London – Women’s Rights Charities on Wednesday said almost two thirds of the British women killed by men over a seven-year period were murdered by current or former partners.
Polly Neate, chief executive of Women’s Aid, said most of them within the first year of leaving their husbands and boyfriends were murdered.
Between 2009 and 2015, 936 women across England and Wales were killed by men, with nearly 600 women dying at the hands of current or former partners.
“It is very shocking that a very high proportion of women being killed are killed by an intimate partner or an ex-partner.
“There is a pattern here, but at the moment, all these cases are reported very much as isolated incidents.
“And the lessons are just not being learnt,’’ she told newsmen, calling for the police to do more to protect women who have left violent partners.
The World Health Organisation said worldwide, one in three women had experienced physical or sexual violence by a man in their lifetime.
Neate said femicide rates in England and Wales had remained consistent over the past few years, in spite of an independent 2014 report by a policing watchdog which criticized the police response to domestic abuse victims.
The Femicide Census, which collects data from police statistics, Freedom of Information requests, newspaper stories and charity reports, showed that 125 women were killed by men in 2009 and 119 in 2015.
“Over the past seven years, eight per cent of women were killed by their sons.
“One in four women recorded in the census was killed by someone unrelated to them, for example a colleague, client or neighbour.
“Of all the females who died after being sexually attacked, a third were killed by a stranger, we are just not working as hard as we could to prevent women from being killed,’’ Neate said.