Page 7 - BPW-UK - E-news - Edition 101 - March 2022_Neat

She was only walking home

In early March last year Sarah Everard was kidnapped while walking
home from a friend’s house around 9pm. Days later her body was found
dumped in a pond after she had been raped and strangled

In early March last year Sarah Everard was kidnapped while walking home from a friend’s house around 9pm.
Days later her body was found dumped in a pond after she had been raped and strangled.

I’m a night walker. I often go out around 9pm for my daily exercise. The time works for me at the end of a busy day
and helps me wind down and reflect on what has been going on.

Sarah had been visiting a friend during lockdown. We were later to find out that her attacker tricked her into believing
she was breaking lockdown rules and he was arresting her. As a Metropolitan policer officer Wayne Couzens seriously
abused his position to commit a heinous crime.

When I first starting walking at night I’d have my earphones in listening to music, less aware of my surroundings.
While I don’t feel any fear walking at night, I am more cautious nowadays and wary of other walkers especially men.
My walking route is on main roads, well-lit with steady traffic, few pedestrians and no earphones.

So in this last year what has changed? Well the Met has been exposed for misogyny among its ranks. There has been
a spate of spiking women’s drinks in nightclubs or injecting women with drugs and two more women have lost their
lives following attacks by random strangers. On 17 September 2021 Sabina Nessa was murdered in London, on the five
minute journey from her home to the pub where she was meeting friends and in January this year, Ashling Murphy was
out on an afternoon jog on the towpath of the Grand Canal in Co Offaly in Ireland when she was murdered in broad
daylight.

What has been the reaction? Well-meaning people have given advice to women to not walk alone, and designed an
app to track a walking route and alert a friend. Does this suggest the victims have been at fault? That women should-
n’t go out on their own or at night?

Sadly there’s nothing new in these stories, women have been
murdered while out and about for many years. Reclaim the
Night, an organisation protesting against violence against wom-
en formed in 1977 in Leeds to protest against the police request
for women to stay at home after Peter Sutcliffe murdered 13
women. More than 40 years on the organisation continues to
march, campaigning for safe streets for women to walk at night
without fear of rape. It comes as no surprise that Reclaim the
Night groups have sprung up in cities the length and breadth of
the country. So nothing has really changed.

I found this poem on Reclaim the Night Belfast Facebook.
It sums things up very well I think.