Fighting for justice for women in a system that's rigged against them

“In December ’85 I was convicted of murdering my boyfriend, Trevor Armitage, who was 33. I met him six months earlier when I was 16 and a prostitute. He was a client. I was 17 at the time of the offence and now I am 24.” 

So began a letter that arrived at my home in North London in September 1992 with an HMP Drake Hall prison stamp. It was from Emma Humphreys, a woman I came to know well. She described in evocative terms how, following a childhood of violence, exploitation and abuse, she had ended up on the streets of Nottingham, where she was picked up by Armitage, who became her pimp and subjected her to regular rapes and beatings. In a moment of fear, she stabbed and killed him.

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At the time, I was involved in campaigning for women who had been convicted of the murder of violent husbands and had co-founded the campaign group, Justice for Women. We were highlighting the discrimination inherent in the operation of the criminal law, which often showed mercy to men who killed ‘nagging wives’ while failing to acknowledge the cumulative provocation, violence and abuse that might drive a woman to kill her tormenter.

It was Emma’s case that set me on a new career path in my early 30s to become a lawyer and use legal skills sharpened by years of feminist activism to fight for justice for women and others subject to the uneven rule of law.

In my book, Sister in Law: Fighting for Justice in a System Designed by Men, I describe some of the significant cases I have fought over three decades. I chronicle the battle faced by two women who were victims of serial rapist taxi driver, John Worboys, and fought for nearly 10 years to hold the Metropolitan police accountable for their abject failure to investigate and stop him.  

Following Worboys’ eventual capture and criminal trial, over 100 women came forward to report him, yet despite this staggering level of calculated violence, the parole board were poised to release him from prison after he had served less than 10 years, compelling my two clients to become involved in a second historic legal challenge to prevent his release.   

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I tell the shocking story of when the Metropolitan Police shot dead a Brazilian electrician on the London Underground whom they mistook for a suspected suicide bomber and of their attempts to minimise culpability. I recall my fight for truth and justice together with the family and campaigners.  

I recount stories of women who fled persecution in their own countries seeking asylum only to be incarcerated in Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre, re-triggering the trauma they had escaped from.

I return to Emma Humphreys later in the book. Her great victory in the Court of Appeal created a legal precedent and freed her from prison after 10 years, but did not sadly liberate her from the demons of past abuse. After three years of freedom Emma died from an accidental overdose of the medication she became addicted to in prison. Her courageous fight for justice, which ended in such tragedy, taught me so much about the legacy of abuse, sexual exploitation and the state’s complicity in continuing that punishment.

I describe the legal case I brought on behalf of several women who, like Emma, had been abused in street prostitution as teenagers, yet having escaped were still punished, often decades later, because they were required to disclose any criminal convictions arising from that life to the authorities if they wanted to work or volunteer, for example to support other vulnerable young women. Their battle for justice ended with a partial victory freeing them from this cruel system of perpetual stigmatisation.

Sally Challen, like Emma Humphreys, was driven to kill the man who had subjected her to coercive and controlling behaviour, a crime only recognised since 2015. Unlike Emma, she was from a privileged family background and yet still saw no escape from the entrapment of a 40-year relationship.

The campaign to overturn her murder conviction raised awareness nationally of how coercive and controlling actions within a relationship, not necessarily crimes in themselves, can in combination, achieve complete subjugation of the victim.

My passion for justice and for confronting a failing and discriminatory legal system led me to found the charity, Centre for Women’s Justice, that aims to hold the state accountable around violence against women.  In some small but significant way we aim to be a beacon of hope for women battling a rotten system.

Sister in Law by Harriet Wistrich is out now (Transworld, £22). You can buy it from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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