'Sarah Everard: How a woman's death sparked a nation's soul-searching'

"Missing: Please Help Our dear friend Sarah Everard," read the posters that went up on south London streets and local social media forums in the days after the 33-year-old disappeared on her walk home in early March.

It was concerning but such appeals are not exactly a rare sight, and the hope was that she would soon turn up safe and sound.

But in the days that followed, as police put out a CCTV image of Sarah and gave details of her last known movements, concern grew to alarm, then dread, then fear, shock and sadness.

Sarah Everard's journey from Clapham Common to Brixton had taken her through some of the capital's most populated, brightly-lit, and well-walked parts. Hundreds of people - many of them young women - tread those pavements every day and consider the streets in and around them home.

As the police investigation ramped up, local women were warned to be careful about venturing out alone. When a police officer was arrested - and subsequently charged with Sarah's murder - the head of the Metropolitan Police Cressida Dick acknowledged that women in London and beyond "will be worried and may well be feeling scared", although she said for a woman to be abducted off the street was an "incredibly rare" event.

But the case had touched a nerve, particularly as walking is one of the few activities to have been allowed during Britain's coronavirus lockdown.

Women across the country took to social media to discuss their own experiences of walking the streets and the lengths they went to to feel safe. Out poured stories of being followed, harassed, catcalled, assaulted and exposed to.

Helena Wadia was one of those. She told BBC Radio 5 Live she wanted to highlight how common it was for women to feel unsafe.

"The first time I was catcalled I think I was about 12 years old," she said.

"I have been self-policing since then. We moderate everything - our clothing, our drinking. We get taxis where maybe we can't afford it. We hold keys between our fingers. We don't wear headphones when we're jogging. We stick to well-lit areas. It's exhausting."

One tweet asking women if they have ever faked phone calls, changed route, or even run in fear after feeling threatened by men in public spaces was liked more than 120,000 times.

bbc.co.uk

Social media response to Sarah Everard's murder

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