To halve violence against women, we must target the perpetrators and the systems that trap them.

Harvey Weinstein, R Kelly, Crispin Odey, Jeffrey Epstein, David Carrick, Dominique Pelicot, Mohammed al Fayed… It’s a brutal list, even with so few names on it. Of course, you could add more, running to dozens of pages.

When we wrote the SafeLives strategy in 2018, we included this sentence: ‘Societal changes reduce motivation and the ability to abuse different types of power.. We knew that these were big generational shifts that we were asking for. But I wonder if we as a society are even at the foot of either part of this work, the motivation or the opportunity.

Motivation to commit interpersonal crime, including rape, is a complex, nuanced, multi-layered problem. Taking the right measures will require really thoughtful work over many years. This work has begun, but it needs to be expanded. Police have a role, but they are unlikely to lead.

However, there are fewer excuses for lagging so far behind in reducing the opportunities for abuse of power.

It is crucial that we do not feel defeated by the word monster. It suggests a mythical, magical force that cannot be contained. When in fact the power to curb someone’s abuse of power lies in many everyday activities. HR procedures. Security awareness. Whistleblowing hotlines. Ways to contact the police. We have them.

What we have done less well is inject the accountability and transparency that exposes abuses of power. On the contrary, we hear repeatedly that these individuals were not only hiding in plain sight, but were supported by networks of facilitators who actively aided their activities. We rely on phenomenally brave victims and survivors of these crimes to fight back.

It became commonplace for law enforcement 15 years ago to go after the enablers of organised crime. Lawyers, doctors, estate agents, private security guards, even companies that sell luxury cars, race horses and boats. Organisations in the UK and abroad developed plans to systematically target the support infrastructure that criminals rely on.

I don’t know the individual culpability of those around Mohammed al Fayed or the other men on my list. But I do know that if we are to halve violence against women and girls by 2034 – the government’s ambition – it will be crucial to tackle both the individual perpetrators and the system that keeps them so firmly in place. Let’s build our safety net to catch a monster.