‘Young women walking alone will be scared into carrying weapons’
SCARING young women over possibly being assaulted if they walk home alone at night could lead to some carrying weapons on them, said one club-goer after a woman fled from a sex attacker on a walk home from Town last weekend.
Police urged women not to walk home from Town alone after the incident, which occurred when the victim was walking up Candie Road towards Elm Grove.
Sophie Langford, 21, said she walked the same route as the woman who was attacked about 10 minutes before the incident. ‘There was nobody around when I was there,’ she said. ‘I do it every week.’
She said that, despite what happened, she was not going to change her habits. ‘Even though this has happened I would still walk home. This is the first time something like this has happened in six or seven years.’
Part of her reason for walking home was the long wait at the taxi rank. ‘I know some people who were waiting at the taxi rank until about four in the morning. You want to get home. If you’re tired and a bit drunk are you really going to stand in the queue for hours?’
Miss Langford’s fellow shop-worker, Leanne Brown, said she had planned to walk home too that night. ‘I managed to get a lift back. If I had walked it would have been along the seafront.’
‘If you were in England this sort of thing probably happens every 15 minutes,’ said Miss Langford. ‘Over here it happens once every three to four years.
‘They make it into such a big deal and if they carry on I reckon girls, especially young girls, will start taking out weapons with them.’
She questioned the use of rape alarms: ‘If no one is around what’s a rape alarm going to do?’
There were smartphone apps, including Snapchat, that allowed friends to see where each other was, and Miss Langford thought these could be useful.
Kay Langlois, 29, said she did not go out much now due to having children, but even when she went out a lot she never walked home alone. ‘I was scared of going home on my own,’ she said. ‘Me and my friend used to share a taxi, or if we did walk home alone it was with a bunch of us.
‘I’m scared of the dark anyway.’
Georgia O’Connor, 19, lives out of Town and said she always got a taxi or a lift home with a friend: ‘I feel safe enough,’ she said. She went out every Friday and Saturday night. But I wouldn’t think of walking home alone.’
‘I’ve walked home along the front,’ said Sammi Tostevin, 38, ‘but I don’t think I’d walk in little lanes.
‘I don’t walk home alone now,’ she added. ‘I get a taxi or the night bus.’
She said it was important not to scare people: ‘But you have to be vigilant.’
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