How police understand misogynistic violence is key to stopping it - Gaby Hinsliff

Natalie Fleet was only 15 when she got pregnant by an older man. At the time, she says she didn't really know how to describe what was happening; she didn't see herself as being groomed, or as a child still not legally old enough to consent.

- Gaby Hinsliff

If anything, she worried that she might be the one who had done something wrong, given she was the one being called a slag and a slapper.

Only now, more than two decades later, does the newly elected Labour MP for Bolsover feel able to say publicly that an experience about which she apparently still has nightmares was statutory rape.

Having met the force of nature that is Fleet five years ago, when she first stood unsuccessfully for election, I'm struck but not surprised by her courage in volunteering a story that perfectly illustrates what a complex crime rape can be to investigate, and how horribly common abusive behaviour is or at least, how common it would look if everyone was as willing to talk this openly about it.

Violence against women is now a national emergency, according to a report from the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC), which feels like a strangely belated statement of the painfully obvious. In 2022-23 reported cases of domestic and sexual violence, stalking, harassment, exploitation and child abuse in England and Wales were 37% higher than in 2018-19. This leap is only partly explained by greater willingness in post-#MeToo times to report things that, as Fleet says, might not always have been previously understood as crimes.