Dame Vera Baird, former victims’ commissioner, told the that violence against women and girls needed to be a higher priority for police.
Speaking to R4’s Today programme, she said: “There is reinforcement to get rid of the dated notion that this is some kind of weird antisocial behaviour and a nuisance and just to look away.”
Dame Vera reiterated the pervasive nature of “non-contact sexual offences,” saying that while it may be online, it still occurs “right in your own home.” She added: “You wonder if he knows you or where you live. In the street, it’s the same thing; it’s in one’s mind.”
Lara Burns was on holiday in Spain with her family in October 2021 when she received an anonymous phone call. The man at the other end of the line called Lara by her name and then made obscene sexual noises and comments.
It wasn’t the first time she had received a call like this. A few months previously there had been a similar call. She had dismissed it then – but this time she couldn’t.
“I definitely got the same bloke,” Lara says. “It was in the middle of the daytime – making disgusting noises and talking about disgusting things.”
Lara, who is from Stevenage and has a teenage daughter, says she felt threatened and feared the man might also have her address, so she reported the calls to Hertfordshire Police.
“I started to think, ‘Is it someone who might know me from work? Is it someone who has just found me online?'”
Lara was interviewed by a police constable, had a more detailed conversation with another officer, and was then referred to Victim Support.
“I remember feeling quite violated,” says Lara.
She no longer felt safe going out at night and was sent a rape alarm by Victim Support.
But she says she never heard anything more from Hertfordshire Police.
Lara says the incident had a lasting adverse effect on her and believes the police could have done more to investigate.
Hertfordshire Police told the they were unable to trace the origin of the calls and had tried to contact Lara several times without success, before writing to her to let her know they wouldn’t be able to “progress the investigation further”.
The force said it had “followed all proportionate lines of enquiry for offences of this nature”.
