A protest to end violence against women took to the streets of Rotherham last night, with residents calling for better education and improved lighting to help them feel safe.
The Reclaim the Night campaign is all about empowering women and allowing them to reclaim spaces in which they feel unsafe.
This year’s theme of the march was ‘A Safe Night Out’. The Office for National Statistics 2022 found four out of five women felt unsafe walking in a park or an open space after dark on their own.
Jo Davidson, 62, from Rotherham, said: “I don’t feel safe in the day either. I don’t think it makes a difference. I think that’s something that men don’t understand and never really have to think about.
I walk the dog in the local wood and I’m constantly stopping, looking, listening because you feel that you have to be aware and I don’t think men, even your husband, even your son, understands how that feels.
I pick a big stick up in the woods and just walk along with a stick just in case.”
The movement originally started as part of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Leeds in 1977, as a response to the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ murders, where the police encouraged women to stay away from dark public spaces.
Danielle, 33, said: “I don’t really go out much, but when I do, I don’t really feel that safe.
We need to teach young people just to respect women when they’re out at night.”
Residents of Rotherham believe that, for women to start feeling safe at night, as well as more education, there needs to be improved lighting.
Mrs Davidson said: “We just walked around the town centre and there were bits of it that were okay, but there was a lot of it that wasn’t very well lit and obviously there’s a cost impact on councils to have to do that.
At the end of the day it’s about people, it’s about people looking out for each other.”
Safer Rotherham found the highest crime types were sexual assault on females aged 13 and over and that 86.3% of victims of rape and sexual offences were female.
Angela, 66, from Rotherham, said: “Even with a man with me, I still don’t feel safe.”
I don’t think anything will ever make a difference because we are the more vulnerable sex.”
Elizabeth, 26, from Rotherham shared the extremities that women have to go to to protect themselves at night.
The trainee police officer said: “You start doing things where you brush up against things so if anything happens to you then your scent, if a sent dog, will be there. Or you always have your phone on you or your location on.”
Sharon Kemp, Chief Executive of Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council shared some words. Source: Holly Phillips
The march started at The Ministry Pavilion and ended with inspirational speakers, including Karen from in2change, a Sheffield-based charity focusing on intervention and crime prevention, who shared her personal experience of spiking.
Counsellor Rukhsana Haleem for East Rotherham also shared her own experience of feeling unsafe when walking in the streets. She said: “The thought came across my mind that why am I changing my routine? Why, in today’s day and age when there’s so much safety out there, why is it me that has to change?”
Police Officers were on hand to ensure everyone had a safe night. Source: Holly Phillips
South Yorkshire Police recently launched the ‘Do More’ campaign, which encouraged people to call out their friends’ inappropriate behaviour and look out for women on nights out. This comes after the launch of the ‘No More’ campaign, which focuses on microaggressions and acts of violence that women face daily.
DCI Aneela Khalil-Khan from South Yorkshire Police said: “At South Yorkshire Police… we are trying to put a stop to this, we are trying to overcome this and we’re trying to understand the traumas that the young ladies and the women have had in the past and trying to make that right.”
