Jenny Evans and the cost of institutional cowardice

The inside story of how corruption thrives when power is unchecked

I first noticed Jenny Evans on Channel 4’s Dispatches when she was unpicking the phone hacking scandal. Her eye for detail was almost intimidating. She stood out from the crowd of journalists chasing Murdoch’s people. This book explains why.

Jenny Evans was sexually assaulted by a high profile man and then betrayed when police leaked her testimony to the press. That violation drove her to investigate corruption, expose phone hacking on Dispatches and show how institutions colluded to silence victims. Her memoir is the story of turning trauma into purpose.

this book is a must read

She did not know it then, but Jenny was the reason I kept going on phone hacking. After she explained how victims had been violated by criminal journalists and ignored by corrupt officers, I felt an obligation I could not walk away from.

Don’t Let It Break You, Honey is not simply a memoir. It is an indictment of failure at the highest levels of police, press and politics. Evans shows how institutions colluded in silence, how they ducked responsibility and how corruption was allowed to spread.

The story is painful but she writes with clarity and even humour. What begins as one woman’s struggle becomes a lesson in the abuse of corporate power.

It is a book our political leaders should read. I will be sending copies to Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy so they can remind themselves of the human cost of institutional cowardice and of what follows when the powerful are left unchallenged.