately, their confidence [in the police] is shattered,” she explains. “Their hope of escaping an abusive situation is shattered.”

One survivor of domestic abuse, Deanna* tells Stylist that she has “always felt the police are unsafe”.

“When the default mode is to protect abusers, how can we feel safe?” she asks. “They’ve already decided they’re siding with the perpetrator.”

Not only have some police been turning a blind eye to domestic abuse, but some are also perpetrators of it. It’s been found that 80% of UK officers accused of domestic abuse are still working for the police force.

It’s been 22 years since Rita* was raped by a police officer, but only recently has she felt safe enough to talk about the experience. “He was a family friend who was six years older than me,” the now 40-year-old tells Stylist. “I trusted the guy – I had no reason not to. He was a symbol of the law, supposedly a person representing safety, and a family friend, yet he was willing to put that all on the line. The only reason I could think anyone would do this is if they knew there would be no consequences to their actions.”

Rita never reported her rapist, fearful that she wouldn’t be believed.

“I figured: he was a copper, it would be his friends/colleagues dealing with the matter; it would be his word against mine and I wouldn’t stand a chance,” she said. “The blame would have been on me being ‘foolish and irresponsible’. I was from a lower working-class family, who he knew well. He was relying on the fact I was a student from a family that couldn’t afford to take him to court even if they had found out what happened.”

While Rita has no doubt that there are good police officers out there doing the job for the right reasons, she sees the job as a “total power move” and a way for officers to elevate themselves above others.

Another woman, Hattie, who is married to a police officer, sees this same ‘power move’ within the job. “When we argue, he uses his position against me,” the 38-year-old tells Stylist. She says he accuses her of abuse when she accidentally bumps him on the foot with a door and tells her she can’t take their child to see her parents without his permission because it would be kidnapping.

“He is the nicest person, but when he goes into ‘police mode’ he is horrible,” she shared. “I wish he would leave the job because I hate what it does to him. It’s an awful profession.”

The police are making efforts to turn the tide and restore the trust of women. Back in 2022, the acting head of the Met took an important step in acknowledging that the police had a culture problem, and launched a campaign to tackle racism and sexism within the force. 

“Women and girls deserve a police service they can trust, one which makes them feel safer and shows empathy and compassion for victims,” Assistant Chief Constable Samantha Millar, NPCC strategic programme director for violence against women and girls, tells Stylist. “We know there is more to be done, and it’s imperative that the voice of women and girls is at the centre of the drive for change. We have been working closely with leading academics and independent advisors, including victim and survivor networks, to understand how we can improve and best support victims through the criminal justice system.”

An example of this is a new model for investigating rape and sexual offences announced in July 2023: Operation Soteria. Forty-three territorial police forces across England and Wales and the 14 Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) areas began implementing the new approach, improving support for victims and putting the focus on the suspect.

“We are encouraged by the early signs of progress seen in forces where Soteria has been implemented, including a marked increase in charges and referrals to the CPS for adult rape offences,” said Millar. 

Alongside Operation Soteria, Millar said they are working with the CPS to reform the way they investigate and prosecute domestic abuse.

“Over the past decade, we have seen an estimated 800% increase in reports of domestic abuse,” she said. “The increase is an encouraging sign that victims are feeling able to come forward and report abuse, and it’s vital that we must prioritise their wellbeing and safety so they are able to live a life free from abuse.”

Just last month, the results of policing’s largest integrity screening project were published. The mass screening reviewed more than 300,000 police officers, staff and volunteers against a national intelligence database, and led to only nine criminal investigations.

“This shows that the vast majority of officers and staff are trustworthy and we know are deeply committed to protecting the public, which I hope goes some way to rebuilding the trust and confidence of women and girls,” said Millar.

But some organisations working with women argue that “figures [from the screening project] simply do not stack up” because if information isn’t being recorded in the first place, then it won’t show up in the data.

Even though much has been done, Millar admitted they can’t rely on “a single course of action” to win the trust of women. 

“We must foster a culture within policing where colleagues feel empowered to report concerns, including misogyny and sexism, if we want to see sustainable change,” she said. “Police perpetrators of abuse must know that there is nowhere to hide.”

To move forward in building the trust of women, Catherine Durose, professor of public policy at the University of Liverpool, tells Stylist that the police first and foremost need to accept that “misogyny is an institutional problem”. It’s not one-off events or bad apples, but part of the culture of policing.

“This needs to involve a zero-tolerance approach to violence against women and girls in their own ranks, and to demonstrate that these crimes are a top priority,” she said, noting that the Casey Review provided a valuable plan for reform for police to follow. “The police need to build on the steps taken since its publication to demonstrate that they really get the challenge and will continue to act to address it.”

A year on from the start of Refuge’s rotten apples campaign, and in light of their recent findings that women don’t feel enough has been done to restore their trust in the police, Miller wants action, rather than just words, from the police.

“Refuge is calling for the immediate suspension of police officers and staff accused of violence against women and girls to protect women and girls from further harm by potential abusers,” she said.

The charity is also demanding that the time between the initial police vetting and revetting period is reduced from 10 years to five years or less in England and Wales.

Simon says that as women’s experiences with the police shift away from “rape myths” and “victim blaming attitudes” and towards better protection and support, it is only then that women will once again feel they could trust the police.

“There is clearly a long way to go to shift cultures of misogyny in the police,” Simon added.

For Rita’s trust in the police to be restored, she would want a “complete overhaul” of what it means to report a crime against a police officer.

“Over recent years, we’ve seen officers committing horrendous crimes against women, and I feel sad to say I’m not surprised,” she said. “Police officers are not being held to account in the same way other members of the public would be. Colleagues are ‘protecting their own’ and it’s allowing the rotten few to continue acting as they please.”

If you want confidential, non-judgmental support and information on your options, you can visit Refuge’s website or ring their hotline at 08082000247. 

*Names have been changed

Images: Getty