I have a question that stalks us all: why have so many men gone toxic?
This certainly seemed the principal lesson of To Catch a Stalker (BBC3). A succession of young women, driven to their wits' ends and scared for their lives as the consequence of what we might genuinely call toxic masculinity, sought help from the authorities and were rewarded with the most meagre of outcomes. In the overwhelming majority of cases the men doing the stalking were spurned ex-boyfriends who took this blow to their self-esteem very personally indeed (although in one case it was simply a female recruitment officer who was being harassed by someone she had found a job for).
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Sky News
an hour ago
- Sky News
I was reporting in London on the day of the 7/7 bombings - here's what happened
I heard about the 7/7 bombings from the guard on my train into London. Well, sort of. We had ground to a halt sometime after 9am just outside Croydon when he ambled through our carriage to warn us there was trouble ahead - a power surge had knocked out the whole of the London Underground network. That was all he could tell us, so I had to work out the rest for myself from ringing the people who might really know what was going on. At that stage, officially, the emergency services were dealing with a fire at Aldgate Tube station. A senior press officer at Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan Police headquarters, told me rather more than he would normally have done: it was serious, several incidents, some casualties. "Anyone dead?" I asked. "Yes, but please don't report that yet," he said. "Maybe." 3:10 I was told there were explosions at five Tube stations and anti-terror branch officers were on their way. At around 9.40am, via my mobile phone from the train carriage, I repeated all that live on Sky News. While I was on air a colleague, producer Bob Mills, phoned in with an extraordinary account of him seeing a blast rip apart a red double-decker bus near Euston. When I finally put down the phone my fellow passengers were understandably alarmed. So was I. And not for the first time, I was in the wrong place as a major crime story was breaking, and if I was worried, it was more that my rivals would be getting ahead of me on the details. Sky News was already showing helicopter footage of dazed and bloodied passengers emerging from Aldgate Tube station. The more seriously injured were being stretchered away. All Underground and bus services were suspended, and with no taxi in sight and through the drizzle, I walked the two and a half miles from Cannon Street station to Scotland Yard in Westminster. I was headed against a tide of bewildered people through damp streets that echoed with the wail and screech of emergency vehicle sirens. At precisely 11.10am my phone died as the whole mobile system crashed under the weight of calls. I was told later that Scotland Yard had considered shutting the network for fear the bombs - like those that killed 193 train commuters in Madrid a year earlier - had been triggered by mobile phones used as timers. I got to Scotland Yard around 11.30am, joined a posse of reporters and our own live camera crew on the pavement outside, plugged in my earpiece and was there, day and night, for three weeks. Read more: 7/7 - the bravery of victims and responders 20 years on How Prevent is tackling extremism 20 years on Why is the govt's anti-terrorism programme controversial? Before midday, Met Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair went on TV, saying that the capital had been hit by "probably a major terrorist attack". He repeated, mistakenly, what I had reported, that there had been five Underground explosions. In fact there were only three, at Aldgate, Edgware Road and Russell Square stations. Get Sky News on WhatsApp Follow our channel and never miss an update Tap here to follow The confusion arose because some survivors had escaped by walking through tunnels and emerging above ground further away at King's Cross and Liverpool Street. The bombs were a huge shock, but not unexpected. My mind went back four years to the al Qaeda 9/11 attacks in the United States. Days after 9/11, at a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority, I had listened to the then-commissioner Sir John Stevens tell the committee: "Make no mistake, we're next." By 1pm police sources suggested at least 40 people had died with hundreds injured, many seriously. In an evening report I raised the spectre of suicide bombers. If confirmed they would be the first in the UK. I was told by someone who had been to the site of the bus blast that a body recovered there had injuries consistent with those found on suicide bombers in Israel and Iraq. 1:22 At 6.13pm police announced that at least 37 were dead. It went up to 38 that night when a critically injured victim died in hospital. The eventual death toll was 52. It had been an extraordinary day, but there was much more drama to come over the next three weeks, with the discovery of the bomb factory in Leeds, unexploded devices, the identities of the terrorists, an attempted copycat attack and the shooting by police of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, mistaken for a would-be bomber. Britain's terror threat had changed forever. Who were the victims of the 7/7 bombings The 52 victims of the London terror attack on 7 July 2005 are remembered with a memorial in Hyde Park. Here are the names of the victims and where they were killed. Russell Square James Adams, 32 Sam Badham, 35 Philip Beer, 22 Anna Brandt, 41 Ciaran Cassidy, 22 Rachelle Chung For Yeun, 27 Liz Daplyn, 26 Arthur Frederick, 60 Karolina Gluck, 29 Gamze Gunoral, 24 Lee Christopher Harris, 30 Ojara Ikeagwu, 56 Emily Jenkins, 24 Helen Jones, 28 Susan Levy, 53 Shelley Mather, 26 Michael Matsushita, 37 James Mayes, 28 Behnaz Mozakka, 47 Mihaela Otto, 46 Atique Sharifi, 24 Ihab Slimane, 24 Christian Small, 28 Monika Suchocka, 23 Mala Trivedi, 51 Adrian Johnson, 37 Tavistock Square Anthony Fatayi-Williams, 26 Jamie Gordon, 30 Giles Hart, 55 Marie Hartley, 34 Miriam Hyman, 31 Shahara Islam, 20 Neetu Jain, 37 Sam Ly, 28 Shyanuja Parathasangary, 30 Anat Rosenberg, 39 Philip Russell, 28 William Wise, 54 Gladys Wundowa, 50 Aldgate Lee Baisden, 34 Benedetta Ciaccia, 30 Richard Ellery, 21 Richard Gray, 41 Anne Moffat, 48 Carrie Taylor, 24 Fiona Stevenson, 29 Edgware Road Michael Stanley Brewster, 52 Jonathan Downey, 34 David Graham Foulkes, 22 Colin William Morley, 52 Jennifer Vanda Nicholson, 24 Laura Webb, 29
Times
an hour ago
- Times
Don't assume that junking juries will speed up justice
Proposals will be unveiled this week that could mean crimes now decided by juries are heard instead by a judge with two magistrates in a radical change to a centuries-old cornerstone of our justice system. No one would deny the present crisis in criminal justice. Delays are at record levels: nearly 80,000 cases are waiting to be heard and, without reform, the backlog is predicted to reach 100,000 by 2029. In December, Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, appointed Sir Brian Leveson, a highly experienced former Court of Appeal judge, to propose measures for reform. He was specifically tasked with exploring the idea of a new intermediate court between magistrates and the Crown Court, consisting of a district judge sitting with two magistrates. • Priest, 83, is arrested in Palestine Action protest in London This new court could lead to jury trial being scrapped for thousands of middle-ranking offences. At present defendants are allowed the choice of being tried by a judge and jury or by magistrates for such crimes as theft, common assault with a racial or religious aggravation, dangerous driving, some offences of criminal damage and drug possession. Defendants in fraud cases could also lose the right to jury trial. With certain offences, Leveson is expected to give defendants the right to ask for a judge-only trial. And if there is strong public disapproval of a crime, some may do just that. But many would surely prefer to wait and chance their arm with a jury and the higher prospect of acquittal. Meanwhile, lower-level offenders, whose crimes carry perhaps up to two years in jail, would lose the choice of jury trial altogether. • The judge who sentences criminals with a synthetic voice Is the state of the system now so dire that eroding the right to trial by one's peers is justified? Many believe it is when weighed against the injustice of serious crimes going unpunished through lengthy delay. But judges are already privately voicing concerns. A new court will cost money and training and need more district judges, magistrates and criminal lawyers who are prepared to do this doubtless lesser-remunerated work. Juries give no reasons for their verdicts; jury room deliberations are sacrosanct. Non-jury courts, however, will have to do so. There may be endless appeals, fresh delays and costs, defeating the whole object. Instead of jettisoning centuries-old rights, the existing system could be better funded to provide more judge-time and sittings. After all, the chronic lack of this, exacerbated by Covid, is what has led to the present crisis. Either way, more funding will be needed. But if the sacred cow of jury trial is to be sacrificed to expediency, the cull must be worth it. Frances Gibb is a former Times legal editor and host of The Lord Chancellors: Where Politics meets Justice podcast
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Post Office scandal victim: 'I need someone to be punished'
Former sub-postmaster Harjinder Butoy spent more time in prison than any other victim of the Post Office Horizon IT 18 months in jail, it then took another 15 years to clear his name. He is one of dozens of sub-postmasters who gave evidence to the official inquiry into what inquiry chair, Sir Wyn Williams, will deliver the first part of his final report on Tuesday, which will focus on the human impact of the scandal and will also look at Mr Butoy is not sure he will be able to watch. "It's going to bring back too many bad memories for me," he told the BBC, adding he needs "someone to be punished". The Post Office scandal is believed to be one of the biggest miscarriages of justices in UK of victims were wrongly blamed for financial losses from the faulty Horizon computer system which was rolled out across the Post Office branch network from than 900 people were prosecuted and 236 were sent to Butoy was one of them, convicted of stealing more than £200,000 from his branch in Nottinghamshire in 2007. "We lost everything from the day I got sentenced. We lost our business. I had to declare bankruptcy. My wife and three kids had to move back in with my parents, " he he was released from prison his conviction meant he struggled to find work and his health also suffered."I just want everyone to know the impact, what's happened to us all. But I also need someone to be punished and let them go to prison and feel like what we've been through," he conviction was overturned in 2021. Parliament later passed a law exonerating all those who had been convicted. 'Huge day' The inquiry heard from 189 people who gave evidence on how the scandal had turned their lives upside lost their businesses, some lost their homes, and most lost their reputations and financial second part of the inquiry's report – on how the scandal happened and why – may not be published until 2026. Although Harjinder Butoy may not be watching, Wendy Buffrey and Nichola Arch will be among dozens of victims and their families travelling to hear Sir Wyn speak as he presents Volume 1 of his report. Many more will be watching the proceedings livestreamed over the Buffrey, who had a Post Office in Cheltenham, was suspended after an audit in December 2008 and prosecuted. She had to sell her house and business to pay off the alleged shortfall in her accounts, and has suffered with her mental says the publication of the report is going to be "a huge day"."To actually have the establishment recognise what they've put us through is huge," she said. "The apologies we've had from the Post Office have been so mealy-mouthed, not thought through, and really not sincere."Mrs Arch, who managed the Chalford Hill branch near Stroud, says: "You would hope the government would acknowledge every detail of that report."She was accused of stealing from pensioners, shunned by her local community, and spat on outside a local two years she was found not guilty, "but the damage had been done by then".The impact on her family was "like a tsunami", she says. "It's like a cobweb. It just affects every single friend, family, child, you know, connected to you." 'Painful' compensation issue For many victims of the scandal, the most pressing issue is financial the main reason why Sir Wyn has split his report into two, to publish his findings on the progress of compensation as soon as has taken a keen interest on how redress is being delivered, holding several hearings on the issue and delivering an interim report in 2023 where he likened the various schemes to a "patchwork quilt with some holes in it"."Compensation has been a painful issue," says solicitor David Enright, from Howe & Co, which represents hundreds of wronged sub-postmasters."However, we are also hoping [the report] will remind people of what the real harm has been, and that is the shattering of families across the country. "According to the latest figures from the government, more than £1bn has been paid out in compensation to over 7,300 hundreds are still waiting for their final payments and many are locked in disputes over the amount they have been Butoy has only just submitted his claim for compensation. It has taken three years to gather all the necessary reports and paperwork. "Clearing our name was so good. But compensation is very hard. It's like they don't believe us, don't trust us."His solicitor, Neil Hudgell, whose firm also represents hundreds of other former sub-postmasters, told the BBC that if the situation doesn't improve, full and fair redress for all victims could take another two to three Solicitors says it has helped more than 300 people agree damages totalling more than £170m. However, Mr Hudgell says his firm still has more than 700 cases waiting to be resolved through the various compensation the police officer leading the investigation into the scandal has admitted criminal trials may not start until Mr Butoy, and others who want to see those responsible held to account, the wait continues.
