LONDON – Patsy Stevenson has said she only intended to take into account the vigilance of Sarah Everard, whose disappearance while walking home in London has enchanted and terrified the country.
But as he stares through the camera as two officers hold her on the ground, Stevenson becomes a symbol of the protests themselves.
Stevenson, one of three women detained at the event amid quarrels with police, told Sky News that she never wanted the fame, but that it would try to use it anyway to force change.
“I went viral by accident,” she said. ‘The only way I can do it in vain is not to make it political, not against the police or against anyone. It’s literally just about the safety of women. ”
“We need to change the system where women do not have a voice and it is not safe for women to walk down a street,” Stevenson said.
Despite her unwillingness to ‘become in the public eye’, Stevenson, along with Everard, continued on Twitter in the UK on Monday.
Stevenson was among the 1,000 at the mass gathering on Saturday in honor of Everard, 33, a marketing manager. The official vigilance was canceled earlier by organizers after law enforcement officials said it would violate national closure measures.
On Friday, Wayne Couzens, an elite officer with the London Metropolitan Police’s diplomatic protection order, is charged with Everard’s kidnapping and murder.
Everard’s disappearance on March 3 and the discovery of her body a week later sparked outrage and sadness over the low conviction for those who commit violence against women in the UK, and the reaction of politicians across the political spectrum. spectrum.
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Prime Minister Boris Johnson will meet with senior cabinet members on Monday to discuss strategies to combat violence against women and girls. The meeting comes amid more planned protests outside parliament.
“Like everyone who saw it, I was deeply concerned about the footage of Clapham Common on Saturday night,” Johnson said in a statement on Sunday referring to images of impromptu vigilance in south London.
Johnson ordered two investigations into how the vigilance was handled on Saturday, but it was not the fact that he joined the growing calls for the chief of the London Metropolitan Police to resign.
Police Commissioner Cressida Dick has defied such callsand calls the guard “an illegal gathering that, according to the regulations, poses a serious danger to human health.”
She defended her officers who had to do a “morse difficult policing” to disperse the mass gathering, but “fully” understood the “strength of feeling”, especially of women.
“I would not want a vigil in memory of Sarah to end with these scenes,” Dick added.
Everard was last seen walking home in a busy London street earlier this month. Closed circuit television recordings showing her brightly colored clothes being worn in a well-lit street have caught the minds of many women who take similar precautions when walking alone in the dark.
Jamie Klingler, an organizer of the group Reclaim these Streets, told NBC News that the footage became “painful” for many women because their safety fell on them, despite the behavior of male offenders.
“She was abducted and killed, and it struck a chord with us all,” she added.
The upset after Everard’s death upset some of those closest to the slain woman. In an opinion piece written by one of her friends, Helen Edwards, it is asked that the politicization of Everard’s death should stop.
“In my opinion, her abduction and murder are not a symptom of a sexist, dangerous society. “If something terrible happens, there is a rush to find reasons and share the blame,” Edwards wrote.
The impact of the murder of Everard continues to resonate in public conversations about violence against women around the world.
“The reason the murder of Sarah Everard shocked us all is because it could have been any of us,” said Rothna Begum, a senior women’s researcher at Human Rights Watch.
What really resonates is, ‘Why was she killed? How was it that she was killed just because she just walked home at night? ”
Unrelated to the Everard murder case, a police bill will be read in parliament again this week. The nearly 300-page bill quickly became controversial from the police’s response, with some advocates urging it to say it would “greatly expand” police forces and criticize several opposition politicians, which now intends to vote against the legislation.
The #PolicingBill hashtag was on Twitter in the UK on Monday.
Elizabeth Kuhr contributed.