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5 minute read

Keys in one hand, phone in the other, dropping pins for friends, parents and partners, well-lit streets only, a fast, determined pace. We all know it. We’ve ALL done it. Every single one of us, of every single age, has assumed this warrior-like attitude when walking alone at night. This mindset of high alert. A sort of emergency awareness with Cortisol ripping through us - fight or flight - head ready to flick around at the slightest noise behind us. Or to the side of us. Or anywhere really.

This week there has been too much talk about what a woman ‘should do’ to keep herself safe from male violence. We all know what ‘should’ happen. Let’s look at that word and use it a better way…

It shouldn’t be a big deal as we walk home from a friends house a couple of streets away. A stroll that should be benign, but might not be.

A stroll we have to warn our daughters about. A stroll that is stressful in a way men rarely know. Sure, they know it theoretically. They hear us speak of it. It’s on the news and social media. But they’ll never really know it. That feeling of quickly closing the door behind you when you get in safely. Of sometimes leaning against it. Of it being late, but you’re so awake with the blood pumping through your veins, your breath deep and fast. The deep relief to be home.

I have daughters. One is almost 13 and the other almost 10. Young girls with blossoming bodies, young girls becoming beautiful. Becoming the women they will be. Raised by me; a feminist, a single mother, an advocate and warrior for them, as well as their nurturer. Like you are with yours. Like we all are with all our kids - girls and boys. Parenting is far more conscious now than it apparently used to be, but alas the prevalence of violence against women still abounds. I have no doubt that our kids will change the world when it’s their turn to, but there are years before then.

And the time is coming now to warn them. The time where we must move on and graduate them from Stranger Danger - from the juvenile protection messaging of their younger years, of talking about not allowing themselves to be touched or taken. Of having awareness of their own safety. Of knowing what consent is. Of what to do or what to say if physical boundaries are crossed and they feel upset, confused, or worse, hurt, by the advantageous advancements of another - often a male.

In the Stranger Danger days of junior school, they are also taught how to speak up if something bad happens to them. How to report it. They are taught what they should do if (or when) something intimidating happens to them that they don’t permit. Think about that…

They are taught how they should report it.

What messaging does that give our kids? To our little girls?

It tells them to be ready.

“Little one, prepare for this. For this will probably happen to you.”

It’s horrible. Because it’s true. It’s happened to lots of us.

One time in Dublin City, I was walking along one of the busy main streets, in daylight on a Saturday, when a man walked behind me for a while. I was deeply uneasy and kept ducking in and out of shops. He waited, always behind me. I told a security guard in one shop that he was following me, he said, “I can’t help you love, he’s not in my shop”. I walked on - he got close to me - then he reached into my bag and robbed my purse. Nobody helped. He continued to walk behind me, as I walked at speed looking for a police person, taunting me, saying to me that if I reported him he’d follow me home. I eventually ran up to a policeman in tears, but the guy disappeared down a busy shopping street.

Another time, I was robbed with a knife at an ATM. It was the morning. I went to work afterwards. I was very shaken, but with an ‘it could have been worse” attitude, I got on with my day.

As women, we can become very used to the prospect and experience of intimidation.

On Friday, Marina Hyde wrote a striking paragraph in The Guardian. She said, “The women who love you have to communicate the fear to you when you’re still a girl, knowing that one day you too will have to communicate it to the girls you love. They pass you down their strategies – their defences – like your birthright. And when you’re big enough to be out in the world on your own, those same women spend their time hoping till it hurts that this fear, which they had to gift you out of love, will somehow save you.”

Read that again. Doesn’t it break your heart?

Being a mother of kids about to launch into the world is an excruciating business. In fact, motherhood is mainly made up of an excruciating sequence of watching them walk away from you. Mine are reaching teen years and all that brings - strangers, sex, drink, drugs (I hope not, but I did it all and I have to be a realist). I can only hope they keep their wits about them. I hope I raise them well. I can lose hours in my perimenopausal sleepless nights thinking about all that could befall them - of all that could taint or tarnish their future, their happiness. Their safety.

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Just like Sarah Everard’s mother did when Sarah was small no doubt. Because all mothers do it. No doubt Sarah’s mum told her to be careful, to take care. And the lovely thing is; she listened. Did you see on the CCTV how carefully she was taking herself along those roads? She heeded the warnings. She did everything right. And it still went wrong. What could she have done to avoid what happened to her? Nothing. Because it was his fault, not hers.

Her mum described the pain as visceral. I doubt that woman will ever sleep a full night again. Bless her - it’s unimaginable. Except it’s not, is it? We’ve all imagined it for years. We imagine it every time we walk in the dark. Doing everything right, but it still going wrong.

Last night, I was putting my youngest daughter to bed. The blinds weren’t pulled down yet and she was glancing nervously at something she thought she saw moving in the back garden. I asked her what she was looking at as she kept flicking her head towards the darkness. She said she thought she saw a man. I turned on the garden light to show her there was nothing there. That, in fact, she had seen the bushes blowing about in what was quite a blustery night. We looked out together, she asked me was I sure there was nothing there. I said, yes, I’m sure. I pulled the blind and got on with corralling her to bed. We all went to bed. After an hour she came into me. She said she was scared of what was in the garden, of the dark scary shadows. She crawled into my bed, where she stayed for the night.

There is fear is already in her. And as she grows up beyond spooky stories, monsters under beds and jump scares from her sister, she will find out that real-life is scarier. Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it’s a policeman who could capture and kill you. Or, more commonly, it could be someone you know. Or, like Sabina Nessa’s awful murder - random but pre-meditated.

One month ago it was the 22nd anniversary of Raonaid Murray’s murder here in South Dublin where I live. The story still plays on me as it happened mere moments from my parent’s house. My friends and I were in our 20’s at the time and I remember the local furore. The local fear.

As I drive my girls to school each day, we pass the place she was stabbed to death. Aged 17 and left bleeding to die on the path one night as she walked home after being with friends in the local town. 22 years later, her parents and police still don’t know who did it. They still don’t know peace.

Raonaid would have been told to mind herself like we all were. She would, like all of us, have said the same to her friends no doubt - the same thing we were told by our mothers - the same thing we are told by our own instinct on each dark road - don’t go down there it’s too dark, walk tall, walk fast, don’t listen to headphones, hold your keys, call someone, hurry, look around, hurry, look behind, hurry, look around…

Every woman knows that the universal goodbye between girlfriends, said quietly but firmly, in a hug on a doorstep somewhere is; “Text me when you get home”.

All these things we are told we ‘should’ do in order to be safe. All the things put on us - on the women to do - in order for us not to be harassed, or raped, or attacked or killed by men. And now, according to the UK police messaging this week, we should be flagging down buses and familiarising ourselves with correct policing policies? All because of male violence towards women that is nothing to do with us or our actions? All these things we are told we could and should do, that don’t work and will never work, if boys and men aren’t told consistently NOT to prey on women.

Enough now.

Ellie Balfe, October 2021

May you rest in peace Sarah Everard, Sabina Nessa, Raonaid Murray and all the other women who simply walked home alone. A donation of €100 has been made on behalf of Heyday to Women’s Aid Ireland.