Share the ‘Signal for Help’

In the wake of Sarah Everard's tragic murder in March 2021 (BBC News, 2021), a heightened movement is surging, recognising vulnerability around safety on our streets alongside private thoughts of ‘that could have been me’ as we reflect on and relive our own unpleasant experiences or near misses. Sarah's is now a familiar face for all the wrong reasons. In a YouGov survey for the All Party Parliamentary Group for UN Women (2021), 1000 women highlighted the prevalence of street harassment. Sarah's case exemplifies an extreme example of this statistic. The survey reports that 97* of women aged 18 to 24 had experienced sexual harassment, with 80* saying that this took place in a public space. Sarah's life, so wrongly and prematurely taken when walking home after having dinner with a friend in Clapham, London, illustrates this and also a larger all-pervading picture of violence in the workplace and at home, not only by a ‘stranger’, but commonly by people we know.