Can I Legally Defend Myself in the UK? Avoiding Jail When You Fight Back

If you’re confused by UK self-defence law, you’re not alone. In this episode, Julie Waite (Co-Founder of Streetwise Defence) breaks down the real rules around protecting yourself — and what the law actually allows.

Using the case of Martyna Ogonowska as a starting point, Julie explores why she was convicted of murder, the truth about carrying weapons, and what “reasonable force” really means.

Learn what you can do to stay safe legally — from improvised weapons to pre-emptive strikes — and why awareness and mindset are your most powerful tools.

“You can fight back. You just need to do it within the law.” – Julie Waite

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Transcript

Julie Waite 

Welcome to Self Defence for Women, Live an Empowered Life, the podcast that helps you stay safe, feel strong and take control of your personal security, both physically and emotionally. I'm Julie Waite, Women's Safety Advocate and co-founder of Streetwise Defence, here to share real world strategies and insights so you can move through life with more confidence, more knowledge and more power. Just before we start, if you find this episode helpful, please hit subscribe and leave us a quick review.

It really helps us reach more women who need this information.

Today I'm going to talk about a subject for our friends in the UK which is ⁓ the UK law when it comes to self-defense. You may have seen some media coverage of a young woman, I'm going to try and get her name right now, Martyna Ogonowska, who has been convicted of murder after stabbing a man who she says

had physically assaulted her and was trying to sexually assault her. And there's been a lot of people that have been quite shaken up by this. It's an older case, but it was being appealed and I believe they were trying to get it changed to manslaughter, but it's been upheld as murder and she's now been sentenced to 17 years in prison. So I'm not a legal expert, but we do train in self-defense and we do inform people what the law is and what they can legally.

do to defend themselves. This case is quite worrying for a lot of people because, one, because of just, I think, the massive lack of ⁓ compassion in the legal system and understanding. This is a young woman who had previously been raped, aged 14. She had PTSD ⁓ and she felt fearful for her safety.

at this point. She carried a small pocket knife which she thought she was doing to keep herself safe. She used it when she felt in danger and she stabbed this man in the chest once and he died. ⁓

It's a very difficult case because you look at sentences that other criminals get and they're not getting anywhere near 17 years and yet here's a young woman who has tried to defend herself in a difficult situation and she's got convicted of murder. So I think there's a lot of people thinking, are we allowed to defend ourselves? What's the point if you try and defend yourself and then find yourself convicted of murder?

So I wanted to clarify a few points about why this has happened because you might not understand the intricacies of this. So first of all, she was carrying a knife and in the UK it is not legal to carry a knife. So if you carry a knife immediately in any kind of court legal situation, they're not going to be looking on you favorably because that's illegal and carrying a knife

knife shows intent. So that's kind of part one of it. Part two of it was that they said her response was disproportionate to the threat so if she had for example stabbed him in the arm or in the leg and then been able to get away then you know she may have been charged with assault or something like that. I'm not again I'm not a legal expert on

on this but it would have been a different situation obviously she wouldn't have killed him if she hadn't stabbed him in the chest but the fact here is that they believed it wasn't proportionate so maybe if he had driven her in the boot of his car to a secluded field and was trying to rape her and you know taped her up or whatever and then she managed to stab him they might have seen that as more proportionate.

if that makes sense. So those are the main reasons. They also looked at her state of mind as well, which they said because of the PTSD and other things that happened to her, I don't think they were 100 % convinced that her state of mind was what a reasonable person would have done. So that's that case. And I hope that explains it a little bit and that

people don't feel kind of defeated by the legal system thinking, oh, well, there's no point in trying to defend ourselves. The other element of this, the kind of the opposite side of this, which is kind of fueling this debate as well is the 1 % conviction rate that we have in the UK for rape, which is just shocking.

add on top of that that there's a three to four year backlog of rape cases. This is something that we found out after Dene did, my partner Dene did a training, private training for a lady QC and her family at their home. And when they were talking about the legal aspects of self-defense, she had said about the state of the UK with regards to supporting women who have been raped or sexually assaulted.

It's very hard because, you know, when you think about it, on the one hand, there's this 1 % conviction rate for rape, three to four years backlog. So there's people feeling like that's kind of almost like a green card to people just to go out and do what they want. So people are feeling scared and vulnerable and then thinking, well, how should I best defend myself? I'll carry a knife, which obviously isn't the right thing to do. And then on other hand, on the other side,

you've got this, well what's the point? What's the point in trying to defend myself because the law's not going to protect me, there's no law there to back me up. So I wanted to kind of give our view on this which is that you can legally defend yourself. You can do it but you just need to understand the law and understand how to do it within the law.

So the UK law says that you can use reasonable force to defend yourself and it must be necessary and proportionate. So those are the three words that are looked at when ⁓ they're deciding if the self-defense is legal or not. Was it reasonable? Was it necessary? And was it proportionate? And again, going back to this case that we just talked about, that's where they felt like it wasn't reasonable and proportionate.

and of course she was carrying a knife which is illegal. So in the UK you cannot carry a knife or a weapon to defend yourself. That is not legal. You can use your hands, your body to defend yourself which is what we teach and you can use an improvised weapon which is an everyday item that you may have on yourself so you may happen to have a pen in your bag you could use that.

You may happen to have an umbrella, probably not the best thing, you could use that. You may be at home doing some DIY and you may have a hammer out, you could use that. You may be in the garden and you might have a spade or something, you could use that. If you're on the street, you might have a cup of coffee, you could use that.

So it's something that you've got about yourself that just happens to be there that you can use. So we've got a whole episode on improvised weapons that you might want to go back and have a look at, because it just gets you in the head space of noticing what's around you and what you could use to defend yourself. The other part of UK law is that you can strike first if you feel that you are in imminent and serious danger.

For example, if someone's got you cornered and you feel like they're about to hit you, they're very aggressive, they're verbally aggressive, you feel like you've got no way out, then you can strike first. But however you strike, it must be, again, reasonable, necessary, and proportionate.

Obviously in these situations you've got things like adrenaline coming into it which could exaggerate your response but we generally feel that you shouldn't have to worry too much about your response that's what I'm trying to say. If you're kind of like a peace-loving, law-abiding person going about your day something happens you're probably not...

going to have a response that is way disproportionate, particularly if you make sure that you're not doing anything like carrying a knife, because if you're carrying something like a knife, it's very easy to go extreme with that. So if you do want to learn the physical techniques that we teach, we teach you how to use your hands, which we believe is the best self-defense weapon that you have.

We teach you how to use your hands to target the vulnerable areas of the attacker's body and how to do that and how to get away. Also, we teach all the prevention, the awareness, the mindset that goes with that because the physical response should always be the last resort.

I hope that that gives you an overview of the law in the UK and the fact that you can protect yourself, you can defend yourself, you can fight back legally, you can protect your body, you can protect your space and you can even strike first if you need to, if you feel in serious danger. So don't be put off and kind of defeated when you see headlines like this.

Every single case is unique and you know, this is a very unfortunate and tragic case But it doesn't mean that you can't fight back. So I really hope that that clarifies that have a look at our episode on improvised weapons because that'll help you get an idea of that as well and Just have a think about How you could defend yourself if you found yourself in this in a situation where you had to do that

If you really don't know what you would do, then it's probably time to take action. Check out our online courses. We've got lots of online courses. We've got lots of information. Check that out and invest the time in yourself, in your own safety, because you are worth it. Until next time, stay safe.