All women know they are prey – and that no one with any authority seems to care | Marina Hyde

Despite the horrifying levels of violence against women, there is no strategy to end it. Just promises to learn lessons'

Cressida Dick must be the last woman in the country who thinks there may be lessons" to be learned from Wayne Couzens's rape and murder of Sarah Everard. At least 80 women in the UK have been killed by men since Everard. Only 1.6% of rapes in England and Wales reported to police even result in a charge. Fifty-two per cent of police found guilty of sexual misconduct kept their jobs. Women already know all the lessons. Women live with the all-pervasive understanding that they are prey.

The women who love you have to communicate the fear to you when you're still a girl, knowing that one day you too will have to communicate it to the girls you love. They pass you down their strategies - their defences - like your birthright. And when you're big enough to be out in the world on your own, those same women spend their time hoping till it hurts that this fear, which they had to gift you out of love, will somehow save you. In the evenings," said Sarah Everard's mother in her unforgettable victim impact statement, at the time she was abducted, I let out a silent scream: Don't get in the car, Sarah. Don't believe him. Run!'"

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

This article was amended on 1 October 2021. Liz Truss is the minister for women and equalities, not Kemi Badenoch (who is equalities minister) as an earlier version said.