\n<\/p>\n
Violence against women is \u201cat breaking point\u201d and the justice system needs to change, according to the writer of new ITV drama Believe Me about the survivors of \u201cblack-cab rapist\u201d John Worboys.<\/p>\n
Jeff Pope, who is also writing a BBC drama about the murder of Sarah Everard, said he wanted to tell these stories because \u201csomething needs to happen\u201d and the \u201cpolice just won\u2019t seem to me to change\u201d.<\/p>\n
Believe Me tells the true story of how the women who were attacked by Worboys were failed and doubted by the Metropolitan police. He was eventually jailed in 2019, with the help of evidence from Carrie Symonds (now married to Boris Johnson) who was drugged, but escaped being raped. Symonds is portrayed in Believe Me by Industry actor Miriam Petche.<\/p>\n
Believe Me also highlights the \u201cutterly horrific [figure] \u2026 that for every 100 rapes and sexual assaults reported to the police only three proceed to charges\u201d, explained Pope.<\/p>\n
Talking about violence towards women, Pope said: \u201cI think we\u2019re at a bit of a breaking point. If you take this and the piece about Sarah, which is still a long way off, these are both huge moments, where \u2026 this stuff is being done to women and nothing [changes]. Something needs to happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust because you\u2019re a man and it\u2019s not happening to you it doesn\u2019t mean you can forget about it \u2026 you\u2019ve got to lance the boil. It\u2019s astonishing how little understanding men have of women\u2019s lives. I think we\u2019re approaching a breaking point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pope, who has written numerous true crime series and films such as Philomena and Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes said he does not have an anti-police agenda but \u201cthe Met is not yet fit for the role in 2026\u201d and needs to be more open and honest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Met say they\u2019re bringing in a new initiative and \u2018We\u2019ve changed our procedures and this can\u2019t ever happen again\u2019. They say that endlessly [but] something more fundamental needs to happen \u2026 The starting point should be \u2018We believe you\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
He thinks the problem goes back to Tony Blair\u2019s premiership, when the police became \u201cfar too preoccupied with figures\u201d. During research for the programme by his company Etta Pictures he and the executive producer Saurabh Kakkar were struck by how much \u201cthought, care and effort\u201d goes into declaring sexual assaults as non-crimes.<\/p>\n
Pope said it made him angry how the women were treated by police, such as making insinuations about their characters by asking if they were the kind of woman who \u201cwould wear red nail varnish\u201d, or making them retell their story numerous times.<\/p>\n
He said he had not realised how much women have to think about \u201cthings that a man wouldn\u2019t even think about\u201d such as wearing earbuds while jogging, and hoped Believe Me would change men\u2019s perspectives as well as how sexual assault cases were dealt with.<\/p>\n
Acknowledging some people might question why a man wrote Believe Me, Pope said: \u201cWhat happened to them after that night, how they were treated \u2026 it\u2019s not about gender. Yes I\u2019m a man but I\u2019m a writer saying this is something that needs to be addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kakkar said that Etta and ITV Studios worked with Worboys survivors to tell their stories accurately, with some of them visiting the film set. They have all, including Symonds, seen Believe Me.<\/p>\n
Due to the subject matter, Kakkar said Etta had \u201clots of wellbeing coordinators on set \u2026 to create an incredibly empathetic environment\u201d, in addition to intimacy coordinators.<\/p>\n
Worboys is due for a parole review this year over additional assaults not covered by the drama.<\/p>\n
Symonds said: \u201c<\/em>I hope Believe Me serves as a wake-up call to the police, the CPS and the Parole Board. Far too often, women and girls are failed by the very institutions meant to protect them.<\/p>\n \u201cThe treatment of the victims in this case was truly shameful. Reform matters but what we urgently need above all is a profound shift in culture.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Violence against women is \u201cat breaking point\u201d and the justice system needs to change, according to the writer of new ITV drama Believe Me about the survivors of \u201cblack-cab rapist\u201d John Worboys. Jeff Pope, who is also writing a BBC drama about the murder of Sarah Everard, said he wanted to tell these stories because<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[360,1515,2222,262,6558,358,359,1388,418,24383,9405],"class_list":{"0":"post-48923","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-assault","9":"tag-breaking","10":"tag-drama","11":"tag-john","12":"tag-point","13":"tag-rape","14":"tag-sexual","15":"tag-violence","16":"tag-women","17":"tag-worboys","18":"tag-writer"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}