Is there any specific attack you're worried about?
Sometimes people will kind of run up behind me
and then it always flashes in my mind like, oh what would I do –
If they grab you?
– If they grab me?
Yeah.
OK.
So, I wrote this article about giving up running in the dark over the winter.
It attracted quite a lot of comments actually, I was surprised at the number of comments.
Men and women, people saying that you know, I should just
go out running anyway.
A lot of, kind of suggestions about joining a running club
or taking up self-defence, joining the gym instead.
It's like, so good for my mental health to be able to do this.
Yeah, I want to be able to do it all the time
and I can't or I feel like I can't.
We can talk a lot about how things should be safer and the streets should be safer,
but actually the reality is they're not.
This is about the human rights of women and girls to to live,
not to exist, not to subsist, to live but to thrive as well.
And that's one thing that I really want to find out,
whether there's anything I can do to feel safer running at night
or whether anything can be done for women
to feel safer running at night.
Leeds where I live and where I grew up,
has a particularly complex history with violence against women.
Notably with the case of the Yorkshire Ripper.
For six years during the 70s and 80s,
police told women to stay inside after dark,
while they badly mishandled the investigation and failed to catch Peter Sutcliffe,
who attacked at least 22 women, killing 13.
Can you predict when the Ripper might strike again?
Not at all.
It could be in 10 years, it could be next week,
it could be right now.
Men off the streets!
Last night in Leeds,
public dissatisfaction with the police performance so far
found a voice.
Hundreds of feminists marched through the city
demanding that the police should put a nine o'clock curfew on men
until the Ripper is caught.
That may seem a trifle bizarre, but the fact is
that thousands of women are already under their own self-imposed curfew.
So Leeds has got a really, really long and proud history of activism.
Starting with the reclaim the night marches in the 70s and 80s,
I was part of them in the 80s.
You know, it felt so empowering, so fabulous
and I'm very proud that I'm continuing at that campaigning work
that I've been part of for 50 years nearly.
There was a lot of anger especially among young women at the time,
because you know, it was anybody, anywhere, living in west Yorkshire could,
at any time, be a victim.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, it just went on for so long and the message was very much like,
stay at home, you know, have someone with you, don't go out on your own –
– And patronising, misogynistic.
You know, it was power over, squashing us, you know, minimising us,
making us less than, you know?
I want to be out, I want to be out in this park, I want to be on the bus.
There's 1.2 million women here in west Yorkshire,
we know that one in five women are subject to serious sexual assault in their lives,
we don't have time to sit back and you know, wait.
I work alongside the mayor Tracy Brabin,
we have got a safety of women and girls strategy.
The mayor's brought in £700,000 in the last year
for night-time economy stuff, night marshals, taxi marshals, safe spaces.
We're trying to impact every bit of the system, it's not just about policing,
it's about women affect every bit of society, we want them to matter,
we want them to know that they matter, and we want that to be the case forever.
There might be a perception now that things are going in the right direction,
women were feeling more able to report when things had happened to them,
do you feel like with, you know, recent cases that we've had with Sarah Everard,
we're in a position now where we could actually be going a bit backwards,
in terms of like, public trust?
Oh absolutely, it's devastating that, you know,
You can't know that you're safe with a police officer.
West Yorkshire is not the Met, but that doesn't mean to say we don't have our own problems,
we know that.
It's a battle.
You know, it's shocking that we have to say this about policing,
but you know, we live in the real world, don't we?
It feels positive that at least where I live,
with a mayor and deputy mayor who are both women,
feeling safe on our streets is a priority
and yet the headlines are still dominated by violence against women.
As we mark the second anniversary of the murder of Sarah Everard,
who was killed by Wayne Couzens, a serving Met police officer,
I can't help but feel things aren't moving fast enough.
Stop the police!
Alison told me about a new app for women's safety
being rolled out in Bradford,
making it the world's first walk safe city.
The free app is designed to make it easier to choose
the safest routes through cities and towns.
I'm sceptical, but I want to see if tech could be a solution to feeling more safe.
One thing Alison Lowe was talking about was the safe places,
kind of dots on the map.
The yellow one is a police station.
So our nearest one according to this is the City Vaults.
There are certain venues that have kind of signed up to this scheme
to be like a safe place.
If women are walking home on their own
and they're feeling kind of a bit intimidated ...
Andrew Tate.
I read an article about how young people
are super into, young men, are super into Andrew Tate.
But I'm not concerned, because teenage boys have always been misogynist
and he's just flavour of the month and he'll be gone soon.
So the app has this kind of orange SOS button at the top,
it alerts your family and friends that you need help.
It's a good feature in the sense that it's it's quick and easy.
So it's so much quicker than having to like, you know, message your friends,
it's literally like a couple of taps but ...
And I believe what you believe.
Thank you, that's very kind of you.
You all right though, yeah?
Yeah.
And you?
Cheers pal.
Yeah, so you can actually see why someone might feel uncomfortable
walking around sometimes like, most people are just friendly and fine,
but and people sometimes just want to talk to you,
but you know, it's good to have that facility.
People have reported crime, so they've reported assaults.
It's so that you know, you can see the kind of crime hot spots
and you can avoid those areas.
Yeah and it seems to pull in data from the local crime stats which is useful.
Oh there's a mugging.
There we go.
I guess it sort just made me feel a bit safer.
Knowing that like, you know, there are ...
Within kind of a half a mile radius like, a couple of dozen
places that I could go, you know, places that are just like,
you know, literally just there.
Another one kind of just around this corner so.
Yeah, I guess that would make me feel safer.
It's an interesting trial anyways,
it'd be interesting to see whether people kind of use this.
That's better.
Yeah.
You're looking to cause as much pain and distraction as you can,
in a five to ten second window, so you can get out of that.
Yeah.
Okay that's your goal, getting out there safe.
97% of women age between 18 and 24 have experienced sexual harassment
according to an investigation by the UN.
The problem is not with us, but when it comes to stepping out on to a dark street tomorrow,
I do want to feel safer.
So I've come to see if learning Krav Maga,
a martial art focused on real world situations can help.
You're looking to do that, but you're really looking to be ready to strike.
What you're also aware of
is as I'm grabbing and turning what happens a lot
is people grab and turn and the strikes already coming.
Right, okay.
Okay.
That's where the arms are.
Yeah.
That's exactly why the arms up, it's both passive and defensive.
Yeah.
Okay so, now I'm gonna grab and turn.
Yeah.
And for me having learning this sort of stuff, having a general sense of personal safety.
So you mentioned the streets you went down,
some of them were quite suburban, some of them were quite dark.
Ideally you're just looking to avoid those kinds of places,
but if you have to go down those kinds of places,
hood comes down, headphones come out and you're aware.
Keep that awareness.
Call somebody, be talking to somebody,
that's always going to put an attacker off,
if you pretend you're talking to your mum.
If you get a sense that somebody's following you,
start saying things like, yeah, I'm literally 30 seconds down the road,
because that's changing the game of the person behind you.
Everything they're hearing is making them think,
can I do this attack, can this attack work?
The best we can hope for is that we get to a point where in this gym
we're training these defences, we're doing them that regularly
that in the gym, they are 90% effective.
That means in a real life scenario they'll be about 40% effective
and a 40% defence against somebody who's got no training,
it's going to be very effective.
Good and then elbow straight back.
That?
That's it backwards.
Yeah, so like, am I going for the face?
Yeah, go for face, neck, throat, yeah.
Okay.
It's really easy to become risk-averse.
Yeah.
But being risk-averse means you're probably never going to leave the house in winter again.
Yeah.
And we don't want that, what we want to get to is a point of,
and you're already there to some degree,
risk awareness, because the second you risk aware,
you change the way that you're assessing things.
You're starting to pay attention, you're starting to understand,
there are risks out there,
but I've got a practical way way to deal with it
or at least a starting point.
Yeah.
Okay.
He surprised me actually.
I expected it to be kind of going through the motions of, okay I've done self-defence class.
Yeah, look at me I can defend myself,
but actually it definitely has made me feel a little bit more confident.
We shouldn't have to do a self-defence class, but like,
I don't know, in the short term if it makes you feel better
then, yeah perhaps it's worth it.
A lot of the feedback to my article suggested I simply join a running club
to feel safer.
I've never run in a group before,
but I've come to Chapel Allerton runners in Leeds
to see how I feel running alongside other people
and to find out how common my fears are.
Over the winter I kind of tend to stop running,
because I don't like running in the dark and I find it quite scary being out on my own,
is that a concern for anybody in the group?
I would run here in the summer when it's light,
because I live quite close, but in the winter I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that.
Certainly later at night on my own and it's something I try to avoid
and something that you know, my husband doesn't like me to do either, you know?
Sometimes I prefer it in the dark,
because you more likely to get heckled through the day,
less people can see you.
I think it was last summer we were running very late,
you know it's very light until late at night
and everyone's having a chat and the women in the group start
talking about being heckled and then every single women said, 'Oh yeah,
that happened to me.'
And you can see the bloke's going, 'Oh right, that's everyone?'
Like, you know that's just completely normal.
And I know we just don't have to think about it in the same way at all,
you know?
And when you see cases like, you know obviously there's Sarah Everard,
which is a really high profile case and Sabina Nessa,
does that affect you're running at all or?
As a result of those sort of cases my perception of risk changed quite a lot
and I think that's the case when running in a group,
like today our group, several times, people sort of sarcastically clapped us on.
Which when you're in a group, it was actually quite funny,
but on your own as a women that could really be quite threatening,
because every single person who did it was a lone man.
I think personally I struggle a bit with sort of the narrative of
women needing to think about this all the time,
because it perpetuates a narrative that women are victims.
If you're constantly being told that it's unsafe, then you think it's unsafe,
even if actually the risk is very, very small.
And I mean I don't think I've ever heard of a case,
certainly in Leeds of a runner being accosted,
but I'm sure that people get hit by cars
or you fall down and break an ankle or things like that.
The risk of those things is much, much greater than the risk of being attacked.
So to me, if I was taking my phone with me, it's more because I'm worried that I might fall down
and might need somebody to come pick me up, you know?
When I wrote the piece a few people, a few women just said, you know,
'I don't care, I do it anyway.'
And I was like, 'They do it anyway.'
That's an option.
I find it really sad to think that so many women don't do things,
because they are afraid or feel at risk.
You are stopping yourself from experiencing things that actually
the reward massively outweighs the risk of doing them.
I am newly compelled by the argument that we can't
put our lives on hold over the winter through fear.
And as the evenings get lighter again and we regain a sense of freedom,
it's a discussion that's starting to feel as though it can wait.
but it won't be long before winter rolls around again
and again and we should not be left facing these same fears
year after year.