{"id":44549,"date":"2026-02-15T15:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T15:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=44549"},"modified":"2026-02-15T15:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T15:46:09","slug":"we-owe-it-to-every-victim-of-jeffrey-epstein-to-better-protect-british-women-and-girls-and-we-will-jess-phillips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=44549","title":{"rendered":"We owe it to every victim of Jeffrey Epstein to better protect British women and girls. And we will | Jess Phillips"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I<\/span>t always takes a calamity \u2013 a dreadful murder that reaches every front page, a mass paedophile ring being uncovered, or a political scandal unfolding \u2013 to make institutions sit up and act on violence against women and children. These windows of potential energy are never wasted by women\u2019s rights activists. Historically, they have used them to build the #MeToo movement, to fight for legislation change and to push for greater resources for victims.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve done it, many times \u2013 \u201cnever waste a crisis\u201d is my mantra. In the past few weeks, while the nation\u2019s attention has been on the political fallout from the Epstein files, I have seen the opportunity to push for more, for better. To move beyond the throwaway line about the victims being the most important thing \u2013 and to actually make them just that. Deeds not words are what matter. If repentance and sorrow is all we achieve out of the courage of the Epstein victims, we will have failed; change is all that will suffice.<\/p>\n

That said, I am weary, tired and frankly downright furious that women and children must wait for a crisis to get progress. I wish that systems and institutions didn\u2019t need us to bleed first and act second. Women ask for this at times of calm, we shouldn\u2019t have to scream.<\/p>\n

When we were writing Labour\u2019s violence against women and girls strategy, this was always at the forefront of my mind. The fact that we couldn\u2019t once again just have some nice prepackaged policy that we could pull off a shelf when the going got tough. It had to be long-term, systemic change in our police, in our courts, in our health services, our armed forces, our housing, our schools. We had to start really focusing on preventing the terrible harm from happening in the first place, not just trying to make nicer plasters to cover up the cuts and bruises. We had to get other government departments to realise that the safety, security and wellbeing of half the population wasn\u2019t just a Home Office issue.<\/p>\n

I have worked on this issue under many governments \u2013 it always felt a bit one note, and investment in prevention has never been made. We had to change that, we had to write a strategy that would actually deliver on our commitment to halve violence against women and children. Of course, I want to end all violence against women and girls, just like I want world peace, but committing to that would be nothing more than a throwaway line, an aspiration, a pipe dream. Our aim had to be actually achievable and practically measurable.<\/p>\n

No UK government has ever dared or cared to put a number on the problem before, because this issue has always been seen as too big to deal with or too likely to fail. Our target of halving violence against women and girls within a decade matters to me \u2013 it holds us to account, it focuses the minds of those with levers of power and demands that they pull them. Long-term, persistent, consistent, backaching and heartbreaking work is the only thing that is even going to remotely shift the dial on this issue.<\/p>\n

The NHS has to take responsibility for the consequences of this abuse just as it would with diabetes. Schools must be given the tools to deal with how these incidents affect their pupils. If children grow up to be perpetrators of abuse or end up as victims, that will ruin their life chances and ability to function in the workplace more completely than not being good at maths. It\u2019s no good having an engineering degree if you end up on the sex offender register \u2013 and the growing number of young people becoming perpetrators of these crimes should frighten us all.<\/p>\n

Want to tackle growth and productivity? Well, the annual socioeconomic cost for domestic abuse alone is estimated to be \u00a389bn, without even including, rape, sexual harassment, stalking and other abuses. I could go on and cover every area of policy in every government department that would fail if it didn\u2019t stop and think about how this issue will undermine its progress. This is what this government is seeking to do, to really change this thing once and for all \u2013 to change the system, not just react.<\/p>\n

Epstein\u2019s victims don\u2019t just need me to make sure no UK airport could ever be used to traffic them again. That loophole has been closed, and we will, of course, close any others we need to \u2013 but that isn\u2019t enough. They need me to make sure that those who abused them are actually held accountable so they can\u2019t do it again. They need me to make it so there is less likely to be a future Epstein in a UK classroom today; they need me to make sure legislation stops abusers who use naked images and online hideaways to groom them in the first place. They need me to make sure that when they say that they have suffered, not only do they have recourse in the law \u2013 but also that their mental health is cared for with therapeutic and social support so that they can recover and live prosperous lives.<\/p>\n

I will use the momentum of the current political attention on this subject to get more; I always do and always will. It\u2019s how I have been trained to operate over decades, like the scrappy kid at the dinner table of a large family that I am. But I am damned if I will let these pinch-point moments be the only time those calls are heard. The long-term strategy of the government must be exactly that \u2013 long term.<\/p>\n

I am proud of the challenge we have tried to rise to, of the strategy with investment and system change at its heart; but even that we must stretch to meet our ambitions, and it must never only be cared about when it is politically expedient to do so. Epstein\u2019s victims deserve better.<\/p>\n