No-contact, no harm? Not in the case of Libby Squire. Exposing 'indecent exposure'.

Image credit: Lisa Squire

In my years studying and commenting upon cases of men who kill women, sometimes multiple times, I’ve lost count of the offenders who had a history of so-called ‘lower level’, ‘non-contact’ sexual offences like indecent exposure. It’s something that crops up so often in the biographies of killers and serial killers that I think we need to take a much closer look at it than we have done so to date.

The most recent case I have come across is that of Libby Squire, which I help to examine in next week’s episode of Britain’s Most Evil Killers, 9.00pm Tuesday 14th September on Sky Crime. The details of her murder highlight the urgency of this issue.

Libby was an intelligent, determined, go-getting young woman who was studying philosophy at the University of Hull, having received a coveted unconditional offer to study there. She had taken a gap year prior to university to travel to Paris and had also worked at a café in High Wycombe. She was going places. Until her killer, a man with a significant history of non-contact sexual offences, decided to end her life in January 2019.

In stark contrast to Libby, he was a pathetic figure. He had been engaging in sexual offending since his teenage years. In his native Poland, he had been committing voyeurism – obtaining sexual gratification from observing women when they don’t know they’re being watched – as well as consuming vast quantities of hardcore pornography. He was abusive towards his wife. She came to live with him in the UK but fled back to Poland soon after his arrest for Libby’s murder. Whilst he presented a veneer as the regular likeable family man who worked hard to provide for his wife and children, what lay beneath that mask was monstrous. Neighbours regularly heard him shouting at his wife, who was absolutely terrified of him.

He committed a string of sexual crimes and burglaries around Hull for approximately 18 months prior to Libby’s murder. He stalked the streets near to where he lived, engaging in voyeurism, masturbating as he watched women through their bedroom windows. He also broke into women’s homes and stole personal items. He committed nine separate offences – that we know of – and his DNA was on police databases, although his identity was unknown prior to Libby’s murder. At the time of his arrest, Humberside Police knew of six of the offences, details of the other three emerged when he was arrested and his picture was shown in the media, prompting other victims to come forward.

Libby’s case reinforces my belief that indecent exposure is not a stand-alone, one-off offence. Someone does not wake up one day and just decide to do this, then never do anything like it again. It is borne out of an inherently misogynistic value system, whereby offenders feel entitled to engage in this behaviour, because they feel they have a right to violate women. Libby’s killer abused, controlled and manipulated his wife because he felt it was his right to do so. He terrorized the young women of Hull, because he felt it was his right to do so. He raped and killed Libby, because he felt it was his right to do so.

Abuse is a pattern of behaviour, a course of conduct, and when we see this behaviour, we must call it out for what it is – a symptom of the underlying disease of misogyny. Men who do this kind of thing hate women. They see them as inferior and subordinate. Not equals with whom to have reciprocal and loving relationships but as objects to use for their own gratification then discard.

As a result of looking into Libby’s case, I decided to take a closer look at exposure.  In terms of its legal definition, it falls under Section 66 of the Sexual Offences Act (2003). A person commits exposure if,  

(a) he intentionally exposes his genitals, and

(b) he intends that someone will see them and be caused alarm or distress.

In relation to the legal penalties when convicted of exposure, this ranges from a fine to a maximum sentence of two years in custody, depending on the offender’s culpability and the harm that they intended or caused. The offence is considered to be more severe if a victim was followed or pursued, and if the offender masturbated whilst exposing himself. The offences that Libby’s killer committed fall firmly into this category. The use of threats and the targeting of a particularly vulnerable victim are also factors associated with the more severe end of the spectrum.

How many men are actually convicted of exposure each year in England and Wales? According to figures I found from a Freedom of Information disclosure for the years 2012-2016, it ranged from 535 in 2013 to 618 in 2016, so between 10 and 12 each week.

In terms of how many exposure offences are reported to the police, in the year ending March 2020, the Office for National Statistics state that it was 10,772, around 200 per week. This figure also - unhelpfully - includes reports of voyeurism[i], so it’s difficult to ascertain how many were for exposure and how many were for voyeurism.

However, when you explore the Office for National Statistics figures on how many women experience exposure, those figures of convictions and reports are dwarfed.  

The ONS estimates that in year ending March 2020, 113,000 women were the victims of exposure. That’s around 2,200 each week. There are literally thousands of women who are being subjected to this vile crime every week and not reporting it to the police. That’s no surprise really, especially given headlines consistently telling us about conviction rates for contact sexual crimes like rape falling through the floor. If we don’t see rape cases progress to prosecutions, what hope is there for victims of non-contact sexual offences like exposure?

But exposure isn’t just going to go away. Men who feel entitled to commit this crime will continue to do so.

Since the age of 16, 10.2% of women have experienced exposure once or more. On an annual basis, between 2012 and 2020, the percentages ranged from 0.6% to 1.2% of women each year.

When examining the detailed information available about victim characteristics, some groups of women appear to be more vulnerable to men who choose to expose themselves[ii].

Women in younger age groups 16-19 (1.8%) and 20-24 (1.9%), single women (1.2%) and women who are full-time students (2.0%) are more at risk of falling victim to this crime than older women and those who aren’t in full-time education. The figures on ethnicity suggest that women of mixed white and black African heritage experience the highest rates of victimization (7.4%), followed by women of other black / African / Caribbean heritage (2.9%) and women of Chinese ethnicity (2.2%).

These figures are shocking, and we need to start talking about exposure a lot more than we currently are. No woman should have to put up with this.

Whilst few exposure offenders will go on to kill, I have come across far too many cases of killers with a history of exposure. To me, that suggests that it is an important ‘red flag’ which should alert us to those who are a grave danger to women. And even among those who don’t go on to commit crimes like rape and murder, shouldn’t we be trying to prevent this offence from happening in the first place? In and of itself, exposure is a horrendous violation.

I will be leading on the development of an academic research project around indecent exposure in the following weeks and months to further understand why so many men choose to commit this crime, why relatively few women report it and how to ensure that the criminal justice response to exposure actually fits the crime.

Exposure is a symptom of the culture of misogyny that bubbles away on society’s backburner. It’s time to turn up the heat on those who decide to do this. 

[i] Voyeurism is a criminal offence under Section 67 of the Sexual Offences Act (2003). A person commits an offence if— (a)for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification, he observes another person doing a private act, and (b)he knows that the other person does not consent to being observed for his sexual gratification.

[ii] Figures in brackets indicate the percentage of women aged 16-74 in these groups who have experienced exposure in the previous year, to year ending March 2020.