Libby Squire's mother leads campaign urging victims to report flashers

The mother of murdered student Libby Squire has backed a new campaign calling for women to report flashers and voyeurs - as police warned how 'non-sexual contact' offenders go on to commit horrific violent crimes.

Lisa Squire spoke out as Thames Valley Police launched a new scheme called 'It Does Matter', with figures revealing 95 per cent of such crimes go unreported.

Her daughter Libby, 21, was studying at the University of Hull when she was raped and murdered in the early hours of February 1, 2019, following a night out in the city.

Polish butcher Pawel Relowicz, who dumped tragic Libby's body in the River Hull after raping her on a playing field, was jailed for life in February 2021 - given a minimum of 27 years behind bars.

Before he killed her, Relowicz had been carrying out a campaign of chilling, sexually motivated crimes in the student area of Hull - including peering through windows to watch young women, breaking into their homes to steal intimate items and masturbating in the street.

Ms Squire, from Buckinghamshire, told today how a man had exposed himself in public to Libby just three months before her death.

She told ITV's Good Morning Britain she did not know whether this was Relowicz but the incident had left her daughter feeling 'furious'.

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She also spoke of her regret at not urging Libby to report the matter to police at the time - but would now take a different approach and urged others to raise the alert in similar situations.

Ms Squire said of Relowicz: 'He was committing voyeurism, committing sex acts in public – he was following girls home, exposing himself to girls as they were walking by.

'Some of his crimes were reported and the police did investigate it but they didn't know who he was.

'I'm not sure if it was him, but around about November time Libby rang me and said a man had exposed himself to her on her way home and she was absolutely furious.

'I talked her down and I didn't tell her to go and report it to the police because I didn't know better then.

'She was just like, "I can't believe how disgusting that person is".

'I completely understand why people aren't aware that these things should be reported, because I wasn't aware until I've been forced into this world, and so now I would do differently.'

Libby, a philosophy student at Hull University, had been out with friends when the killer chanced on her three months later.

She caught a taxi home, which dropped her outside her house, but she did not go inside before wandering in the wrong direction and laid down in the snow.

CCTV footage showed Libby, disoriented and possibly hypothermic, being ushered into a silver Vauxhall Astra which belonged to Relowicz, who lived half a mile from her house.

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Her body was found seven weeks later in the Humber Estuary. The married father-of-two was jailed for a minimum of 27 years at Sheffield Crown Court in February 2021. 

In the hours after raping and murdering her, he returned home and watched pornography before going out again in apparent search of another victim.

Thames Valley Police, in launching the new campaign highlighted Libby's murder as well as those of Sarah Everard and Zara Aleena - all of whom were killed by men with histories of non-contact sexual offending.

Ms Everard, 33, was raped and killed by depraved Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens, who was off duty, as she walked home in south London on March 3, 2021.

It later emerged that Kent Police failed to arrest the Scotland Yard officer when he was reported for flashing a pedestrian back in 2015.

After being jailed for life with a whole life order in September 2021 for Ms Everard's murder, Couzens last year pleaded guilty to three incidents of indecent exposure that took place in Kent in 2020 and 2021.

These included exposing himself to a woman in a McDonald's branch just three days before he killed Ms Everard. 

Jordan McSweeney, a sexual predator with 28 previous convictions, murdered law graduate Ms Aleena, 35, as she walked home from a night out in Ilford, east London, in June 2022.

McSweeney was handed a life sentence with a minimum term of 38 years at the Old Bailey in December 2022 after admitting Ms Aleena's murder and sexual assault.

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In November 2023, he won a Court of Appeal bid to reduce the minimum term of his life sentence, which was changed to 33 years.

Thames Valley Police said the murders showed the risks posed by sexual offenders whose earlier crimes often go uninvestigated.

Office for National Statistic figures last year showed more than 12,000 exposure and voyeurism offences were recorded by police in England and Wales since April 2021.

But these are thought to account for only six per cent of estimated total incidents.

And a report by the All Party Parliamentary Group for UN Women found 71 per cent of women had experienced harassment in a public space but 95 per cent of incidents were not reported to police.

Thames Valley Police assistant chief constable Katy Barrow-Grint urged victims of non-contact sexual offences to call 999 or 101 or report the crimes online.

She said: 'It really does matter when you’re a victim of upskirting or flashing or indecent exposure.

'We know that many, many women have been victims but very few actually report to police. This campaign is all about trying to encourage victims to tell us.

'The first thing is to make sure you're safe and you've managed to get away.

'If it’s just happened then do please call 999 and you will get that immediate response where you are, but you can also report it on 101 if it's a little bit later on.

'And you can also now report online, so if you don't feel you want to talk to somebody, you don't want to talk to police at that moment in time, then do please fill the forms in.'