Concerns about misogyny, violence against women and girls, online radicalisation, and harmful online influence have prompted growing debate across the UK and beyond.

Governments have introduced strategies. Schools have expanded safeguarding efforts. Police, courts, charities, youth organisations, and community groups have all been asked to respond.

Yet no single institution created these challenges, and no single institution can solve them.

Part 1 of this series explored how the ecosystem shaping young people has changed, this part examines how other parts of that ecosystem are responding to growing concerns about misogyny, harmful online influence, and violence against women and girls, issues that have become increasingly difficult to ignore and can no longer be treated as peripheral.

Where prevention begins

There is another reason the boys will be boys explanation no longer holds.

The UK government itself no longer treats extreme misogyny as merely bad behaviour.

Violence Against Women and Girls is now recognised as a national threat, and Prevent — the UK’s early-intervention programme designed to identify and respond to radicalisation — has expanded its focus to include forms of online misogynistic extremism.

Teachers, doctors, social workers and other frontline professionals are increasingly trained to identify signs of online radicalisation, including grievance-based misogyny and Incel ideology. Individuals identified as being at risk can be referred into support programmes before criminal behaviour occurs.

The existence of Prevent tells us something important. The debate is no longer whether misogynistic radicalisation exists. The government has already answered that question.

But Prevent also reveals the limits of what we currently call prevention.

By the time Prevent becomes involved, a young person has often already been exposed to the content, absorbed the messaging, and begun displaying concerning behaviours. This is intervention. It is not prevention in the truest sense of the word.

True prevention happens much earlier. It happens in families, schools, youth clubs, sports teams, faith communities, and relationships with trusted adults. It happens in the spaces where beliefs can be challenged before they harden into ideology.

Prevent can intervene when warning signs appear. It cannot replace the layers of community, youth work, and support that once helped stop those warning signs emerging in the first place.

What the justice system is communicating

Neurologically, adolescence is one of the most significant periods of brain development a human goes through. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for long-term thinking, weighing consequences, and regulating emotion, isn’t fully developed until the mid-twenties.

This is not an excuse. It is a window into the problem.

A 13-year-old consuming content that tells him women are beneath him does not process that the way a 35-year-old would. He doesn’t have the same tools to interrogate it, question it, or place it in context. That matters for how we design intervention. It doesn’t remove accountability. It changes where accountability also needs to sit — with the adults, institutions, and systems that allowed the content to reach him in the first place.

But understanding the developing brain cuts both ways.

When a young person who has committed a serious sexual offence watches the system respond with no tangible consequence, something is communicated to every peer watching. Not a lesson about rehabilitation. Information about what is and isn’t treated as serious.

Every response sends a signal. Not just to the person involved, but to everyone watching.

In England and Wales, proven sexual offences committed by children rose by 47% between 2022 and 2023, followed by a further 6% rise between 2023 and 2024. That is more than a one-off spike. It is a pattern. And patterns invite questions.

Other countries are responding differently. South Korea exempts children under 14 from criminal punishment and primarily relies on probation and rehabilitation. China allows criminal responsibility from age 12 for specific severe crimes, including rape, alongside mandatory rehabilitation.

These are fundamentally different approaches. Yet both countries continue to grapple with youth sexual offending.

The lesson may not be that one system has found the answer and the other has failed. The lesson may be that accountability and rehabilitation are being asked to solve a problem that often begins years before an offence takes place.

What governments have tried — and what restriction alone can’t do

Governments around the world have moved from regulation towards restriction, and in some cases outright prohibition.

Australia passed world-first legislation in late 2024 requiring platforms to prevent under-16s from holding accounts on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and others. The burden was placed on the platforms rather than parents.

China has had digital restrictions in place for years. Under-18s face limits on gaming time, while younger users encounter restrictions on access to domestic social media platforms.

The UK has now moved in the same direction. On 15 June 2026, using secondary legislation within the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, the government announced a blanket ban on social media platforms offering services to children under 16, set to take effect in Spring 2027.

The direction of travel is clear. The question is whether restriction matches the problem.

The objective is to reduce harm to children and young people by restricting access to social media platforms until the age of 16.

The ban may form part of the response. But harm does not exist only on social media. If the goal is to reduce harm, the wider ecosystem shaping young people must also be part of the conversation.

Children continue to evade restrictions in every country that has introduced them. And the way they evade matters.

Young people quickly learn to bypass digital barriers through VPNs, age-spoofing, shared accounts, parental credentials, secret phones and private devices. The challenge is not simply that restrictions can be avoided. It’s that activity can become harder to see.

A young person who was previously consuming harmful content in a visible environment may now be doing so somewhere nobody can see. That is not necessarily safer. In some cases, it may increase risk.

And then there is the question of what replaces access if the restrictions work. One school pupil interviewed by the BBC said that without social media she would stare at a wall. That is not a trivial answer. It is an honest one.

A ban can remove access. It can’t provide belonging, purpose, trusted adults, friendship, or somewhere to go after school. Those require a different kind of investment.

The most influential voices do not rely solely on mainstream platforms. Content moves across podcasts, encrypted messaging apps, gaming platforms, private communities and peer-to-peer networks.

Restricting one route does not remove the underlying demand. Harmful content spreads because it meets a need. If that need remains unaddressed, it will always find another path in.

The ban matters. But it is not a strategy on its own.

What needs to run alongside it

A government strategy can’t raise a child.

It can’t sit at a dinner table, notice a subtle shift in a teenager’s behaviour, or recognise when something doesn’t feel quite right. The state can establish macro-policies. It cannot replace the village.

That is why restriction alone will never be enough.

The missing piece is helping parents navigate the world their children are growing up in. Not as a punishment or surveillance, but as a universal support framework.

Some will see that as state intrusion. I see it differently. Raising children in a hyper-connected, algorithmic ecosystem is a challenge facing every parent, regardless of background, income, or education. Most parents are navigating technologies, platforms, and online cultures that did not exist when they were growing up. Support should reflect that reality.

Beyond the home, investment is needed in the people and places that create belonging. Men’s groups, sports clubs, faith communities, mentorship programmes, youth organisations, and local charities doing relational work with young people over time. Adults who choose, consistently and deliberately, to be a positive influence in the lives of young people around them.

Prevent's own reviews have highlighted the importance of investing in grassroots organisations and community spaces that already hold credibility with young people. Prevent sits within the UK's counter-terrorism framework and is specifically designed to identify and support people at risk of radicalisation before criminal behaviour occurs. Even there, the evidence points back to relationships, trust, and community connection.

The research is remarkably consistent on what works. Long-term relationships with trusted adults. Support before crisis rather than after it. Peer-based approaches that reshape what belonging is attached to. Emotional literacy taught early, where naming a feeling is normal rather than a source of shame.

Small charities and community organisations are doing this work right now. Many are delivering extraordinary outcomes with limited resources and uncertain funding.

What is taught online can be untaught in the community. What is normalised online can be challenged through relationships. Algorithms can influence a young person. Relationships can transform one.

Because a government strategy cannot raise a child.

But a village still can.

Where responsibility actually lands

This isn’t a single-owner problem.

The platforms made choices. To optimise for attention and engagement rather than the developing minds consuming content at scale.

Government made choices. To reduce youth service funding, close community infrastructure, introduce restrictions, and develop strategies aimed at addressing a problem that research suggests may begin much earlier.

The justice system makes choices about accountability and the messages those choices send to every peer watching.

Prevent is doing what it was designed to do. But by the time it becomes involved, the process has often already begun.

Parents, teachers, coaches, faith leaders, youth workers, community organisations, and neighbours all have a role to play too.

This pattern didn’t emerge from one decision, one institution, one platform, or one individual. It emerged from thousands of decisions made across a system over time.

That’s also why there isn’t a single solution. Restrictions alone won’t solve it. Education alone won’t solve it. Accountability alone won’t solve it. Countries operating under very different models continue to wrestle with many of the same challenges.

Running through all of this is a simple reality: by the time a young person reaches a classroom intervention, a Prevent referral, or a courtroom, the conversation has often been happening for years.

Singapore offers an interesting contrast. While it continues to face many of the same challenges affecting young people elsewhere, its approach places significant emphasis on coordination between schools, families, communities and government agencies. Not because responsibility sits with one institution, but because responsibility is understood to be shared.

Perhaps that’s the lesson. A village isn’t simply a collection of people who care. It’s a collection of people who are connected.

Government, schools, parents and the platforms can’t do this alone.

Responsibility isn’t the problem. Most people already agree they have some.

The question is whether the people holding that responsibility are working together, or simply working alongside one another.

And what would it take to connect the thinking, communication, and collective action needed to create environments where belonging, accountability, and healthy relationships are learned before harmful narratives take hold?

Because boys are watching. Girls are watching.

They are learning what power looks like. What respect looks like. What accountability looks like. What relationships look like.

The question isn’t whether they are being taught. They are. The question is who is doing the teaching.

And whether we’re prepared to become the village again.

Thanks for reading (and listening)

As always, take what resonates and leave the rest. And it does resonates please do share.

J’K

This piece responds to themes explored in Episode 21 of the Like Me Officially podcast - Who Taught Them That? The Danger of the Adolescent Ecosystem. Examining the structural failures, digital influences, and accountability gaps shaping modern youth.

About Me

A chronic overthinker who writes and speaks about identity, responsibility, and what comes after survivor, bringing the personal and the systemic together.

• The Podcast: Host of Like Me Officially (LMO), a Substack-hosted show exploring violence, silence, and the labels that try to define us.

• The Infrastructure: Founder of The Convening, creating accountability infrastructure for complex social challenges.

No neat conclusions. Just real experiences and evolving thoughts. If you see the world differently, you belong here.

Share

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In 2015, approximately 86,500 child sexual abuse and exploitation offences were recorded in England and Wales. By 2024, that number rose to over 122,000. A 41% increase in under a decade. Half of those offences committed by children aged 10 to 17.

In 2010, reported rape stood at around 16,000 cases a year. By 2025, over 70,000. A fourfold increase in fifteen years, a trajectory mirrored by youth justice data showing proven sexual offences committed by children spiking by 47% in a single year.

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These numbers are not a behavioural accident. They are a reflection of what is being absorbed by young people. To understand why this harm is accelerating, the architecture of the ecosystem raising and influencing them has to be examined.

What the ecosystem is

Every young person grows up inside an ecosystem. A real, functioning set of environments that shape what they believe is normal, what they understand about themselves and others, and what they do when they feel threatened or unseen. Culture and community are also part of that ecosystem.

That ecosystem has layers.

The home — culture, tradition, and heritage. The school — community, culture, and peers. The community through sports clubs, faith spaces, youth organisations, peers, and even fashion. The justice system. Government policy and the infrastructure it funds or defunds. And now, the digital environment: social media platforms, their algorithms, and the influencers operating across all of them.

Each touchpoint holds some level of accountability for what it’s influencing and being absorbed, and what behaviours and attitudes are getting passed on.

When we ask why harm is rising, we have to look at the full ecosystem producing the ingredients, not just the most visible one. The layers named here are not the full picture. Culture reaches young people through film, television, music, and sport too. Each carries its own influence. Each holds its own accountability.

How the ecosystem changed

What was removed

This didn’t happen overnight and it didn’t happen by accident.

In 2010, a programme of austerity began cutting UK youth services. By the time it was done, funding had reduced by 73%. Over 4,500 youth work jobs gone. More than 760 youth centres closed. Spend per child dropped from £158 in 2010 to £37 by 2021.

For generations, youth centres were far more than places to spend time after school. They were safe, trusted community spaces where young people could belong, build friendships, develop confidence, and access support from caring adults. Sports, music, arts, homework support, trips, leadership opportunities. And just as importantly, access to youth workers — trusted adults who could offer guidance on life, education, relationships, and future opportunities.

No single service replaced them. Their role was fragmented across schools, charities, sports clubs, community organisations, and online platforms. None of those spaces offered the same combination of belonging, trusted adult relationships, personal development, and safe social space in one place.

A group of teenagers gathering at a youth centre was often seen as a sign of community. The same group gathering on a street corner could be viewed very differently. The young people hadn’t changed. The spaces available to them had.

At the same time, child poverty was rising. 4.5 million children in the UK are now living in relative low income after housing costs , 31% of all children, nearly three quarters of them in working families. Source: DWP Households Below Average Income 2023/24. That’s a structural failure. Not a personal one.

Then came the smartphone, social media, and algorithm-driven platforms deciding what gets seen. Systems designed to maximise attention, not necessarily support wellbeing

The need to belong didn’t disappear nor did the need for guidance. The search for identity, meaning and connection didn’t disappear. The search simply moved elsewhere.

The search, and who is answering it

Young people are searching. That’s not new. What’s different is what’s available to answer the search, and how little understanding many of them have of what they’re feeling or why.

Loneliness is a big issue with young people. It isn’t always the absence of people. Sometimes it’s the absence of feeling seen, understood, or safe enough to be known. The need to belong. The search for direction. The desire to matter. Every young person has those needs. They’re legitimate.

Historically, some of those needs might have been met by family, faith groups, sports clubs, youth centres, mentors, neighbours, and trusted adults. Places where young people could ask questions, make mistakes, and be guided through uncertainty.

Today, increasingly, that search begins online.

Into that search steps a system offering something powerful: an explanation. A diagnosis nobody asked for. A reason why life feels difficult. A community that understands. An identity to belong to. And eventually, a target to blame.

Messages such as: the world is set against men. Women have too much power. You’ve been lied to.

For a young person who already feels unseen, disconnected, or uncertain, these messages can land deeply. They offer certainty where there’s confusion. Belonging where there is loneliness. Answers where there are questions.

But many of these narratives don’t stop at explanation. They need a cause. Someone to blame. A target.

And once there is a target, the research shows what can follow. Not in every case. Most boys who consume this content don’t go on to commit violence. But the research is consistent: repeated exposure can change what feels normal. Attitudes shape behaviour. The more often people are presented with dehumanising ideas, the easier those ideas can become to accept.

Attitudes are where behaviour starts. Dehumanisation is the step that comes before harm.

The manosphere as part of the ecosystem

The manosphere sits inside the digital layer of the wider ecosystem. It’s one part of the story, not the whole story.

The manosphere appears formally in UK government strategy, parliamentary debate, Ofcom inquiries, and research by organisations including Movember. It has been identified as a contributing factor in discussions about violence against women and girls.

Movember describes it not as a single movement, but as an ecosystem within an ecosystem. A city with different neighbourhoods.

Most boys do not begin at the extreme end of the spectrum. They start in places that appear entirely ordinary: fitness, sport, gaming, self-improvement, confidence, relationships, business, or making money. On their own, these are not a cause for concern. What happens next is where the risk emerges.

The algorithm does not distinguish between healthy curiosity and vulnerability. It learns what keeps a person engaged and offers more of it. Gradually, across hundreds of automated recommendations, one topic becomes connected to another. Self-improvement becomes a conversation about why men are being held back. Fitness becomes a conversation about dominance. Dating advice becomes a framework where women are viewed as something to acquire rather than people to understand and respect.

Without anyone noticing, including the young person consuming it, their baseline begins to shift.

The concern isn’t one influencer, one website, or one ideology. The concern is a digital ecosystem capable of identifying unmet needs, directing attention, reinforcing beliefs, and gradually shifting norms at scale.

More than six in ten young men aged 16 to 25 in the UK regularly engage with masculinity influencer content. More than 80% of 16 and 17-year-old boys have consumed content from some of the most prominent figures in this space. More than the proportion who could name the Prime Minister.

That isn’t a fringe phenomenon. It’s part of mainstream youth culture.

But the influence of this ecosystem extends beyond boys.

The same digital systems are also being used to groom, manipulate, and exploit girls. Young people are moved from public platforms onto private and encrypted channels where exploitation becomes harder to detect. In 2024, 91% of indecent images of children identified were self-generated, either shared willingly, coerced, or obtained through manipulation.

Because ultimately, this is not only a story about boys or girls.

It’s a story about an ecosystem that has become increasingly influential in shaping how young people see themselves, see each other, and understand their place in the world.

Ecosystems do not determine behaviour, but they do help shape the conditions in which attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours develop.

Thanks for reading

As always, take what resonates and leave the rest.

J’K

This piece responds to themes explored in Episode 21 of the Like Me Officially podcast - Who Taught Them That? The Danger of the Adolescent Ecosystem. Examining the structural failures, digital influences, and accountability gaps shaping modern youth.

About Me

A chronic overthinker who writes and speaks about identity, responsibility, and what comes after survivor, bringing the personal and the systemic together.

• The Podcast: Host of Like Me Officially (LMO), a Substack-hosted show exploring violence, silence, and the labels that try to define us.

• The Infrastructure: Founder of The Convening, creating accountability infrastructure for complex social challenges.

No neat conclusions. Just real experiences and evolving thoughts. If you see the world differently, you belong here.

Share

Read my Substack Notes

“Truth doesn’t wait for consensus. It doesn’t wait until people feel comfortable. It doesn’t shrink because someone disagrees with it. Some truths are inconvenient. Some are confronting. Some force people to question the stories they’ve built their identity around. And that’s why truth often gets resisted before it gets accepted.”

Another note simply said:

“Truth doesn’t need your agreement for it to be true. That’s not arrogance. That’s reality.”

Watching the public backlash surrounding Misan Harriman unfold across British media and social platforms over the last week felt deeply concerning. Misan came under attack by sections of the British press after sharing a post questioning why the police and media appeared to give little attention to a Muslim victim reportedly targeted prior to the Golders Green attack on two Jewish men. And honestly, I found myself asking: Is it now wrong to ask questions? to highlight an error or inconsistency?

Because depending on which headline, clip, article, or social post people encountered first, audiences appeared to walk away with completely different understandings of the same events. Some saw a reckless public figure behaving irresponsibly. Others saw a man being publicly distorted and punished for speaking openly about media narratives, selective empathy, Gaza, and the rise of right-wing politics. He was accused of spreading a “Golders Green conspiracy”, despite the question raised being rooted in factual inconsistencies surrounding how the incident was reported. Multiple headlines repeatedly referred to “two men stabbed”, despite reports indicating there were three victims in total.

At the same time, sections of the media circulated out-of-context clips to suggest Misan was comparing Reform UK voters to Nazis, an interpretation he publicly denied.

If reports referenced three victims, why did raising that inconsistency appear to trigger more institutional and media outrage than the inconsistency itself?

That question matters to me because it was just that: a question. A “why.”

It wasn’t a declaration of hate, not a call for division, and not an attack on Jewish people. It was a question about media framing and selective attention. There’s a fundamental difference between questioning media framing and promoting division, or at least there should be. But in this context, those two things collapsed into one another within public discourse. And perhaps that’s part of what many people found unsettling about the reaction: the speed with which inquiry itself appeared to become suspicious.

Whether people agree with Misan or not is not actually the point I’m most concerned about. Disagreement and having different opinions is healthy, afterall we’re not monolithic society. What concerned me was how quickly framing appeared to become reality. Headlines travelled faster than context. Outrage travelled faster than investigation. Emotional reaction travelled faster than reflection.

And increasingly, that feels dangerous.

One thing that has stayed with me from my history lessons in secondary school, church sermons, and research to support marketing efforts is this: Context matters.

I was taught not to stop at the headline. Not to pull one verse from scripture without reading the chapters around it. Not to study historical events without examining who recorded them, who benefited, and what was happening at the time. Because context changes understanding and sometimes dramatically.

And yes, context can be uncomfortable and time consuming. It can challenge what we thought was true, interrupt certainty, and force us to reconsider inherited beliefs, institutional trust, political loyalties, or emotional attachments. But discomfort alone doesn’t make something untrue.

History has repeatedly shown us that truth is often resisted before it is accepted, not always because it is false, but because accepting it may threaten comfort, familiarity, identity, ideology, influence, or power.

That is partly why I find the current media climate increasingly unsettling. Not because disagreement exists, but because we seem to be losing our ability to sit with complexity long enough to examine what is actually happening before rushing to moral conclusions. What worries me is that constant exposure to fragmented information may slowly erode our capacity for deep critical thought.

I sometimes wonder what will happen to society when people lose the habit of investigating beyond the first emotional reaction. I think that time is here. Because context requires effort, and effort is becoming increasingly rare in a world designed around speed, outrage, virality, and emotional stimulation.

Not all media exists purely to inform. Some exists to sell, to provoke, to emotionally activate, and to reinforce the values, fears, or ideological leanings of its audience and backers. That doesn’t mean every journalist is dishonest or every publication is corrupt, but incentives matter, and incentives shape narratives. What also connects many of these stories is the role different media ecosystems now play in shaping not just information, but emotional direction.

Because once a public figure becomes symbolic, the headlines often stop functioning as simple reporting. They begin functioning as signals about morality, identity, danger, belonging, political allegiance, and cultural acceptability. Over time, readers are not simply being informed; they are being emotionally positioned toward outrage, suspicion, defence, fear, and ideological certainty.

That’s where the pattern becomes concerning, because the issue is no longer just whether coverage is accurate or inaccurate. It is whether modern media structures increasingly reward emotional reaction over thoughtful examination. Conflict keeps audiences engaged. Outrage drives clicks. Moral tension sustains attention. In that environment, nuance can become commercially inconvenient, especially when complexity slows emotional certainty.

And perhaps that’s why these patterns now keep repeating across politics, entertainment, publishing, universities, cultural institutions, and public life more broadly. These are not just online controversies; they are major headline stories, front pages, television debates, institutional investigations, career consequences, and years of framing battles. A few stand out because the media attention itself became part of the story:

• Jeremy Corbyn: For several years, he became the centre of one of Britain’s most sustained media framing battles. Coverage expanded beyond policy into allegations around antisemitism, patriotism, extremism, Palestine, and national identity. Over time, the discussion became less about specific political positions and more about symbolic moral acceptability within public life.

• Gary Lineker: Over several years, Lineker evolved from a football presenter into a recurring national political controversy. Headlines focused on his migration comments, BBC impartiality, Gaza commentary, Zionism debates, accusations of antisemitism, and calls for his removal. Again, the discussion moved beyond sport entirely, and the deeper tension became whether public broadcasters could still employ figures with strong political opinions in the social media age.

• Meghan Markle: Gradually evolved beyond one individual into a broader cultural narrative involving race, monarchy, victimhood, media ethics, celebrity activism, and institutional protection. Eventually, the headlines themselves became part of the story.

• J.K. Rowling: What began as comments about gender identity rapidly escalated into a global culture war around feminism, safeguarding, free speech, identity politics, and platform responsibility. The individual increasingly became symbolic of wider ideological conflict.

What connects these individuals is not whether they were right or wrong. It’s how rapidly modern media ecosystems transform human beings into symbolic cultural battlegrounds.

Once that happens, nuance often collapses. People stop engaging with full interviews, long-form discussions, context, or complexity. Instead, they consume clips instead of conversations, headlines instead of investigation, and reactions instead of original sources. Eventually, the public figure themselves almost disappears beneath the narrative constructed around them.

What also stood out to me was the public response to Misan’s coverage itself. A complaint tool reportedly created by NewsCord allegedly passed 50,000 submissions within 48 hours and later exceeded 80,000 complaints. Whether people agreed with Misan or not, that level of reaction suggests many people are no longer passively consuming headlines without questioning them.

Whether people support Misan or not, those numbers suggest a significant number of people feel increasingly uneasy about media framing, selective context, and the emotional intensity of modern outrage cycles. And that is partly why this conversation feels bigger than one individual. Because underneath the headlines sits a much deeper societal question: Can we still hold nuance in public conversation?

Can people question narratives, express discomfort, critique institutions, or raise concerns about selective empathy without immediately being reduced to caricatures? Or have we entered an era where emotional reaction matters more than honest examination?

I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I do believe this: a healthy society should encourage deeper inquiry, not punish it. It should encourage people to investigate beyond headlines, to examine context carefully, to be open to the complexity a question or truth brings up, and to think critically even when doing so feels uncomfortable.

Because history has shown us repeatedly that societies doesn’t become dangerous only when people lie. Sometimes they become dangerous when people stop questioning altogether, when headlines replace investigation, when outrage replaces reflection, and when emotional allegiance becomes more important than truth itself.

And perhaps that is where responsibility lands:

• With media institutions to report responsibly.

• With platforms not to reward distortion.

• With public figures to speak carefully.

• And with all of us as consumers of information to resist the temptation of instant certainty, this includes employess of media insititutions and social platforms and public figures. Because behind the platform, insititutions and celebrity are human beings.

To think. To question. To read deeper. To seek fuller context before rushing toward condemnation or applause.

Because truth doesn’t become more true because it trends, and it doesn’t become false because it makes people uncomfortable.

Truth should never fear examination. And neither should we.

Thanks for reading,

As always, take what resonates and leave the rest

J’K

About Me

A chronic overthinker who writes and speaks about identity, responsibility, and what comes after survivor, bringing the personal and the systemic together.

• The Podcast: Host of Like Me Officially (LMO), a Substack-hosted show exploring violence, silence, and the labels that try to define us.

• The Infrastructure: Founder of The Convening, creating accountability infrastructure for complex social challenges.

No neat conclusions. Just real experiences and evolving thoughts. If you see the world differently, you belong here.

Share

Read my Substack Notes

Thanks for reading Where Responsibility Lands ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

On March 27, 2026, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) gave us the actual receipt. Their report, The Economic Consequences of Gender-Based Violence, reveals a permanent 12% drop in earnings for survivors.

This isn’t a “rough patch.” It’s “career scarring.” While the commercial side of IWD is busy talking about “giving,” the system is busy taking 12% of the capacity, the autonomy, and the future earnings of those with lived experience.

The Findings: A Forensic Audit of the Theft

The IFS report isn’t just a collection of stats; it’s a forensic audit of how the system fails. The data shows that survivors are 6.7 percentage points more likely to end up in the bottom 20% of earners for the rest of their lives.

This isn’t just about losing a job in the moment. It’s about the long-term damage to “labour market attachment.” Survivors are often forced into lower-paid, “safe” roles just to stay under the radar or manage their safety. And let’s be clear: this “Capacity Tax” isn’t limited to abuse. If you’re navigating a chronic illness or the relentless, unacknowledged load of being a carer, you’re paying a similar price. You’re operating at a deficit because the system wasn’t built to hold your weight.

The Missing ‘P’ in the National Emergency

The VAWG National Emergency is no longer a warning; it’s a reality. We saw 70,000 reported offenses in 2024/25 alone. The government’s current strategy is built on a “4P” model: Prepare, Prevent, Protect, and Pursue. It sounds comprehensive on a slide deck. But there’s a Fifth P missing: Professional Autonomy.

If the strategy doesn’t protect the paycheck, it isn’t protecting the person. We’re asking people to report crimes while the system allows their professional standing to be dismantled. If the Commitment Gap in our workplaces isn’t fixed, we aren’t just looking at a “social issue”—we’re looking at an economic death spiral for 70,000 people a year.

Stop Demanding the Bridge

For too long, those with lived experience have been the ones “giving” to make the system “gain.” Organisations and campaigns should stop asking, directing, and demanding that individuals continue being the bridge for a broken strategy.

Typically, they do the bridging just to survive in the workplace so they can survive outside too.

When a workplace has a policy that doesn’t work, the employee is the one who stretches to fill the gap. When HR doesn’t have a code for “Safe Leave,” holiday time is sacrificed to stay safe. When technical sabotage happens—when a phone is smashed or a laptop is “lost” the survivor is the one who pays for the replacement and then works twice as hard to hide the “glitch” so they don’t look “unprofessional.”

This isn’t resilience; it’s a structural failure being masked by individual exhaustion. Those with lived experience are the bridge between a faulty strategy and a functional office, and that bridge is collapsing under the weight of a 12% Survivor Tax that the system refuses to acknowledge.

The 70% Exercise: Reclaiming the Margin

In my workout practice Flow 60 we are encouraged to use the 70% of our energy and commitmment for each practice. To grow in a career, a person needs to be operating at about 70% of their capacity. That 30% margin is where the magic happens, the innovation, the leadership, the rest.

But look at the math for someone with lived experience:

1. Start at 100%.

2. Subtract the 12% Survivor Tax (The literal income and opportunity hit).

3. Subtract the 20% Masking Tax (The cost of “fixing your face” so the office thinks you’re “fine”).

4. That leaves 68%—and that’s before the actual job has even started.

This isn’t “underperformance.” It’s being overcharged by a system that expects people to Give to Gain while it drains their margin.

Where the Responsibility Lands

The stretching has to stop. In my paper, The Commitment Gap: Bridging the Distance Between Intent and Infrastructure, I argue that most organisations are currently operating on “borrowed capacity.” They commit to supporting those with lived experience, but they don’t build the Accountability Infrastructure to make it possible.

• The State needs to mandate Professional Autonomy as the 5th P.

• Employers need to close the Commitment Gap with actual technical protocols and financial discretion.

• The Board needs to realize that 1 in 4 of their staff is paying this tax. That’s a massive drain on the human reserve.

A Different Kind of Accountability

The Convening is not a consultancy. It’s not a governance framework. It is not another strategy.

It’s accountability infrastructure designed and facilitated for organisations that are serious about delivering on what they have committed to, and honest enough to know they need independent support to do it.

It’s commissioned to serve the commitment. Not the organisations within it.

If you are working across multiple organisations toward a shared social commitment and you can feel the drift beginning.

Until next time.

Read: The economic consequences of gender-based violence report

Listen: EP13. The 12% Survivor Tax: Reclaiming Autonomy from the “Double Life

J'K Frederick

EP13. The 12% Survivor Tax: Reclaiming Autonomy from the "Double Life

TL;DR: On March 26, 2026, the IFS published a landmark report revealing a 12% permanent income drop for survivors of domestic abuse. This isn’t just a statistic; it’s a forensic audit of Career Scarring and the cost of “Performing Fine” in a system that wasn’t built for us…

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5 months ago · J'K

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Six major commitments. Across six different departments. Each one requires multiple organisations to deliver together.

So here is the question I’m asking. What happens next?

The Morning After

The strategy gets announced. The campaign lands. The commitment gets made.

There is a buzz. Congratulatory emails. A sense that something important has shifted.

A week later, the buzz is gone. And the commitment. The anchor and throughline of everything, gets set aside. Until a date unknown.

This is not a failure of ambition. It’s not a lack of goodwill. It’s what happens when the planning stops at publication, and nobody has asked the harder question.

What happens next? Who owns this? Who leads when it gets difficult? What happens when multiple organisations share responsibility and none of them are fully in charge?

Why It Happens

Strategies are written to be published. The effort, the consultation, the internal negotiation, all of it points toward the moment of release.

But delivery is a different kind of work. It requires someone to own the timeline. Someone to track what was promised. Someone to ask the uncomfortable questions when the momentum starts to fade.

That someone is rarely named in the strategy itself.

And so when the dust settles, the questions that should have been answered before publication, who owns this? where does the budget sit? who has the authority to convene the right people? remain unanswered.

The urgency of the announcement gives way to the reality of delivery. And the gap opens.

What the Evidence Shows

This is not a new observation. The National Audit Office has consistently found that where delivery involves multiple organisations with different priorities, accountability gaps are among the most significant risks to commitments being fulfilled.

Where responsibility is shared, and nobody is clearly in charge, progress slows. Ownership blurs. Commitments get reduced to possibles from intentions.

The gap is documented. The pattern is known. And yet it keeps happening.

The Alternative

It doesn’t have to be this way.

The gap between commitment and delivery is not inevitable. It is a design problem. And design problems have solutions.

What is required is accountability infrastructure, independent of any single organisation, commissioned to serve the commitment rather than the institutions involved.

That means someone in the room whose job is not to protect one organisation’s reputation or priorities but to ask, on behalf of the commitment itself: are we doing what we said we would do?

It means structured spaces where the organisations sharing responsibility get specific — not about intentions, but about actions. Not about what they hope to achieve, but about what they are committing to do by when.

It means tracking that is transparent. Questions that get asked even when they are uncomfortable. And an interruption to the drift that usually happens quietly between reporting cycles.

A Different Kind of Accountability

The Convening is not a consultancy. It is not a governance framework. It is not another strategy.

It is accountability infrastructure designed and facilitated for organisations that are serious about delivering on what they have committed to, and honest enough to know they need independent support to do it.

It is commissioned to serve the commitment. Not the organisations within it.

If you are working across multiple organisations toward a shared social commitment —and you can feel the drift beginning. Let’s talk in the comments

Until next time.

J’K

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They’re right to be worried. The National Audit Office’s (NAO) review of the previous strategy identified a specific reason for failure weak coordination arrangements meant the government couldn’t monitor progress or hold partners accountable. The 2025 strategy makes the same coordination promises without building the infrastructure to deliver them.

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This isn’t pessimism. It’s pattern recognition.

The 2021 strategy’s coordination failure

The numbers tell the story. The 2021 VAWG strategy delivered 78% of its commitments, leaving 22% unaccomplished. £22 million allocated for delivery went unspent. During the strategy period, reported rape offences didn’t decrease—they increased.

The NAO didn’t attribute this to a lack of effort or resources. They pointed to structural coordination failure: no clear responsibility for who does what, no tracking mechanism for shared commitments, no process for course-correction when delivery stalled.

When responsibility is shared across multiple organisations with no coordination infrastructure, it often becomes no one’s responsibility in practice.

What coordination failure looks like in practice

Consider a survivor reporting sexual violence. She contacts the police, who take a statement and advise her not to discuss the case while it’s under investigation. She needs mental health support, but NHS waiting lists span 6-9 months and IAPT services won’t see her until the criminal case concludes. She requires time off work, but HR needs documentation police can’t provide during an active investigation. She reaches out to a sexual violence support service, only to be referred elsewhere when their crisis advocacy is full.

Four months later: the police investigation has stalled, mental health support remains unavailable, she’s lost income or her job, and she’s retold her trauma to six different organisations that aren’t communicating with each other.

This isn’t a hypothetical scenario. It’s the documented pattern across hundreds of thousands of survivor experiences annually the exact coordination failure the NAO identified in their 2021 strategy review.

The 2025 strategy repeats the same structure

The new strategy states: “We will strengthen coordination across government and partners.”

What it doesn’t include:

• A designated coordination body

• A schedule for ongoing cross-sector convenings

• Tracking mechanisms for shared commitments

• Consequences when responsibility drifts between organisations

These aren’t minor omissions. Research from the Institute for Government shows only 40% of major government programmes deliver successfully, with coordination failure as the primary factor. The UK’s Major Projects Authority found programmes with formal coordination mechanisms are 2.7 times more likely to deliver on time and on budget.

The evidence is clear: strategies involving multiple stakeholders fail without a coordination infrastructure. The 2025 VAWG strategy lacks that infrastructure.

What accountability infrastructure actually requires

An effective coordination infrastructure has three core components:

Designated coordination spaces. Regular, structured convenings bring decision-holders together not for networking, but for surfacing coordination gaps and clarifying responsibility. When DfE guidance contradicts police training on consent education, or survivors retell trauma six times because services don’t coordinate, these spaces force the question: who owns fixing this, and by when?

Shared commitment tracking. A live tracker showing what each organisation committed to, progress against those commitments, barriers to delivery, and dependencies between organisations. This makes invisible coordination failures visible before they appear in three-year reviews.

Consequence through visibility. When commitments are shared across dozens of organisations, it’s easy to assume someone else is handling coordination. Transparency creates accountability progress becomes visible to peers and stakeholders, changing behaviour without requiring formal sanctions.

These mechanisms aren’t theoretical. They’re how successful multi-stakeholder coordination works in other contexts.

Why does this infrastructure not exist

Three factors prevent accountability infrastructure from being built:

Cost. Quarterly convenings, independent facilitation, tracking systems, and staff time require investment. The 2025 strategy allocates £20 million for “challenging harmful attitudes” but no specific budget for coordination infrastructure. Governments prefer funding programmes with measurable outputs over accountability mechanisms with outcomes that emerge over time.

Political discomfort. Building coordination infrastructure requires acknowledging previous approaches failed. Saying “we’re strengthening coordination” is easier than saying “we’re establishing quarterly convenings with public tracking because the 2021 strategy’s coordination failed.”

Unwanted visibility. Accountability infrastructure makes it obvious which organisations are delivering and which aren’t. The cover of collective responsibility, ”we all failed”, is more comfortable than “we specifically failed at X while others delivered Y.”

The accountability gap persists not because solutions don’t exist, but because implementing them requires institutional courage.

The cost of repeating this pattern

If the 2025 strategy succeeds, 35,000 fewer people annually will experience violence by 2034.

If it fails as the 2021 strategy did, annual rape offences could rise from 70,000 to 140,000 meaning 70,000 more people will experience the same coordination failures the NAO documented: retelling trauma to multiple uncoordinated services, falling through gaps between agencies, navigating fragmentation that’s persisted for decades.

That’s not an abstract policy outcome. That’s 70,000 real people paying the price of institutional coordination failure.

Making ignorance impossible as an excuse

The 2025 VAWG strategy will be reviewed in 2027. The coordination pattern will either be broken or it will continue.

Individual experiences create empathy. But patterns create accountability. When one survivor reports coordination failure, it’s tragic. When hundreds of thousands report the same failures, it’s structural and the NAO has confirmed it.

Coordination infrastructure is buildable. The evidence for what works exists. The question is whether it gets built before the 2027 review confirms the strategy is failing for the same reason the 2021 strategy did.

If it fails and someone asks why, the answer won’t be “we didn’t know what was needed.”

It will be “we knew, and we chose not to build it.”

That’s what accountability actually means.

This article expands on themes from Episode 8 of the Like Me Officially podcast.

J'K Frederick

EP 8. Accountability Matters: Who Pays When Systems Don’t?

On December 18, 2025, the UK published its Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy. A 10-year commitment to halve violence. Within hours, I saw the same pattern: applause, promises, and a missing piece I know too well, coordination infrastructure…

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7 months ago · 1 like · J'K

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Halving Violence Isn’t Enough: What the UK’s VAWG Strategy Must Confront

In 2025, the UK government published Freedom from Violence and Abuse: A Cross-Government Strategy — its national plan to tackle violence against women and girls and to halve it within a decade. You can read the full strategy here:

On the surface, the strategy is bold. It signals commitment and suggests the government is prepared to take control of an issue it has now formally framed as a national emergency.

The headline ambition is clear: to halve violence against women and girls within ten years.

However, ambition only matters when it’s tested against reality.

As we move through 2026, the question is no longer whether the strategy sounds serious, but is it capable of driving change at the scale the numbers demand.

Halving violence sounds bold until you look at the numbers

In 2010, reported rape in England and Wales stood at around 16,000 cases a year. By 2025, that figure had risen to more than 70,000 annually. This is an epidemic.

Even if the government meets its stated aim and successfully halves current levels of violence, tens of thousands of women and girls would still be harmed every year. Those levels would remain more than double what they were a decade and a half ago.

Halving violence would represent progress. It would not represent resolution.

When harm has increased fourfold, incremental improvement cannot be the ceiling. The scale of the response must match the scale of the problem.

Incremental reform cannot meet exponential harm

When violence escalates so sharply, the response cannot be limited to revised language, refreshed strategies, or isolated pilot programmes.

What is required is institutional refurbishment. This means removing outdated policies that no longer protect. It means confronting internal cultures that normalise disbelief or minimise harm. It means replacing inherited practices with systems that are modern, trauma-informed, and fit for purpose. It also means enforcing standards consistently rather than relying on goodwill or voluntary compliance.

Systems designed in disbelief cannot be expected to deliver justice. Without deep internal change, halving violence remains an aspiration rather than an achievable outcome.

What is genuinely new in this strategy

It’s important to acknowledge what has shifted.

This strategy moves the burden away from survivors and places it more clearly on perpetrators. It explicitly names men and boys as a prevention priority. It frames violence as preventable rather than inevitable. It positions violence against women and girls as a cross-government issue spanning policing, education, health, local authorities, and the criminal justice system.

These shifts matter. Language matters. Direction matters.

But direction without enforcement does not change outcomes.

Responsibility is named but consequences remain unclear

While perpetrators, men, and boys are now clearly identified, accountability remains poorly defined.

Key questions still lack clear answers. Who is accountable when institutions fail to improve? What happens when safeguarding fails in schools? What happens when prevention programmes are underfunded or deprioritised? What happens if the ten-year target is missed?

At present, responsibility is framed largely as moral rather than enforceable. Moral responsibility alone does not change behaviour. Systems change when accountability carries consequence.

Cross-government vision doesn’t yet mean integrated delivery

The strategy sets out a cross-government vision that includes policing, education, health, local authorities, and criminal justice. This was also an ambition of the previous strategy.

Budgets remain siloed. Oversight remains fragmented. When outcomes are not met, responsibility becomes diffuse.

When everyone owns the vision but no one owns the outcome, failure becomes familiar. Coordination is not integration, and integration is what lasting change requires.

Negligence must be named and owned

The institutions at the centre of this strategy; policing, education, health, local authorities, and the criminal justice system must lead. But leadership requires honesty.

These institutions have not only failed to prevent harm; in many cases they have contributed to ongoing harm towards women and girls. That reality must now be owned.

Without acknowledging how institutional practices have perpetuated risk, meaningful reform cannot begin. Accountability begins with truth.

Will institutions be forced to clean house?

This strategy will only succeed if it compels institutions to do more than signal ambition.

Outdated policies must be removed. Harmful cultures must be confronted. Leadership must be held to account. New systems must be built that reflect the realities women and girls face today.

We know this level of change does not require a decade to begin. In recent years, Burkina Faso has demonstrated what decisive leadership and internal restructuring can look like when urgency is genuine, with significant reforms initiated in under twenty-four months.

The point is not comparison for its own sake. It is evidence that speed is possible when political will exists.

As we move through 2026, the question becomes unavoidable. Is violence against women and girls truly being treated as an urgent national emergency, or has momentum been driven largely by underfunded charities and overstretched independent workers carrying responsibility beyond their remit?

The big five must lead but they cannot act alone

Leadership must start with the core institutions, but it cannot end there.

If violence is to be reduced at the scale required, industry and wider sectors must be brought fully into the work of change. Workplaces, media, technology, sport, faith spaces, housing, transport, and civil society all shape norms and behaviours. None of these spaces are neutral.

Radical change cannot sit solely within statutory systems while the rest of society continues unchanged.

Shared responsibility without diluted accountability

This is not about spreading blame. It is about shared responsibility with clear leadership.

Core institutions must set standards, model cultural change, and enforce accountability. Industry and other sectors must align with those standards, examine their own cultures and policies, challenge harmful norms internally, and actively participate in prevention and repair.

Everyone has a role to play. But leadership, power, and accountability must remain clearly located.

Why this moment matters even more now in 2026

Violence against women and girls has not risen in isolation. It has grown within systems and cultures that allowed it to persist.

The response must therefore be just as expansive.

Halving violence cannot be the ceiling when the baseline has shifted so dramatically. Without enforceable accountability, institutional courage, and collective action beyond government, we risk repeating the same cycle with improved language and similar outcomes.

Progress is not about saying the right things. It is about building systems that finally do what they were meant to do.