‘ A cloud that hung over our joy’ – women tell of terror in daily lives
PETER SUTCLIFFE did not just rob women of their lives, he also robbed thousands of women of their right to feel safe going about their daily lives during the 1970s.
Following the news of his death, scores of women gave their accounts of the culture of fear instilled into thousands during the five years in which 13 women were killed and seven others viciously attacked.
West Yorkshire mayoral candidate and Batley & Spen MP Tracy Brabin was interviewed by police following the murder of Yvonne
Pearson in Bradford. Ms Brabin, 58, was onanightoutwithfriends the night Ms Pearson was killed.
“It certainly brought it home thinking that I could have been around the corner at the time,” she said. “It was a cloud that hung over our joy of being young women that we felt we had to always be conscious and we were in charge of our own safety when, actually, you can take all the safety measures you like and still end up dead.”
Elisabeth Baker, who was working in Leeds as 26- year- old barrister at the time of Sutcliffe’s first murder, said women everywhere felt terrified of going about their daily business.
She said she breathed a sigh of relief at hearing the news police had made an arrest in January 1981. “I can recall the wave of relief which came over me, along with the thought that male colleagues would no longer have to escort me to my car if it was dark.”
Sarah Taylor Phillips, who grew up in Halifax, said: “He killed Josephine Whitaker on our school playing fields in 1979.
“As schoolchildren we did live in fear and you were suspicious of everyone. The search went on for so long.”