Millions of men in England and Wales pose a danger to women and children, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police has said.
Sir Mark Rowley said the figures were “eye-watering” and an “inconvenient truth” as he called for a much bigger effort, a national strategy and more money to tackle the problem.
He relied on an upcoming study produced for police chiefs nationally that says there are up to 4 million perpetrators of violence against women and children, who are mainly men, with one in 10 people being victims, who are mainly women or children.
Rowley, who is Britain’s most senior police officer, said the scale of offending by men against women and children was beyond the criminal justice system to tackle.
He told the London policing board: “When you look across violence against women and children, there are millions of offenders in the UK. Some of the numbers are eye-watering.
“The scale of this is way beyond policing and the justice system and we need a frank conversation about it, that looks at prevention work, protective work, as well as enforcement … work.
“This is largely men offending on women and children … You’ve got millions of men in the country who pose a risk to women and children at some level. And requires a whole step up in approach.”
The London policing board was set up to oversee reform of the Met after a series of scandals and revelations about the scale and severity of attacks by its officers against women.
Among them was the use by Wayne Couzens of his police powers to pluck Sarah Everard off a London street before he raped and murdered her.
The Met’s reputation was rocked further when it was revealed that David Carrick had become one of the worst sex offenders, using his status as a Met officer to intimidate a string of women victims into silence.
In both cases the Met missed chances to identify both men as a danger to women while they were still serving.
Rowley, commissioner since September 2022, said the Met had improved its charging for rape, but said the scale of violence against women and girls was daunting.
The figure of 4 million, mainly male, offenders comes from research to be published later this year that was commissioned by the National Police Chiefs’ Council. It was discussed recently at the government’s national policing board.
Rowley, in his written report ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, said: “National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) analysis at the recent National Policing Board suggests that one in 10 people in England and Wales are a victim of VAWG [violence against women and girls], with around four million (approximately one in 15) people being perpetrators.”
Other data shows that 800,000 women a year are sexually assaulted, there are 1 million domestic violence reports a year, and the National Crime Agency estimates that 750,000 adults have a sexual interest in children.
The Met’s own figures show that 10% of 999 calls to them relate to domestic abuse, and it is responsible for 30% of all violence with injury and 50% of violence suffered by women. About 30% of rape and sexual offences take place within abusive relationships, the Met said.
Rowley said: “I think it’s a bit of an inconvenient truth about how big this problem is. If we are really nationally and in London have the scale of response that the threat to women and children from predatory men deserves, it will need a massively upscaled approach across multiple agencies.
“It’s great that we in the Met in our corner of the system [are] improving and doing better, but those iterative improvements are nowhere near what the size of the problem requires.”
Rowley accepted crimes such as sexual violence were under-reported and that a national strategy to reduce offending with multi-agency prevention and protection measures was needed, and currently lacking.
The Met commissioner also claimed lack of money and inability to recruit enough officers meant reforms to the embattled force would be slower than needed.
He said that by 2025-26, the Met faced a budget shortfall of £400m, and claimed that government reimbursed the Met for only £20m of the £70m cost of protests, the main protests being those triggered by the Gaza conflict after the attack on Israel last October.
He said the “reduced resource and available workforce” meant that “reform will be more limited and partial than the scale of reform that is needed”.
