“I had to flee for perhaps five minutes, which felt like a lifetime. The worst thing you could ever dream of happening.”
One of several women who have been attacked while walking home is Niamh, 20; she is recounting an incident in which a man pursued her back to her flat.
“I suppose it’s simply that shock and just adrenaline and, you know, instincts or whatever take over because you’re just fearing for your life.”
It is terrible. Anyone who has been in that role, I believe, can say the same,” she said to ITV News.
A lot of young women experience fear.
An extensive poll of 18 to 25-year-olds commissioned by ITV News reveals that 81% of young women report feeling uncomfortable strolling home in the dark.
ITV News spoke with several ladies who claimed they are terrified of walking home late at night.
Mel told us: “As far as I was concerned, I was going to get raped and or killed, and I was going to be found in the bushes. That is where my brain was.”
Other women told us how they were left to verbally, sometimes physically, defend themselves to persuade those males to leave them alone after they were used to being followed home from work on a nightly basis.
“I would leave work anxious and scared after multiple events of being harassed and threatened just metres away from where I work,” one claimed.
Many of them, including Niamh, work in hospitality; hence, they usually work late into the night and cannot escape driving home in darkness.
But Niamh is also afraid of walking home in the dark, following another event in broad daylight some months ago.
“I was alone myself when a stranger attacked; nobody else was around. The only reason I escaped was that I battled him off, which was also rather horrific. He tried to rape me.
Jess Phillips, recently named Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Victims and Safeguarding, has worked with assault and abuse survivors at organisations including Women’s Aid throughout her whole career.
Phillips described the issue of violence against women and girls as a “national emergency” and claimed she was not surprised by the fact more than 80% of women are terrified of walking home in the dark in one of her first interviews since assuming the post.
She declared: “The reality is that this government considers violence against women and girls to be a national emergency, and a national emergency needs systematic change, not just paying lip service when something bad happens”.
Regarding the poll findings, Phillips remarked she was not surprised: “I genuinely wish that I could claim that it did [shock me]… I expected more ladies to feel dangerous in the dark.
We also asked Phillips how she felt after viewing our chat with Niamh.
“What it makes me feel is frantic and desperate to make it so that resources and processes are in place for her the very first time Niamh comes forward and suffers. More so, though, that we can stop the continuation of that violence by moving every mountain we can reach.
“That this is not something that should merely be women’s responsibility about where they can and cannot go,” she said.
She was strolling back home.
“She was walking home” became a frequently used term following Sarah Everard’s horrific attack and murder in March 2021 close to Clapham Common in London. After walking from a friend’s house home, the 33-year-old was kidnapped, raped, and killed.
Though it’s undoubtedly not a new problem, her murder set women’s safety front first and spurred national indignation. Mel, who was attacked ten years ago on her way home from a funeral, claims that her situation has “got worse”.
“The one thing I still fear every single day is walking home. It influences my planning and how I socialise,” she stated.
2014 saw a man trailing Mel, who then was 24, off the bus. He sprang off at the last moment to prevent her from getting back on to avoid him.
Mel turned down several offers to take her home, so he headed ahead of her along the small path separating her house from the peaceful road the bus had left her. He sat on a seat awaiting her at the end of the poorly lighted hallway.
She added, “There were a couple of metres between the bench and the path, so I thought if I could get there, I could just run and make it to the main road.”
Mel saw the man was masturbating as she approached the bench: “It’s in a completely different territory because you realise this is somebody dangerous.”
Saying he had a knife, he would use on her should she not stop screaming, the man barred Mel from walking the five-metre distance to the main road, flung her phone into the bush, shoved her into the ground and tried to rape her.
“I couldn’t tell you any timeframes, so I’m not sure how long that lasted, but it was during that that he was dragged off me while I was trying to hit him and get him off me.”
Nearby, three off-duty police officers had decided to stroll down the alleyway as Mel was being attacked.
“That was a complete miracle. From what I knew, I was going to be discovered in the bushes, raped, killed, and subjected to My brain was in that state, she said.
“I was saved, and he did not sexually assault me. Still, it was fierce.”
Mel’s life underwent a total transformation with the attack.
She explained that she had to change her public-facing name to prevent the offender from finding her, which impacted her work as an actor. “It’s not just the fear thing; it turns your entire presence in public on its head – I think people don’t necessarily think about the widespread impact of these things.”
“It destroyed my career… The effects are significant,” she remarked.
Mel began working with WalkSafe, an app that lets users identify nearby hazards on a map and warns particular contacts should the user not finish a journey after years of lobbying on women’s safety problems.
On the app, catcalling, sexual harassment, and groping account for the top three events recorded.
In a perfect world, programmes like WalkSafe wouldn’t be necessary.
“People don’t want to have to track themselves, but I do think it’s a perfect solution to make yourself safer were something to happen.”
“Still, I have to follow myself and have my phone, and it feels… It seems improper to have to do that.”
For attempted rape, the man who attacked Mel served a seven-year prison sentence.
Women grow up knowing, Dr Jacki Tapley of the University of Portsmouth said, the notion that women should protect themselves while out alone – whether that is through tracking apps, avoiding wearing particular garments, or arranging routes or times of day for travelling.
Having spent decades studying and teaching criminology and victimology, she said the problem of not being able to go home safely is a more general one concerning male violence against women.
From a very young age, we are fed a story that suggests women should expect violence from men. This has always astounded me; we must defend ourselves against males.
“Why did he attack her? Why are we not rewriting that story in the twenty-first century to: Why are guys aggressive against women? Why can’t we be challenging guys about their actions and demanding them not to mistreat and endanger women?”
“We have learnt to live with this,” she said.
Dr Jacki noted that the fundamental problem is men’s behaviour, even as many projects aiming at enhancing public safety—such as installing street lights or altering park landscaping—have their role.
“It wasn’t a shrub in the wrong place or the fact that Sarah [Everard] lacked an app; the issue is a man chose to kidnap her and kill her.”
From school age through university and businesses, education must occur everywhere, Dr Jacki stated.
“It’s wrong to think things haven’t changed and got better,” she said, stressing the higher knowledge of the threat presented to women and the upgraded processes to cope with those circumstances. Generally speaking, nevertheless, those public attitudes need modification in society.
Fighting violence directed against women and girls “centre stage”
Within the following ten years, the new government promises to have halved incidents of violence directed against women and girls.
Jess Phillips believes prevention will involve education and awareness; relationship and respect education in schools are crucial elements, and “robustly going after the kind of people who perpetrate it”.
She stated, “I truly, really hope that we build up fear in the people who perpetrate this crime that people can’t get away with it, but also build confidence in people like Niamh to feel that law enforcement and support services are there for her.”
Jess Phillips, the parliamentary under-secretary of state for victims and safeguarding, characterised the violence directed at women and girls as a “national emergency”.
According to Phillips, the new government has set addressing violence against women and girls “centre stage”.
Women in Data’s preliminary research indicates that, as of March 2024, 70% of women in the UK have reported an episode of harassment or crime occurrence over the preceding three years.
Most women who have experienced abuse and assault will be observing how the government addresses more generally the issue of walking home and of violence against women and girls.
More importantly, it could also decide how many more women must endure events like those Niamh and Mel detailed going forward.
ITV News teamed up with market research agency Savanta to interview 1,232 young people between 18 and 25 between 9 and 12 April to gather the numbers for this analysis.
Anyone who feels uncomfortable on their way home can access the following tools:
WalkSafe app offers a map with local issues such as poorly-lit walkways and lets contacts be contacted should you not make it home;
Strut Safe (a phone line accessible for anyone to contact on their way home).
Should you be the victim of an assault, you should phone 101 to the police; in an emergency, dial 999.
Support is accessible from the following sites should you or someone you know have been assaulted:
Voluntary groups including Rape Crisis, Women’s Aid, Victim Support and The Survivors Trust;
Run by Rape Crisis England and Wales, the support line for rape and sexual abuse.
A nurse or doctor working at your neighbourhood general practitioner’s office.