SARAH VINE: Like most of us, it would’ve been hard-wired into Sarah’s brain that a policeman was someone she could trust. It makes my blood boil that she met a monster with a licence to kill

Sarah Everard’s parents are absolutely right: if Wayne Couzens had not been a police officer, she would almost certainly still be alive today.

If this serial sex offender – a man who, it now appears, allegedly committed a very serious sexual assault on a child, described as barely in his teens, before his twenty-year police career even began – could not have hiding behind The confidence and authority of his badge meant she would never have let him stop her, let alone allow him to handcuff her and put her in the back of his rental car.

Sara wasn’t crazy. But she, like so many of us, was a law-abiding citizen, one who respected authority and trusted the institutions that govern a civilized society. Couzens was a police officer and a firearms officer (he even worked in the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command, although she wouldn’t know that) and he had the badge to prove it. What possible reason could she have had to suspect he was a rapist and murderer?

Like countless young Londoners who move to the less salubrious parts of the capital to fend for themselves, Sarah would have been well aware of the dangers. Watch that footage of her walking home, and you can see that she’s moving quickly and with purpose. It’s not even late yet – around 9pm, and she had been talking to her boyfriend on her cell phone.

We’ve all experienced it. I remember taking a similar trip in and around the capital in my teens and twenties, before the advent of Uber, when taxis were prohibitively expensive and wouldn’t go south of the river or north of the city anyway.

You needed all your wits, often with your keys in your hand, occasionally looking over your shoulder, as you followed the pools of light from the street lamps. If you ever saw some guys or someone who looked suspicious, you crossed the street, went to a corner store, got into a pay phone and made a phone call.

But a police officer? Why would you suspect such a person? Of all the characters Sarah could have likely encountered on the streets of South London, a cop would have been the very last to be presented as a threat in her mind. It would probably be deep in her brain that a badge was something she could trust.

To be honest, she may have been a little stunned when she was stopped. Then again, it was the middle of Covid-19, a time when we were all being asked to comply with a series of complex, sometimes bizarre, ever-changing rules.

People were constantly stopped in streets and parks, usually because they had violated some new directive that they didn’t even know existed. I remember being immediately scolded by a police officer for sitting down on a park bench to rest my legs for ten seconds, for God’s sake. The newspapers were full of stories about people who got into trouble or were fined. Poor Sarah was probably too worried that she had accidentally done something wrong to realize the danger that lay ahead.

When my daughter was younger and starting school for the first time and going out on her own, I remember saying to her, “If you ever get scared or in trouble, find a crowded place, find someone with authority: a guard, anyone. in uniform – a police officer’. And there she is, Sarah, talking to a cop on a busy road, captured on CCTV moments before this monster drove her all the way to Dover, where he raped and strangled her and set her body on fire.

I keep thinking of what Sarah’s mother said in her victim impact statement, about seeing the images captured on the camera of a passing bus, and from inside silently shouting, “Don’t get in the car, Sarah!” and my heart breaks for her. But most of the time it makes my blood boil.

Sarah Everard was walking home when she was kidnapped, raped and murdered by Couzens while he was off duty

A crowd gathers for a vigil in Sarah’s memory outside New Scotland Yard on March 14, 2021

Sarah was not a ‘vulnerable’ young woman; she was not drunk or intoxicated, she had not put herself in danger. She wasn’t lost or stumbling home through a dark alley. She was on a main road at a perfectly reasonable time of night, in full view of passersby. She wore sensible, practical clothes.

There was literally nothing this young woman could have done to better protect herself, and yet just hours later she was dead under the most horrific circumstances.

That is the main reason her murder caused such an outpouring of grief and anger among women of all ages: if it could happen to Sarah, it could happen to all of us, to all of our daughters.

All violent deaths are an insult to humanity, but there is something special about Sarah’s circumstances. Couzens was meant to be one of the good guys, a hero, a protector. He turned out to be a monster.

Worse, he could have been stopped – again, by the very same people whose job it is to protect us from devils like him: his colleagues on the police force. If they had done their job properly, if they had paid attention to even a small number of the many (and there were many) accusations made against him by a variety of women over the years, he would not have been in such a position wrong. authority.

He would have been just another creep on the street, the kind that we women – even at my age – are all too accustomed to and should stay away from. But thanks to them, he wasn’t. He was a police officer, and that literally gave him a license to kill.

Sarah’s brutal murder is the ultimate betrayal of a society that still protects male predators from the consequences of their actions; of a culture that turns a blind eye to certain male behaviors and instead of seeing them for what they are – offensive, intrusive, potentially very dangerous – dismisses them as mere misunderstandings or overreactions on the part of the victim.

Couzens’ behavior was noted time and time again; time and time again it was ignored. Why? Because he was one of the boys? Because he was good at his job? Because all women are hysterical? Because we can’t take a joke? Because, honestly, don’t flatter yourself, honey. We all know the drill. We’ve heard it a million times before.

I have always believed that as women we should not fall into the trap of thinking that all men are a potential danger to women. That’s clearly not the case, and it’s stupid and reductive to say otherwise.

I have also always believed that as women we should take responsibility for our own safety and try, where possible, not to put ourselves in unnecessary danger.

But Sarah’s case has made me question all that. Her murder was not only a terrible crime and an unspeakable tragedy for her family; it has also destroyed the fundamental principles we are taught as young girls and women: take care of yourself, be responsible, trust the authorities and you will be safe.

It will be a long time before any of us believe this lie again.