26 April 2019: Mihrican Mustafa, 38, and Henriett Szuchs were two women whose bodies were found in a freezer in east London. A man, 35, of Newham, east London, was jailed for life.

  12 July 2019: The remains of Brenda Venables who died in 1982, when she was 48 years old, were found in a sceptic tank. An 86-year-old man was held on suspicion of murder.

  Waiting for further information regarding the deaths of other possible victims Alem Shimeni, Annabelle Lancaster, Marie Gilmore, Debbie Twist, Amanda Gretton, Melanie Jane Spence, Donna Boden and Sarah Hopkins.4

  It took a surprisingly long time before women realised that they were being singled out for murder, and the murderers were usually their husbands or partners. The phrase ‘domestic violence’ – suggesting a sort of home-made, amateur cruelty – came into use in the mid-1970s in England after the launch of the first organisation to defend women assaulted and abused by their male partners.5 Erin Pizzey set up the Chiswick Women’s Family Aid, and in the same year the National Women’s Aid Federation began to support, educate and re-house abused women and children.

  In the UK at the time of writing, one woman is killed every three days.6 In the year 2022, there were 107 murders of women.7 The slight drop in 2022 deaths from the numbers recorded by Ingala Smith for 2019 may be a result of lockdown rules during the pandemic forcing women to stay with men who would have murdered them if they tried to leave. Latest details (from 2020) show that most women – 68 per cent – are killed inside their homes, 61 per cent by a male partner, 41 per cent of them murdered by their partners after deciding to separate.8

  The 1976 Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act created protection orders to ban violent partners from approaching their wives and girlfriends. Victims of violent husbands have described the orders as ‘worse than useless’.9

  Prosecutions for men breaking the orders fell from more than 10,000 in 2017 to less than 7,000 in 2021, of which only 5,500 received sentences. Although protection orders for women victims of violence increased by nearly half (48 per cent) in the two years from 2018, about a quarter of them were violated. One man repeatedly breached the order over seven years, threatening his ex-wife and two daughters. She said: ‘He made threats to kill me . . . I was just constantly looking over my shoulder all the time . . . We were just petrified, fearing for our lives. We didn’t feel safe whatsoever. We were just waiting for something to happen.’10

  Research into men who assault their wives and partners suggests that domestic violence is a ‘gateway’ crime to other crimes of violence. More than half of the men who killed women in 2018 had been previously violent to their partners or to other women. Three men had killed women before. Some men who are violent against women go on to other victims; some progress to terrorism. A third of men linked to terrorism had been involved in domestic violence in 2019.11

  Men who attack their wives and partners can be excused by the woman’s ‘provocation’ – that her behaviour was so maddening that a husband could not stop himself lashing out and killing her by accident, his responsibility diminished by rage. In 2001, Mr Justice Rougier, at Winchester Crown Court accepted that Jean Betambeau, 62, was guilty only of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, after he stabbed his wife ten times with a carving knife, fell with her to the kitchen floor and tied a plastic bag over her head. The judge said: ‘I accept that your wife was a difficult woman to live with, and offered you a fair degree of provocation . . . Also you are a relatively elderly man and prison would be very hard for you. I accept this was a single incident and the risk of you re-offending is minimal to zero.’12

  It is probably true that Mr Betambeau was unlikely to re-offend, given that the wife who had irritated him has now been permanently silenced. It is to be hoped that he does not remarry, or that the second Mrs Betambeau is not prone to argument. Mr Justice Rougier might have considered that other men, also irritated by their wives, might be encouraged by the legal defence that a nagging wife is responsible for her own murder. Lady Rougier might have had thoughts about this too.

  But women who kill their husbands find it hard to persuade the court that they too had a ‘fair degree of provocation’. Even the understanding of Battered Woman Syndrome – where a woman cannot defend herself, but may act, years after the first abuse, has found little traction in the courts. A sudden flare into murderous violence is understood by the courts; a woman’s painfully slow arrival to murderous despair is not. The law on the provocation to murder describes, understands and excuses the sudden blow-up of murderous male rage. But attacks on abusive men by their wives, long after the initial provocation, are excluded from the defence.13

  Mrs Sara Thornton was physically and emotionally abused by her alcoholic husband for the eighteen months of their marriage – a neighbour gave evidence that she had been taken to hospital unconscious, ‘black and blue’. Sara Thornton asked for help from her doctor, from her local church, from social services, from Alcoholics Anonymous, from the Marriage Guidance Council and from the police – who were called five times and charged Malcolm Thornton with assaulting his wife. When he threatened her, and her ten-year-old daughter, Sara Thornton stabbed him once with a knife, as he lay asleep on the sofa. She was found guilty of murder in 1989, the judge ruling that there was no excuse for the murder as it did not take place during a ‘sudden and temporary loss of control’. He said she could have ‘walked out or gone upstairs’.14

  Thornton served six years of her prison sentence until the charge was changed to that of ‘manslaughter’, after psychologists argued that she had been mentally disturbed by long-term abuse and that this was as valid a defence against the charge of murder as a sudden loss of temper from ‘provocation’.15

  Kiranjit Ahluwalia was found guilty of murder in 1989 when she set fire to her husband’s bedding while he slept, after he had told her their marriage was over, demanded £200 and threatened to beat her and burn her face with an iron. She was sentenced to life imprisonment (for a minimum of 12 years), but on appeal in 1992, the court accepted a plea of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility owing to her prolonged and deep depression after years of abuse. The defence of only a ‘sudden and temporary loss of control’ was wrong, the judges ruled, and declared that a delayed response was possible . . . but their honours warned that the longer the delay between the assault and the defensive attack, the less likely that such a plea would be accepted.16

  It became clear that in order to win a claim of self-defence, a woman had to show a set of acceptable behaviours, even while being beaten into despair and obedience. A wife in the dock had to prove that she was sexually faithful, devoted to her family and had previously allowed her husband’s violence. She had to demonstrate that she was a loving, passive person: a ‘normal’ woman.17

  Most serial killers are men – most of their victims are women. Serial attacks on ten women from 1969, and the murder of at least 13 but possibly more, in the north of England between 1975 and 1980 by Peter Sutcliffe, nicknamed ‘the Yorkshire Ripper’, revealed the vulnerability of prostitutes to assault and murder.18 Police incompetence, which left Sutcliffe free after nine police interviews in five years, was partly caused by lack of concern for prostitutes. A senior West Yorkshire detective said in 1979 that the then unknown murderer had ‘made it clear that he hates prostitutes. Many people do. We, as a police force, will continue to arrest prostitutes. But the Ripper is now killing innocent girls. That indicates your mental state and that you are in urgent need of medical attention. You have made your point. Give yourself up before another innocent woman dies.’

  Rape

  The increasing freedom for women, out of the home and into the wider world of work and community, was blamed for exposing women to sexual attack. After a recorded decline in rape in the mid-nineteenth century, numbers of reported rapes rose steadily until the mid-1960s, when they soared in a trajectory that still continues upwards. It was easier to blame women for being ‘in the wrong place’ or ‘at the wrong time’, or dressed in the ‘wrong clothes’ than to inquire, arrest and try a man for doing ‘the wrong thing’. The 1960s successful, single, white, educated women were accused of competing with men, rivalling them, disempowering them and so turning them to sexual violence.19

  The increase in rape after the 1960s was caused by a boom in reporting of so-called ‘date rapes’ – where the rapist and the woman were known to each other before the assault. In the UK in 1973, 14 per cent of the rape convictions were those of ‘date rapists’. Twenty years later almost all rapes reported were ‘date rapes’ – 45 per cent of rapes were committed by acquaintances and 43 per cent were ‘domestic rapes’ by partners or family members. Strangers were responsible for only 12 per cent of the reported rapes.20 It may be that courtship and date etiquette became more sexual and violent towards the end of the twentieth century; or that women were resisting male assumptions that a date meant consent to sex, or a greater readiness to report threatening and violent men.

  Rapists could still expect a sympathetic hearing, if summoned to court. In 1977, a Northern Irish guardsman named Thomas Holdsworth had his three-year sentence for rape reduced to six months by the appeal judges, who said: ‘We have a man of previous good character whose army career would be completely destroyed if this sentence were to stand.’21

  This good-character guardsman had sexually assaulted a 17-year-old girl, ripping out her earrings, fracturing her ribs and causing serious vaginal injury. One appeal judge, Mr Justice Slynn, remarked that Holdsworth had ‘lost his self control or allowed his enthusiasm for sex to get the better of him’.22 Another, Mr Justice Wild, observed that the young woman would have been ‘less severely injured if in fact she had submitted to rape’.23

  But this guidance from the bench – to submit to rape to avoid injury – was contradicted by the honourable judge himself, in a later trial. Then, Mr Justice Wild explained that only determined resistance proved that a woman was refusing sex: ‘Women who say “no” do not always mean “no”. It is not just a question of saying “no”, it is a question of how she says it, how she shows and makes it clear. If she doesn’t want it, she only has to keep her legs shut and she would not get it without force and there will be marks of force being used.’24

  Law lords ruling on another appeal decided that three men were not rapists after they dragged a sleeping woman, Daphne Morgan, out of her bed and each had sex with her, holding her mouth and nose when she screamed to her children to call the police, because they sincerely believed her husband, who had told them that her refusal and resistance was part of a sex game. The case prompted a change in the law to say that a man’s belief in consent must be ‘reasonable’.25

  Poor women, students or unemployed women are more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than well-off women.26 Women of colour are less likely to be believed than white women, when they complain of a rape.27 One survey of women attending rape crisis centres suggested that 23 per cent of them were Black and mixed race.28 Women with Asian ancestry were less likely to be raped, according to government statistics.29

  Of course, many rapists claimed that their partners or friends were willing. He could claim that he was being ‘rough’ or ‘playful’ and that the misunderstanding was all hers. But if the 1960s had really ushered in a new world, where many women enjoyed being surprised with rough sex, the era should not have seen a rise in female fears. Women expressed greater anxiety about their safety and especially fear of sexual assault increased.30

  In police interviews and in court, the rapist’s definition of what was and what was not sexual abuse gained equal status to the woman’s definition of what was and what was not ‘rape’. The cliché of ‘he said/she said’ showed that denial was granted the same authority as the accusation – a dream situation for a guilty man. He could define the act as ‘bad sex’ that failed to please her, or that she regretted, or that she tricked him into sex in order to accuse him of rape for blackmail or the chance to shame him. The inquiry turns on the woman and her motive, and can inquire into all the surrounding circumstances. As a witness to the act she does not make much of a contribution – all she has to offer is that she did not consent. Her evidence is explored only to discover if she is dishonest. Women reporting rape find that it is their own life that comes under scrutiny. Their mobile phones are almost always confiscated and police officers search for evidence of previous sexual relationships, diseases, previous complaints of rape or mental illness. If a raped woman refuses to give up her phone, the investigation into her rape is almost always halted. A report by the Crown Prosecution Service found its own demands to download phones to be ‘irrational and over-intrusive’ in 60 per cent of the cases.31

  A rape case rarely gets to court within a year, and then the woman is expected to relive the assault in front of a public court and in view of her rapist. Her behaviour is key to his conviction. While his criminal history is confidential, and his privacy defended by a qualified lawyer, her life is scrutinised and she has no support or representation in court. One of the leading historians of rape writes: ‘Her clothes, hairstyle, posture, accent and tone of voice, all take on immense significance. The woman is reduced to her body: what she was wearing, how she walked, and her sexual attractiveness. Consent is inferred through the female victim’s body, rather than the male perpetrator’s actions. In this reduction of the woman to her body, she has diminished as not a full person under the law, and indeed within society . . . Few women are able to bear the burden of performance.’32

  A new so-called science of ‘victimology’ was developed after 1940. Some rapes were said to be a ‘victim-precipitated crime’ that occurred because of the sexual provocation of the woman, her inability to defend herself because of physical weakness, drunkenness or fear and the absence of guardians such as parents, friends or police.33

  Despite the fact that most rapes and assaults on women took place in the home, by known assailants, the emphasis on stranger rape was revived in the 1990s with true-crime and dramatised crime on television. Repeated, painful and complicated domestic assaults by drunk and angry men were not material to draw audiences; but stranger rape suited the entertainment industry, and it suited the rapists themselves. The murderous rapist psychopath became a staple of entertainment and entered the understanding of rapists. According to Joanna Bourke: ‘Rapists who were diagnosed as psychopaths found the emphasis on pathology congenial. It did, after all, separate them from common criminals, and landed them in hospitals (where 15 per cent were able to escape).’34

  The glamourisation of rape into a crime of unstoppable sexual desire sometimes accompanied by psychopathic violence does not reflect the regularity and frequency of sexual assault for normal women in England. A study in 2002 of 1,882 men on a university campus found that 120 men (6.4 per cent of the sample of male students) said that they had undertaken 483 sexual acts that the researchers defined as rape or attempted rape.35 Of them: 44 said they had only raped or attempted rape once, and 76 were repeat rapists. Of the 76 who said they had raped or attempted rape more than once, 34 reported 2 rapes, seven reported 3 rapes, nine reported 4 rapes, four reported 5 rapes, five reported 6 rapes, three reported 7 rapes, three reported 8 rapes, and an astounding eleven reported between 9 and 50 rapes.

  Since the survey respondents were students at a university, it might be thought that the 44 who raped once were just getting started on a career of multiple rapes in adult life.

  The UK is one of the least successful countries at convicting suspect rapists, unlike Germany, where the majority of prosecutions end in a guilty verdict. In Britain in 1977, one in three reported rapes were prosecuted and the rapist found to be guilty – that fell to one in four by 1985, one in ten in 1986. In that year police chose not to prosecute 25 per cent of the rapes reported to them in England. Fewer than a third of those questioned were charged; only 25 per cent of them went on to court, and 5 per cent of those cases were dropped by the prosecution. Of those few arriving at court, only 6 per cent were convicted. By 2007, this miserable conviction rate had dropped to one conviction for every 20 reported rapes.36

  In an attempt to improve this, the Crown Prosecution Service took the extraordinary decision to prosecute only those rape cases it thought certain to win. The first year of this experiment saw 1,000 potential prosecutions dropped for being too difficult, and the next year 2,000. By December 2021, 67,125 rape offences were reported but only 2,409 of them taken to court and only 1,409 ended with a conviction: a success rate of 2 per cent. Victims’ Commissioner Dame Vera Baird estimated that because of this there could be ‘almost 1,500 rapists per year who are still on the streets who could have been convicted if this decision had not been taken’. In her words, ‘We were witnessing the effective decriminalisation of rape.’37

  Rapists walked free in the distant past as now, because neither medieval magistrates nor modern police believed women who complain of rape. The belief in the 1960s that working-class women and children were likely to be making false claims against their ‘betters’ – for malice and fraud – grew into a suspicion of the so-called ‘liberated’ single women said to be aggressively feminist, and anti-men.38 In the 1970s, police believed one in every five rape reports to be false.39 In 2005, a review suggested that about 3 in 100 accusations of rape were untrue,40 but a 17-month-long experiment in 2011–12, in which all suspect women were prosecuted for lying, resulted in only 35 cases of false allegations being brought to court – compared with 5,651 rapists. Thirty-five women had been lying about having been raped – less than 1 per cent (0.61 per cent) of all complaints.41 A genuine rape victim, taking her complaint to the police, is far more likely to be suspected of making a false allegation (20 per cent) than her rapist is to be convicted (2 per cent).