Femicide is not inevitable – it is preventable, the aunt of Zara Aleena said as she called for a 20-year strategy on ending male violence against women and girls.
Zara, 35, was kicked and stamped to death during a sex attack lasting nine horrific minutes as she walked home in Ilford, east London, in June 2022.
Her killer was a known violent offender who should not even have been on the streets after his licence – attached to his release from prison just a week earlier – was revoked for failing to go to probation appointments.
Zara’s aunt Farah Naz told Metro: ‘This man got away so many times. He got away so many times that there was a sense of “I can keep getting away with whatever I want to do”.
‘There were very few consequences throughout his life and the inquest showed the lack of consequences led to an escalation in his crimes.
‘He wasn’t a monster. He was a man whose crimes, beginning at 12, went unchallenged. Each failure to hold him accountable fed an entitlement that ultimately cost Zara her life.’
The latest annual Femicide Census report published this week names Zara among at least 121 women killed by men in 2022.
Data shows that men used the brute force of their bodies – by hitting, kicking, stamping and strangling – in the killings of 20 women, representing 17% of victims.
More than half (57%) of all male perpetrators were known to have histories of violence against women and/or were subject to monitoring or restrictions at the time they killed.
That includes Zara’s killer, who had amassed 28 convictions for 69 offences including some for violence against women, and was wanted by the police and probation service for recall to prison when he strangled and stamped her to death.
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With the help of our partners at Women’s Aid, This Is Not Right aims to shine a light on the sheer scale of this national emergency.
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Ms Naz said: ‘We saw the CCTV of her murder. It was harrowing then, and it remains harrowing now—to see her name listed among 121 women, and to know she was killed in such a brutal way.
‘None of these women can be reduced to statistics. Zara was not just a number — she was brilliant. A daughter, a granddaughter, a niece.
‘She was simply walking home. She should have been safe.’
Law graduate Zara had been out with a friend that night, visiting the Great Spoon pub before moving on to Champs Bar on Chapel Road.
At 2am they said goodbye, her friend getting in a taxi while Zara decided to walk.
Her killer had also been to the Great Spoon with a pal that evening, but he was kicked out for harassing a female member of bar staff.
Over the following four hours, CCTV record him drunkenly staggering around the streets looking for a woman to attack.
He followed three women – physically running after one, publicly masturbating at another and stalking the third through dimly lit residential roads – and sexually assaulted a fourth before grabbing Zara and dragging her into a driveway.
Zara was attacked ‘with a savagery almost impossible to believe’, the Old Bailey was told.
The prosecutor wiped away tears as he revealed: ‘Zara Aleena did not stand a chance. She had no idea [he] was behind her and, once he had grabbed her, there was nothing she could do.’
She was found with head injuries and struggling to breathe by passers-by. Emergency services were called but she died in hospital with 46 separate injuries.
Addressing the femicide report’s findings in relation to the use of brute force, Ms Naz said: ‘It tells us a lot.
‘It’s not just about a rage in a moment. It’s about domination and it’s about dehumanisation. It’s about control, and it’s about a sense of entitlement – I can overpower this person.
‘He didn’t just use his body to kill her – he also overkilled her. That’s often a feature in male violence against women and it shows us that it’s a crime of hatred.
‘It’s a crime of hatred and dominance played out on a woman.’
The jury at Ms Aleena’s inquest last year found: ‘Zara’s death was contributed to by the failure of multiple state agencies to act in accordance to policies and procedures – to share intelligence, accurately assess risk of serious harm, (and) act and plan in response to the risk in a sufficient, timely and coordinated way.’
Evidence to the inquest prompted the coroner Nadia Persaud to issue a prevention of future deaths report warning there is a risk similar killings could occur unless action is taken.
She instructed the Probation Service and Metropolitan Police to improve their services.
Ms Naz said: ‘Zara’s murder could have been prevented. The failures were no secret—probation inspectorate and other leaders knew of them three years before, six years before, 10 years before she was murdered.’
She added: ‘Zara believed that law was about putting things right, and that’s why she went into law, but how can we do that if we keep repeating the same mistakes?
‘We all know that femicide isn’t inevitable – it’s preventable.’
Learn more about femicide
- On average, one woman a week is killed by a partner/ex-partner
- Of the 249 female domestic homicide victims between March 2020 and March 2022, the suspect was male in a staggering 241 cases
- Women’s Aid have found that women are over three times more likely to be killed by a partner than by not wearing a seatbelt
- A Killed Women survey found that only 4% of bereaved family members said their loved one’s killing was not preventable at all
- Nearly half (49%) of women murdered by their partner or ex-partner are killed less than a month after separation, 79% killed within six months of separation and 90% killed within a year of separation (ONS, 2017)
Ms Naz’s campaigning against male violence has taken her all the way to Downing Street and meetings with both Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer.
With the government due to publish its delayed ‘Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy’ this month, she has called for ‘a 20-year strategy instead of a four-year strategy which is never going to go anywhere’.
‘The government talks about a 10-year strategy, but no government can guarantee 10 years in power,’ she said.
‘Without cross-party agreement, these commitments risk ending with the next election.
‘Violence against women and girls must be treated above party politics—a strategy that lasts beyond election cycles, because women’s lives depend on it.
‘We need a 10 or 20 – year strategy if we are to turn this crisis around.’
She also backs plans to introduce a Good Samaritan law compelling people to assist someone in danger, when safe to do so, and Redbridge council’s Don’t Stand By, Step In campaign calling upon residents to watch out for signs of sexual harassment.
Ms Naz said there is currently ‘a culture where people look the other way’, adding that ‘there were so many opportunities’ for the perpetrator to have been picked up before he murdered Zara.
‘If somebody had called the police, he would have been arrested,’ she said.
‘I’m not attacking those people. We have a culture of looking the other way.
‘And it’s not just that night that people looked away. When he was in prison and he beat someone up and wasn’t held to account and his risk factor wasn’t increased, there was a looking away.
‘When he attacked a woman and that wasn’t taken as a substantive crime and the jury acquitted him, there were people looking the other way.
‘When the justice system didn’t address his escalation, there were people looking the other way.
‘When probation services didn’t pick him up time and time again – and they should have picked him up on the first point he broke his conditions – they were looking the other way.
‘When the manager in probation didn’t say to the officer “yes, do the paperwork today, get it sorted, let’s pick him up”, they were looking the other way.
‘When the police didn’t pick him up when they were supposed to, they were looking the other way.
‘When people saw him chase women, they were looking the other way.
‘When there were cars driving along a busy road and Zara was being followed by him and nobody did anything, they were looking the other way.’
In response to the femicide report, Jess Phillips, minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, said ‘the scale of violence and abuse suffered by women by and girls in this country by men is nothing less than a national emergency’.
‘That’s why we have pledged to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, including tackling child to parent abuse through an effective system to ensure problematic behaviours and victims are identified early, and services respond effectively to stop harmful behaviour from continuing or escalating.
‘But we know more needs to be done which is why our forthcoming Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy will seek to overhaul the policing and criminal justice response to domestic abuse to ensure that more victims are protected and more perpetrators are punished.’
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