#RECLAIM THESE STREETS
SARAH OUTRAGE SPARKS VIGILS ACROSS BRITAIN FOR THE FEMALE VICTIMS OF MALE VIOLENCE
CANDLELIT #ReclaimTheStreets vigils are to be held by women across Britain to remember Sarah Everard and thousands of female victims of violent men.
As police officer PC Wayne Couzens continued to be questioned on suspicion of the 33-year-old’s kidnap and murder, plans for a small gathering on Clapham Common, south London, close to where she was last seen, went viral.
Events using the hashtag will be held tomorrow across the capital – in Hackney, Walthamstow, and Crouch End – in Liverpool, Oxford, Cambridge, Cardiff, St Andrews in Scotland and online.
Yesterday, as 97 per cent of women aged 18 to 24 in the UK told a survey they had been sexually harassed, female
stars backed the cause. Kate McCann, Sky News political correspondent, said: ‘What happened to Sarah Everard has hit home hard for so many women because we make the calculations she did every day too.
‘It is frustrating and tiring and constant. And yet sometimes, despite all those calculations, it still isn’t enough.’
Actress Georgia Tennant tweeted: ‘The familiar freezing over when you sense someone trailing you followed by the wave of relief you feel when they pass on by. How sad that the best we can hope for is to feel both.’
Singer Nadine Shah said: ‘ I’ve been followed home too many times to count. The solution starts with respecting women.’
The initial #ReclaimTheseStreets vigil, at the Clapham Common bandstand at 6pm tomorrow, was planned as a socially-distanced gathering ‘ for and about women, but open to all’ – then support surged. Many were angry at ‘victim-blaming’ by police who knocked on around 750 doors asking for information and advising women to be careful and not to go out alone.
The Met later said it gave out standard advice to ‘help keep people safe’.
Women’s equality party member Georgia Ladbury tweeted: ‘How about we urge men not to go out instead? Say a curfew at nightfall? Perhaps we’d see more done about street safety if it were men losing freedoms, not women.’
Vigil co-ordinator Anna Birley said: ‘What we’re hoping to achieve on Saturday is to take back our public spaces and say safety for women is paramount. The problem isn’t with women – the problem is people who perpetrate violence and make people feel unsafe.’
Another organiser said: ‘Streets should be safe for women regardless of what we wear, where we live or what time of day or night it is.’
Downing Street promised a new strategy to ensure women’s safety – involving law enforcement agencies, charities and women’s groups – would be published later this year.
No.10 spokeswoman Allegra Stratton said that it would ‘better target perpetrators and support victims’ and ‘tackle new and emerging forms of violence against women and girls, such as upskirting and revenge porn’.
Prime minister Boris Johnson said he was ‘shocked and deeply saddened’ by the case. He added: ‘We must work fast to find all the answers to this horrifying crime.’
Home secretary Priti Patel insisted every woman ‘should feel safe to walk our streets without fear of harassment or violence’.
#ReclaimTheseStreets events followed an online outpouring of women’s traumatic experiences.
Many said holding keys in their hands, avoiding certain routes, and staying in after dark had become routine.
They encouraged men to stay away, cross to the other side of streets and challenge others on their behaviour.