By Beth Rigby, political editor
When it comes to prominent women in public life, it doesn't get much more high profile than being one of 222 female MPs, serving in the cabinet or on the opposition front bench.
Women like Jess Phillips, Caroline Nokes, Dr Rosena Allin-Khan and Fay Jones are role models, campaigners and leaders. They are also women who have - like the vast majority of all women - experienced sexual harassment, assault or abuse.
Caroline Nokes, former cabinet minister and now chair of the equalities select committee, was groped as an 11-year-old schoolgirl by a group of men, and claims she was touched inappropriately by Stanley Johnson - the prime minister's father and former Conservative MEP - when she was in her early 30s. Mr Johnson said in response: "I have no recollection of Caroline Nokes at all. I have no response."
Jess Phillips, a shadow minister and a former Labour leadership contender, was assaulted at a party by a former boss.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, shadow cabinet minister and A&E doctor, was harassed by a senior medic when she was a junior doctor.
Fay Jones was flashed as a 17-year-old girl.
Their stories are all different, but there is a common thread through all of this: profile and power in adult life doesn't preclude you from sexual harassment, assault or abuse.
That was part of the purpose of getting these authoritative, public, high-profile women together to talk about their own experiences: to show other women that no-one is immune to sexual harassment; that women can take strength from sharing experiences, and that one woman's courage to speak out might give others the courage to do so too.
But the other purpose of the conversation was to talk to these women in their role as lawmakers, to hear what can be done to deal with the scourge of violence against women and girls.
Sarah Everard's murder
The event that lit the touchpaper for everything from this conversation, to the re-opening of the government's consultation on violence against women and girls, to the renewed focus on the abysmal record on sexual assault convictions, was the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard.
A young woman who was just walking home was killed at the hands of a serving police officer. It provoked a national outpouring of grief and anger. The question - the hope - is whether the legacy of Sarah Everard's tragic death can become a turning point.
On this the MPs have mixed views, which I will come back to, but where they are united is the determination to use their positions in Westminster to make sure violence against women and girls is made a political priority, and to inspire women, campaigners and fellow lawmakers to bring about change.
All these MPs support attempts to make sexual harassment a crime in upcoming legislation. Fay Jones is also demanding that cyber flashing - where people send others unsolicited sexually explicit images - is also made a crime.
Jess Phillips, who before becoming an MP worked in a women's refuge, said the case resonated with so many women because it was "the story of every single woman".
"We had all picked up our phones to ring our mates or boyfriend on the way home. We had all picked a specific route because it was a busy road," reflected Ms Phillips.
"This is a universal experience that not enough has ever been done about and women have been expected for too long just to take the burden of it."
Caroline Nokes said the case made her feel angry that the burden is always put on to women.
"You, as the woman, have to take precautions so you're not a victim of male violence," she said. "What really angers me is that we still aren't addressing, in my view, adequately, the cultures underpinning this."
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan told me she had a "sense of pure panic" for her two little girls.
"What has become so normal for me and my friends, was the world they were growing into," she said.
"The Sarah Everard case was a real moment in history, where it caused so many women to reflect on their own experiences and say, 'hold on a minute, this isn't normal, and this is certainly not okay'."
Dr Allin-Khan said she signed her six-year old and eight-year-old to Muay Thai MMA classes the week Sarah Everard went missing.
"That was how bleak I felt about their future. It worried me so much I actually lost sleep."
And she has seen it for real on the A&E wards, where she still does shifts at the weekend as a doctor.
"I do night shifts. I see those girls coming in...cowering in the cubicle because something bad has happened to one of them. And it puts the fear of God in me...no one is immune."
'There was no talk of recording it as a crime; there was no talk of phoning the police'
Fay Jones
Fay Jones, who was elected in 2019, recounted her experience of being flashed when she was a 17-year-old girl.
She was walking towards a restaurant in her hometown of Cardiff to pick up her dad, Gwilym Jones, who at the time was a Conservative MP.
She met her father and didn't say a word.
"I felt so nervous about telling him, I just felt so ashamed," Ms Jones recalls. "Did I do something to bring it on, what did I do to cause that? And I just didn't know how to tell my dad because I felt responsible, that it was something I'd done."
Ms Jones did eventually tell her mum, and then her dad.
"When I did tell them, there was no talk of recording it as a crime; there was no talk of phoning the police or anything like that, because you don't make a fuss. I think if we have learned anything over the last couple of years, it's you've got to make a fuss."
'It lives with me to this day, that men felt empowered to literally grab a school child'
Caroline Nokes
Caroline Nokes also suffered a very disturbing experience as a child. On a trip to London Zoo, dressed in school uniform, she recalls being grabbed by a group of men.
"[They] just grabbed hold of me and groped me, and the thing lasted no more than two or three seconds, and I was 11 years-old and it lives with me to this day, that men felt empowered to literally grab a school child as she passed, hands everywhere, and then gone."
Ms Nokes also recounts an incident in her early 30s, when she claims she was touched inappropriately by Stanley Johnson, the prime minister's father who was at the time a former Conservative MEP and parliamentary candidate.
She says it was in 2003, ahead of the 2005 election at Conservative Party conference in Blackpool. She says as she was checking into her hotel, she remembers Mr Johnson "smacking me on the backside about as hard as he could and going: 'Oh Romsey [where Ms Nokes was standing as a candidate], you've got a lovely seat.'"
"I didn't do anything," said Ms Nokes. "And I feel ashamed by that."
"I would have been in my early 30s, so old enough to call it out...so I now regard it as my duty, and absolute duty, to call it out wherever you see it. To be the noisy, aggravating, aggressive woman in the room, because if I'm not prepared to do that, then my daughter won't be prepared to do that, and Rosena's daughters, who are much littler, won't be prepared to do that. And you get to a point where you go 'up with this, I will not put'."
Sky News approached Mr Johnson for comment in relation to the allegation. He said: "I have no recollection of Caroline Nokes at all. I have no response. Hey ho. Good luck and thanks."
'He took me aside into a room, shut the door, and said 'I can ruin your whole career''
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan
A doctor before becoming an MP in 2016, Dr Allin-Khan told me of her experience as a young medic being harassed by a more senior colleague.
"It was just very inappropriate and he wanted to have conversations with me that I wasn't keen to have, so then started some ritual humiliation at work publicly. And then one day at the end of my shift he took me aside into a room, shut the door and said: 'I can ruin your whole career.'"
"I remember going home and I thought to myself, 'in front of him, I'm not going to cry because that's what you want. You want me to cry.' The moment I left work, I burst into tears, I was afraid to go back in."
But Dr Allin-Khan did go back in and reported him. It emerged this senior medic had done this systematically every six months to a different female junior doctor.
"There are so many industries where you go in bright, you think your future is ahead of you. You're excited. Just like being in parliament, just like being in so many other industries. And then someone just crushes you and makes you feel that if you speak out, your career's over, so many women don't."
Dr Allin-Khan also recalled a horrible story as a teenager when a man assaulted her while cutting her hair.
"I was in my late teens. And he had the scissors and he was doing the front and his hands were touching my breasts while he was cutting my hair. And I remember thinking, 'this is really weird. Why does he need to be rubbing my chest while he's cutting my hair?'
"But I didn't feel like I could say anything. I felt a bit paralysed in that moment, stuck in my own head thinking, 'should I say something? Will he be offended? Is this okay?' It's not okay. It's only now, like decades later that I'm thinking, 'God almighty', like that could happen to anyone, that could happen to my kids, and I'd want them to shout from the rooftops: 'Don't touch me.'"
'I woke up at a party with the boss of where I worked literally pulling my trousers down'
Jess Phillips
Ms Phillips, a prominent campaigner against domestic abuse and violence against women, said she "can't remember the amount of times I've been sexually assaulted in my life in one way or another".
"I remember somebody flashing me as I was walking into the girls' school. There's a park next to the drive you had to walk up and men would frequently just stand there with their trousers around their ankles. People would pull up to you in cars masturbating and like, call you over to ask you for directions. So you'd go over and they'd be masturbating. This is not something that is unusual or uncommon."
She also talks about being assaulted by a former boss.
"I was working in a pub and I was going out drinking with all the people afterwards and I woke up at a party with the boss of where I worked literally pulling my trousers down."
She said another man came into the room and pulled her boss off her, and the next day she went back into work as if nothing had happened.
"I've never once called the police about any single one of my experiences or anything that's ever happened to me."
A turning point?
Two of the MPs are Conservatives, two are Labour, but what all four women want to do is improve the safety of women on our streets: to make sexual harassment a crime, and to use the tragic case of Sarah Everard as a force for change - a moment in which the calls of those thousands of women who marched in the streets, and the 180,000 who submitted evidence to the Violence Against Women and Girls consultation, are answered.
But the views of the MPs are mixed. Ms Phillips, a veteran campaigner on the issue, looked visibly upset when she talked about her view of the situation.
"There's too many women being abused. Just too many. And that level of volume - no government has ever been able to handle it."
She also talked about the appalling rape conviction statistics in the wake of the prime minister's admission to Sky News in October that he could not look a victim in the eye and have confidence they'll see the perpetrator brought to justice. Nor could he stand by the targets of prosecutions and conviction rates his government had publicly set just three months earlier.
Since the prime minister gave that interview, statistics have been published by the Office of National Statistics that paint an even bleaker picture: rape cases have soared to record levels, with 61,158 cases reported in the year to June 2021, up 10% on the previous year, while the number of cases resulting in a charge fell to the joint lowest.
Only 1.4% - equivalent to one in more than 70 rape cases - resulted in a suspect being charged or summoned. It makes for depressing reading. But the government's Rape Review plan to return prosecution and conviction rates to "at least 2016 levels", when there were 5,190 prosecutions and 2,991 convictions, at least gives campaigners a scorecard against which to measure the government and keep up pressure.
Ms Phillips said sexual harassment, violence and abuse was not a political priority and argues there needed to be a proper offender strategy to monitor those who are the most serious and prolific offenders, like that used to surveil terror suspects.
Changes to the law
All of the politicians also agree sexual harassment should become a specific crime, although Sky News understands there are divisions at the top of government over this issue - with the Home Office pushing for its inclusion in the new policing and sentencing legislation going through parliament, but Downing Street pushing back.
"There has been some back and forth," said one official. "I don't think everyone agrees."
Caroline Nokes said making the offence a crime should be recognised as something that "sends a firm message".
"It also helps you to identify those perpetrators early on in their offending journey. Because we know, don't we, Wayne Couzens, that he flashed women before he ever kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard. So it's all very well and good in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to focus on the serious, violent serial offenders and important that they serve long sentences. But I want to see us go back and identify people at the start. You have specific crimes that will then enable all of those pathways that could intervene to swing into action."
Fay Jones pointed out the government did prioritise getting the Domestic Abuse Bill back into committee at the height of the pandemic, with this landmark legislation becoming law in April 2021 - four years after it was first introduced in the Queen鈥檚 Speech by the then-PM Theresa May.
The legislation to better protect victims of domestic violence and abuse banned the "rough sex" defence, made non-fatal strangulation an offence in its own right, and also made threats to share intimate images illegal.
Ms Jones is now campaigning to make cyber flashing a criminal offence - and planning to table an amendment to the Online Harms Bill.
"[Social media] influencers talk about this all the time, where their inboxes are just deluged with pictures of people," she said. "It also often happens on the Tube, when someone will drop an explicit image on to someone's phone to see their reaction."
Meanwhile, Nicole Jacobs, the first domestic abuse commissioner in England and Wales, has called on the government to amend the Policing Bill to create a legal duty for local authorities and police forces across England and Wales to make domestic abuse, domestic homicide and sexual offences a priority in their serious violence prevention plans, in order to make sure the issue is focused on rather than sidelined.
But there is a limit to what legislators can do, which is perhaps why they wanted to talk, in a group, about their own experiences to raise awareness and keep up the conversation on how we might better tackle violence against women and girls.
The scale of the problem
Not everyone in government, or indeed the House of Commons, has grasped the scale of the problem, said Dr Allin-Khan.
"I think government reflects where we are in society. There are some people who really get it and really fight hard for change. And there are people who aren't there yet. But ultimately, we know that convictions aren't where they should be. We know that prevention is not where it should be. We know that all the things we've spoken about today mean that it isn't safe for us, and our daughters and our friends, to walk the streets."
According to these female MPs, it's not just about a legal and enforcement imperative to crack down on perpetrators, but also a cultural imperative to change the language away from talking about women experiencing sexual harassment, and towards the number of men and boys who are perpetrators.
"The reality is, and I think that one of the things that is difficult, especially when we talk about having daughters and having sons, is that it seems to me without question we have moved on to know that every single woman has had an experience," said Ms Phillips.
"What we haven't done, culturally, is accept that if everybody knows a victim, everybody already knows a perpetrator. That's much harder for people to comprehend."