Responding to the BBC’s Panorama: Undercover in the Police, Nahar Choudhury, chief executive of Solace, said:
“As long as there is there is contempt, disrespect and the dehumanisation of women in police forces, women will never be safe.
“We have known for a long time that this isn’t ‘a few bad apples’, and last night’s Panorama evidenced the systemic pattern and acceptance of misogyny that runs rampant throughout the very force that exists to protect the public – all of the public, not just the fifty percent made up of men.
“The implications for domestic abuse survivors are as dangerous as they are horrifying: without certainty that they will be heard and believed, without trust that police will not subject them to the same misogyny they experience from perpetrators, women are much less likely to seek the potentially life-saving support forces are supposed to provide.”