I refer to the article (Herald and Post, March 20) headlined ‘Non-fatal stranglings’, in relation to 40,000 recorded cases of domestic abuse of women in Hampshire, causing severe damage to the physical and mental health of victims including suicide.

Your article, however, fails to mention the criminal offence of non-fatal suffocation, which is part of the same legislation as non-fatal strangulation to give it the correct legal title. The law states that both are criminal acts in themselves, punishable by five years imprisonment, in addition to any other sexual violence.

Suffocation in the legislation is defined as the offender intentionally affecting the victim’s ability to breath (such as using a hand or a gag).

Both strangulation and suffocation are extremely dangerous to the victim and can result in serious injury or death, and lasting psychological damage. Unfortunately, these acts have been glamourised in certain ‘grey’ popular literature for profit, normalised in extreme online porn, and endorsed by misogynistic ‘influencers’.

As a result teenage boys and younger men are increasingly copying these behaviours, often on the first date, or in other initial intimate settings. Girls and women may feel pressurised to allow strangulation and suffocation to avoid being seen as untrendy or boring. This is not consensual, as part of a loving and equal relationship, but the exact opposite.

Parents of young men, and especially fathers, must ensure that they are brought up decently to respect girls and women, and local schools must be mandated to address the issue of sexual violence head on.

Young men (and older ones) need to be informed bluntly of the most severe consequences if they offend, and it won’t necessarily just be the police who will take them to task. They need to imagine how they would feel if the victim was their sister, mother or daughter - and it is always someone’s sister, mother, or daughter.

There is an online open sewer running through our homes and our young people’s lives via smartphones and laptops, enriching the makers of, and platforms for, extreme porn.

A generation of women haters are being trained right under our noses – and it may be too late already judging by the appalling crimes carried out in recent years. The imports of Incel culture, and women being seen as ‘property’, need to be returned to the misogynist cesspit which has prospered in the USA of recent times.

Local MPs - Messrs Stafford, Hunt and Hinds be warned – we will remember what you do, and crucially what you don’t do as national MPs, on this issue.

Finally, this is a problem caused by men and must be sorted by men, not their victims - our daughters and granddaughters. There can be no ducking of, or hiding from the issue anymore, just because it is too upsetting or too awful to contemplate. Silence is complicity.

If the the criminal justice system continues to fail to tackle violence against women, victims and supporters will be left with no alternative but to pursue their own justice for the offenders.

If you, or someone you know, has suffered sexual violence, there is excellent and confidential support available locally from Rape & Sexual Abuse Support Centre (RASASC), as well as nationally from Rape Crisis. Their contact details are easily available online with secure platforms and emergency exit buttons. They can also advise on legal options.

Richard Gunner

Byworth Road

Farnham

In your article of April 3, your headline is 'Beacon Hill residents demand 20mph limits' is somewhat misleading.

The article gives the total number voting as 338, this is only some 5 percent of residents of the area according to the latest census, hardly an overwhelming support, demand or indeed a high response rate as claimed by Cllr Spence (whom I note does not even live in the village).

Whilst I can understand the 20 mph outside the school in Beacon Hill, maybe some enforcement of the current 30 mph limit would be preferable. I wonder what the 95 percent who didn't vote will think of noisy and damaging speed humps.

Douglas Streatfield

Hindhead

Last week’s column (Herald, April 3) from our increasingly discombobulated MP makes the frankly ludicrous assertion that the recent decreases in NHS waiting lists should be attributed to the last Tory government.

This is breathtaking nonsense.

He demands credit for the fact that waiting lists have reduced for five consecutive months under Labour but entirely fails to mention the fact that they reached record levels under his government’s watch.

Few people need reminding that during the Tories stint in office, the NHS elective waiting list in England increased from approximately 2.3 million to around 7.6 million cases. In other words, it had more than tripled!

His party failed to address junior doctors’ low pay and poor conditions, something Wes Streeting sorted immediately. His party failed to deliver the new hospitals that they promised and, as it turned out, hadn’t even budgeted for. And, he roundly criticised the extra investment that Labour has made to provide new appointments in the evenings and weekends to cut the backlogs.

So, his claim is a new low in post-truth politics. Is it any wonder that people have lost faith in politicians?

Nick Williams

Stoke Hills

Farnham

It is a scandal that Petersfield Town Council blithely carries on with its vanity town hall redevelopment project, now projected to cost over £20 million, yet cannot find the money to support local charities such as Citizens Advice and PeCan.

The town does not want the proposed redevelopment project, as shown by a recent petition, where 98 percent of those questioned did not support it.

The council should have the guts to call a halt and work through a more affordable option to tackle the critical areas needing remedial work.

A fine week-long music festival has been just held in the town hall, to great acclaim, so why spend millions to create ‘the finest venue in the south of England’?

No, rather keep our local charities solvent, the town demands it!

David Petche

Petersfield