‘Her death was preventable’: Mother of murdered Libby Squire says report flashers to prevent worse crimes

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

The mother of murdered student Libby Squire is urging women and girls to report crimes including flashing and voyeurism, as she warned her daughter’s death was “totally preventable”.

The Hull university student was killed by predator Pawel Relowicz, now 28, who had an extensive history of escalating sexual offending.

He dumped the 21-year-old’s body in the River Hull after raping her on a playing field in the early hours of 1 February 2019. Her remains were found in Humber estuary seven weeks later.

The married butcher had previously committed a string of other sexually-motivated crimes in the city’s student quarter, including peering through windows and breaking into the homes of young women to steal intimate items.

Now Libby’s mother is urging women to make sure they report all non-contact sexual offences to help police stop predators like her daughter’s killer in their tracks.

Lisa Squire, who developed the ‘It Does Matter’ campaign with Thames Valley Police, said her daughter was enjoying her life at university when she tried to make her way home after being refused entry to a nightclub.

“Libby never got home,” she said. “She was raped and murdered by a stranger who had an extensive history of non-contact sexual offences.

“Libby’s death was totally preventable.”

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that over 12,000 exposure and voyeurism offences were recorded annually by police in England and Wales between April 2021 and 2023.

However, this represents fewer than six per cent of the estimated total incidents, highlighting the significant underreporting of non-contact sexual offences.

A report from the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for UN Women also found that, although seven in ten women have experienced sexual harassment in a public place, 95 per cent of incidents are not reported.

Ms Squire urged all victims and witnesses to such non-contact sexual offences to ensure they speak up, adding: “Because if the police don’t know about it, they can’t do anything about it.”

Her warning comes amid growing concerns over inadequate responses to indecent exposure.

An inquiry into the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard in 2021 found her killer Wayne Couzens could have been stopped if police had better investigated eight flashing incidents linked to the serving Metropolitan Police officer. 

Meanwhile law graduate Zara Aleena’s killer Jordan McSweeney stalked at least five women before he sexually assaulted and murdered the law graduate as she walked home in Ilford, east London, in 2022.

Ms Squire called for more government funding to help forces to investigate non-contact sexual offences

“I would like to see every person that’s been a victim of a non-contact sexual offence report it,” she added. “I know that will give the police a whole lot more work but that’s something I’d always say I’m very unapologetic for. But I think there needs to be more funding from Government for the police to investigate these things.

“I think that I’d like to see the non-contact offenders prosecuted and given help, forced to go into treatment services and given punishment for their crimes.”

She acknowledged that in Libby’s case, Pawel’s offending was already spiralling, but added: “In reality, I don’t think anything would have saved her life.

“But in an ideal world, all of the non-contact offences he perpetrated would have been reported and he would have been apprehended. That wasn’t the case. He was on a trajectory - he was going to extremes and this was going to happen.”

Assistant Chief Constable Katy Barrow-Grint, Force Strategic Lead for Violence Against Women and Girls, said: “Many women and girls will have been subjected to non-contact sexual offences during their lives. This is likely to include your family and friends.

“Many will have brushed it off as something that happens to all women, or found that others have laughed at their stories, making them question how serious it is.

“We have created the ‘It Does Matter’ campaign to encourage those who have been subjected to offences such as indecent exposure and voyeurism to absolutely report to the police.

“We will investigate, and it will also provide intelligence that will help us understand patterns of offending to assist with locating those that commit such crimes. It really does matter.”