Days before David Gikawa stabbed his ex-partner Linah Keza to death in her east London home, she went to a solicitor to seek a non-molestation order. Her statement lays out in detail how, over four years, she was harassed, stalked, coercively controlled, intimidated and abused by a man who punched her, attempted to strangle her, suffocated her with a pillow, put a knife in her mouth, threatened to kill any man who came near her and was known to carry a gun.
“I believe that I will be at risk of significant harm if the respondent is not ordered to stop immediately … I am petrified … I do not want to live a life of violence any more,” she said in her statement.
On 31 July 2013, three days before her 30th birthday, Keza was dead, one of 143 women who died in 2013 as a result of male violence. Gikawa, who was 38 at the time of the murder, is serving a 21-year prison term.
This week, Keza’s family and the Metropolitan police will issue a joint statement in which the Met will apologise for failing to provide “the highest quality of service that our public have the right to expect”.
Her case will be fed into domestic abuse training, paying particular attention to the treatment of black and ethnic minority women.
Justice for Keza has been slow. An investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) into the police response took three years and was only completed in 2016. A civil case brought by the family under the Human Rights Act (1998) concluded last year with damages paid to the family. Two weeks ago, six years after Keza’s death, a much-delayed misconduct hearing was finally held to establish whether three officers, Sgt Sidney Rogers, PC Adrian Brown and PC Christopher Moore breached standards of professional behaviour. Each was found guilty of gross misconduct – a rare judgment in police misconduct cases – and each was given a final written warning.
The family has expressed profound disappointment that they were not dismissed. Susan Asiimwe, Keza’s sister, said: “Although we are disappointed that no officer will lose their job after six years of fighting, we are grateful that there has been some individual accountability for the failure to protect Linah.”
The gross misconduct finding is rare. It ought to underline that officers on the front line will lose their livelihoods and their pensions if they fail to assess and investigate incidents of domestic abuse. But the family’s solicitor, Sophie Naftalin, has serious doubts. “We keep hearing lessons have been learned when clearly they have not,” she says. “Police were not listening to Linah. Their reaction reflects the historic culture of disbelief towards women. Further up the chain, policy is improving and new offences address stalking, harassment and coercive control, but I still have no confidence that frontline officers are properly trained in what to look for to build a picture to support a prosecution and save lives.”
Domestic abuse is currently high on the political agenda. Last week the government published its “refreshed” strategy on violence against women and girls. In January, the long-delayed draft domestic abuse bill was published, proposing measures to increase support for survivors and tackle perpetrators.
In February, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, announced an extra £15m to support services for victims of domestic abuse – the boost is welcome but it is only a pittance, given that nationwide funding for women’s services in 2017 fell by 50% as demand has risen by 83%. London has experienced a staggering 63% increase in domestic abuse offences in the seven years to 2018, a year when 78,814 offences were recorded by the Met.
Last month, at the inquest of Donna Williamson, 44, murdered by her partner, Kevin O’Regan, 38, who was out on bail, a jury again identified “systemic failures” in the support provided to victims of domestic abuse, including “persistent failure to assess and record an appropriate level of risk”. The senior coroner at Williamson’s inquest, Andrew Harris, unusually critical, said: “The system we have cannot be relied upon to deliver for the most vulnerable. This seems to be a problem which is national.”
Linah Keza was the fifth of six children. The family is from Rwanda. Her late father was a Pentecostal bishop, her mother a retired pastor. Keza came to Britain in 2007, encouraged by her brother Ivan Kigenza, 44, who had settled here earlier. She was involved in her local church, modelled occasionally and had plans to become a social worker. Keza’s sister, Susan, a lawyer in Kigali, and her husband have three children and have adopted Keza’s daughter, now seven. Susan says: “Linah had a very big heart.”
Keza met Gikawa in 2009. The relationship was “off and on” but always turbulent, with the police called several times. “Linah did not want to be with David but she just couldn’t get rid of him,” says Kigenza ,who spoke to her almost daily. “He said if he couldn’t have Linah, nobody could.”
Keza finally ended the relationship in June 2013. Gikawa, a heavy drinker, had eight convictions and had been in prison. In 2006 he accepted a caution for assaulting a partner. A probation report in July 2013 warned that Gikawa was stalking Keza.
On 23 and 24 July that year, police were called but failed to conduct a five-year intelligence check – where they examine their records to see if there is any cause for concern – an essential part of risk assessment.
On the night of 28 July and in the early hours of 29 July, Keza called the police three times to say that Gikawa was monitoring her house. She was inside with her friend James. His car tyres had been slashed and Gikawa, a Ugandan, had threatened to harm him. She said her ex-partner carried a sharpened kitchen knife. “I’m so scared I can’t breathe,” she said.
PC Brown and PC Moore visited Keza just after 1am. They asked questions as directed by Dash – the domestic abuse, stalking and honour-based violence risk identification assessment and management model. This was introduced across all police forces in 2009 to turn “it’s just a domestic” into a way to assess risk and gather evidence so an arrest may be made with or without a victim’s co-operation. Keza had made a phone recording of Gikawa’s threats in a Ugandan language. The officers showed little interest – a discriminatory reaction, Susan says. They made no official note of the recording. The two officers also failed to interview the two men present, James and another friend, Eugene; they disregarded the significance of the slashed tyres and, in spite of Gikawa’s murderous threats, they assessed the risk to Keza as “medium”.
On 30 July, Gikawa – who had been told that he could only go to Keza’s home accompanied by officers – phoned the police to ask for an escort so that he could collect his belongings from her flat. A two-year intelligence check was conducted that flagged up Gikawa’s violent record.
Nevertheless, incredibly, Rogers told Gikawa he could attend without police, and closed the case. He then lied to the IOPC investigator and denied that he had given permission.
On 31 July, Gikawa entered Keza’s home and stabbed her three times in front of their two-year-old daughter. Tragically, many of the risk factors for domestic homicide as set out in the Dash form had been present two days earlier. They included that Keza had ended the relationship, incidents had escalated and Gikawa was displaying jealous and controlling behaviour.
“A window of opportunity opened for officers to protect Linah, most obviously by circulating him as wanted for arrest for harassment or stalking,” Naftalin says.
“It seems that those officers were not even aware that what Gikawa was doing amounted to a criminal offence.”
Commander Catherine Roper, of the Met’s directorate of professional standards, said: “These officers could and should have done more… we always look to learn from mistakes made during investigations. We are continually working to improve our response to domestic abuse in all its forms.”
Sarah Green of End Violence Against Women said: “Officers are still too often only looking for black eyes. Domestic abuse is not marginal, it’s not a women’s issue it’s a major part of what police do. We are on a very long journey in the treatment of domestic abuse, and police are not investing in proper continual training and making the headway they should.”
Kigenza said that the family kept on fighting for years because “justice for one person is justice for all”. He added: “We don’t want anyone else’s sister or mother or daughter to die like Linah did.”
