A Leaflet Will Not Protect Women. Neither Will Repealing Their Rights.

JSH LAW · EVIDENCE, SAFEGUARDING & PRACTICAL SUPPORT
By Jessica Susan Hill · Reviewed 26 October 2026 · England and Wales unless stated otherwise

A leaflet will not stop a determined rapist. A political label will not stop one either.

A post circulated by Pink-Ladies UK-Official accuses Sky News of labelling concerned mothers, grandmothers, sisters and aunties “far right” merely because they speak about violence against women and children. It attacks the Government’s new guidance for asylum seekers as little more than a pamphlet explaining that rape is wrong. It ends with a line that is difficult to dispute:

“Because a leaflet won’t protect us. Action will.”

That sentence lands because women are tired of awareness campaigns existing alongside investigative failure, court delay, disappearing support services and institutions that become defensive when challenged.

But JSH Law cannot demand evidence from the police, the courts, the media and the Government while applying a lower standard to campaigners. The Facebook post contains a serious and legitimate demand for protection. It also contains broad claims about migrant men that must not be treated as established fact merely because the fear behind them is sincere.

1. What Sky News actually said—and what the response leaves out

Sky News published a 19-minute film on 20 August 2026 under the title “Inside the online networks turning Gen Z women towards ethno-nationalism”. Its own description says that it investigates “the rise of female-led anti-immigration groups across the UK and Europe”. A shorter follow-up asked why women are joining Europe’s hard-right movements.

The terms hard right and far right are political and editorial descriptions, not legal findings. They can be used carelessly. When media organisations deploy them, they should define what they mean, identify the conduct and associations on which the description is based, give those criticised a fair opportunity to answer, and distinguish ordinary concerns about immigration from ethno-nationalism or extremism.

That does not mean the only relevant fact is that the campaigners are mothers or grandmothers. Motherhood is not an ideology. Nor is it a rebuttal to evidence about political affiliation, policy, rhetoric or organised activity.

The relevant policy comparison should rest on published documents rather than assumptions about every person attending a protest. Restore Britain’s published mass-deportation paper proposes repeal of the Equality Act and Human Rights Act, withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights and replacement of the present asylum system. These are proposals, not changes already made to the law.

• the repeal of the Equality Act 2010;
• the repeal of the Human Rights Act 1998;
• withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights; and
• the abolition of Britain’s asylum system in its current form.

Its wider immigration platform advocates mass removal, mandatory detention and nationality-based restrictions. Whether Sky’s editing and terminology were fair can still be debated. But it is inaccurate to suggest that the political context consists only of women expressing concern about safety.

2. The legal contradiction: protecting women by repealing women’s protections

The most important legal issue is not whether a television headline was flattering. It is whether a political programme claiming to protect women would strengthen or weaken women’s enforceable rights.

The Human Rights Act has been used by rape victims against police failure

In Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis v DSD and another [2018] UKSC 11, two victims of serial sexual offender John Worboys relied on sections 7 and 8 of the Human Rights Act. The Supreme Court upheld the conclusion that serious police failures in investigating their reports breached the investigative obligation under Article 3 of the Convention.

This matters. The Human Rights Act was not being used to excuse a rapist. It was used by women to hold the state accountable for a catalogue of investigative failures that allowed a serial offender to continue harming women.

A movement is entitled to campaign for repeal. But if it does so in the name of women’s safety, it must answer a direct question: what equally effective domestic remedy would replace the rights that women such as DSD and NBV used?

The Equality Act protects sex and disciplines public decision-making

Under section 11 of the Equality Act 2010, sex is a protected characteristic referring to a man or a woman. Section 149 requires public authorities, when exercising their functions, to have due regard to eliminating unlawful discrimination and harassment, advancing equality of opportunity and fostering good relations. Sex is expressly included among the relevant protected characteristics.

The Act is not perfect and the public sector equality duty is not a guarantee of a particular result. But outright repeal without an identified replacement would remove part of the legal architecture through which sex discrimination and institutional decision-making are challenged.

Women should examine that consequence before accepting a promise that repeal is being pursued for their protection.

Women must not be made responsible for men’s offending

Discussion of criminal responsibility must remain individual and evidence-led. A woman is not an accessory to a man’s offending merely because she is his wife, sister or mother. Any allegation must identify a recognised offence and prove its required elements.

That is not a statement of existing secondary-liability law. The Crown Prosecution Service guidance explains that an alleged secondary party must encourage or assist the offence and possess the required intention and knowledge. Family association is not criminal liability. Silence cannot be converted automatically into guilt without proving the elements of a recognised offence.

Nor can safeguarding ignore the possibility that a woman living alongside an abuser is herself being threatened, controlled or harmed. A policy claiming to protect women should not replace evidence about an individual woman with an assumption based on her nationality and relationship to a man.

3. What the Government booklet actually says

The Home Office published Understanding behaviours and expectations in the UK: a guide for asylum seekers on 19 August 2026.

It is fair to criticise the idea that a person disposed to commit rape will be restrained by nine pages of guidance. But accuracy matters. The document is not only the sentence “rape is wrong”. It covers:

• the equal rights and personal autonomy of women;
• domestic abuse, including controlling behaviour and the retention of identity documents;
• sexual consent, including consent within marriage and relationships;
• the age of consent;
• sexual harassment, following and threatening conduct in public;
• non-consensual sexual images; and
• routes to help for victims, including migrant women who may fear that reporting abuse will affect an asylum claim.

The guide warns of arrest, imprisonment and immigration or asylum-support consequences. It is therefore an orientation and prevention measure, not simply a moral appeal.

It is also not the Government’s entire response to violence against women and girls. The cross-government Freedom from violence and abuse strategy sets an ambition to halve violence against women and girls within a decade and says that prevention, pursuit of perpetrators and support for victims are its three central strands.

None of that proves delivery. A strategy is not safety. A booklet is not enforcement. A helpline number is not a prompt investigation. The correct criticism is therefore not that the Government has done literally nothing except print a leaflet. It is that information must be accompanied by measurable, properly funded systems that change risk and outcomes.

The Government’s own evidence review illustrates the limit. In the broader field of sexual-violence education and bystander programmes, it found strong evidence for improvements in knowledge, skills and bystander action, but limited evidence of reduced perpetration and mixed evidence on victimisation. That review does not evaluate this particular booklet, but it reinforces the obvious point: information can form one layer of prevention; it cannot carry the weight of protection by itself.

4. Women’s fear is real. Evidence still matters.

Sexual violence and domestic abuse are serious public-safety problems. Published ONS sexual-offence evidence also shows why the discussion cannot be confined to attacks by strangers: partners and former partners are among perpetrators reported by victims.

Survey estimates and police-recorded offences measure different things. Neither should be used without its definitions, date, reporting limitations and relevant population. This article does not calculate comparative offending rates by immigration status.

Women need protection from partners, former partners, strangers, acquaintances, organised exploiters and people abusing positions of trust. An individual allegation should be investigated without either minimising it or treating it as proof against unrelated people who share a nationality.

5. The migrant-crime data are not good enough for either side’s certainty

The Facebook post moves among “people who have entered the country illegally”, people whose status is “undocumented”, alleged offenders and the much broader rhetoric in the accompanying material about migrant men. Those are not interchangeable categories.

Neither are these terms:

• suspect;
• person arrested;
• person charged;
• defendant;
• convicted offender;
• foreign national;
• foreign-born person;
• asylum seeker;
• refugee; and
• person without current immigration permission.

In July 2025, the Government confirmed in a Parliamentary answer that published Ministry of Justice prosecution and conviction data were not broken down by nationality or immigration status. In January 2026, the ONS stated that it did not hold crime breakdowns by asylum-seeker or migrant status.

That gap is unacceptable. It fuels both minimisation and exaggeration.

Population-level comparisons require compatible offence definitions, reliable denominators and a distinction between arrest, charge and conviction. Missing data cannot support confident comparative rates in either direction.

The honest conclusion is not “there is no issue”. Nor is it “migrant men are raping their way through the country”. The honest conclusion is that specific crimes must be investigated without fear or favour, and national data must be improved before sweeping population-level claims are presented as fact.

6. Free speech protects the argument—not freedom from scrutiny

Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention, given domestic effect through the Human Rights Act, protect freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Those are qualified rights, but they matter acutely when citizens criticise government, immigration policy, policing or the justice system.

The Pink Ladies are entitled to organise, protest and express controversial views peacefully. Sky News is entitled to investigate organised political movements and publish critical journalism. Neither side has a right to be insulated from scrutiny by the other.

Calling every woman who discusses migrant crime “far right” would be intellectually lazy and democratically corrosive. Responding to scrutiny by saying “we are mothers” does not answer evidence about political alignment or rhetoric. Describing whole populations through the conduct of selected offenders is equally corrosive.

The answer to controversial claims is scrutiny, evidence and debate—not censorship, caricature or collective guilt.

7. This is a familiar pattern in family justice

In family-justice work, I repeatedly see what happens when a label replaces an investigation. A mother raises domestic abuse or safeguarding concerns. Instead of asking what occurred, what evidence exists, how the child was affected and what risk remains, the system starts asking whether she is “hostile”, “emotional”, “obstructive” or “alienating”. Once the label takes hold, every fact is read through it.

Public debate can make the same mistake when it labels a woman before engaging with her safety concern.

But campaigners can reproduce the error in reverse. Once the word “migrant” is attached to a man, an allegation against one individual is made to stand as evidence against thousands of unrelated people. The identity category starts doing the work that evidence is supposed to do.

8. What meaningful action would look like

If “enough is enough” is to become more than another slogan, the demand should be for measures that can be audited rather than political theatre that can merely be shared.

1. Publish reliable offender data. Collect consistent, quality-assured data on suspects, charges, convictions and sentencing by relevant characteristics, including nationality and immigration status, with clear definitions, population denominators and warnings about data quality. Never confuse an arrest with guilt.
2. Investigate every credible report competently. Preserve evidence early, identify linked reports, use specialist rape and serious sexual-offence expertise, and act on patterns before another woman is harmed.
3. Protect women in every setting. Public-space and accommodation safeguarding must sit alongside serious action on intimate-partner rape, coercive control, stalking, post-separation abuse, child sexual exploitation and institutional abuse.
4. Prosecute first; apply immigration law lawfully. A foreign national who commits a sexual offence should be prosecuted and sentenced like any other offender, with immigration and removal consequences then pursued where the statutory scheme permits. Deportation rhetoric must never become a substitute for a criminal investigation, a fair trial or victim support.
5. Resource survivors to remain in the justice process. Sustainable funding is needed for Rape Crisis services, independent sexual violence advisers, domestic-abuse services, legal support and special measures—not another short-term pilot that disappears when attention moves on.
6. Test the booklet. The Home Office should publish its distribution plan, translations, comprehension testing, referral outcomes and evidence of behavioural impact. If it does not work, change it. If it is only symbolic, say so.
7. Retain enforceable accountability. Any proposal to repeal the Human Rights Act or Equality Act must identify the replacement rights and remedies in full. “Trust us” is not protection.
8. Listen to all women. That includes British-born women, migrant women, refugee women, women with insecure status, women harmed by partners, women harmed by strangers and women who disagree politically with one another.

Conclusion: action, evidence and rights

The Pink Ladies’ post is right about one fundamental point: women should not have to beg to be safe, and a leaflet cannot protect them from a determined offender.

But women’s safety is too important to be owned by a political faction. It must not be used to silence discussion about immigration. It must not be used to justify collective blame. And it must not be used as the sales pitch for repealing legal protections that women have used to challenge discrimination and grave failures by the state.

A leaflet will not protect women.

A label will not protect women.

A slogan will not protect women.

Repealing their rights will not protect women.

Protection means a state that identifies risk, investigates competently, prosecutes fairly, supports survivors, publishes honest data and remains legally accountable when it fails.

Listen to women. Then follow the evidence. Then act.

General information and commentary, not advice on an individual case. JSH Law provides non-reserved litigation support, document-preparation assistance and McKenzie Friend support, subject to the court’s permission where required. It is not an SRA-authorised solicitors’ firm and does not conduct litigation or exercise reserved rights of audience on a client’s behalf. Obtain appropriately regulated legal advice where needed. Comparative foreign law is not binding in England and Wales.