A year on from Sarah Everard's murder, women in Essex say more must be done to keep them safe
One campaigner in Chelmsford is calling for more education in schools
Today marks a year since Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive, was kidnapped, raped and murdered by serving police officer, Wayne Couzens, whilst she was walking home in Clapham, London.
Her death sparked numerous vigils, events and discussions around women's safety across the UK.
Karen Whybro is a feminist and equality campaigner based in Chelmsford, who began her campaigning following Sarah's death: "I wanted to host a vigil here in Chelmsford and that got shot down. That sparked a reaction in me that made me feel very much like we were being silenced.
"It made me even more determined to make sure that this issue isn't glossed over and forgotten about."
She says not much has changed following Everard's murder, and that women still feel unsafe: "Although the Sarah Everard case created a lot of public outrage and did get people sitting up and taking notice, those kinds of murders are actually extremely rare.
"The worrying thing is that domestic violence, stalking and harassment has increased massively over the last year.
"The government has been pretty good at providing funding and but really, there needs to be a cross party long term plan to look at how we challenge gendered violence and how we improve things for women, because the statistics don't show that there is any improvement in this area."
She says a lot of the campaigns focus on the wrong areas: "Women really are sick and tired of being told that we have to change our behaviour, whether that's staying out with your friends, taking a taxi home, avoiding certain routes, carrying a keys, having your mobile phone charged and not getting too drunk.
"It's too often focused on the responsibility of women to change our behaviour, when really we all know that it's not women who need to change their behaviours, it's men."
She says one of the best ways for women to feel safer long-term is to combat the issue in schools: "A lot of funding and projects that are council or government based, quite often focus too much on and safety and policing, and whilst we do need those... we have to try to work on the root cause of it.
"We can get in early in schools and have a really robust PSHE curriculum that teaches everybody about healthy relationships and about how abuse and coercive control happen.
"All of those things are really important for for girls and boys to understand so that they can grow up with healthier attitudes towards themselves and each other. That has to be really high on the agenda."
Karen wants more to be done and is currently working with Chelmsford Business Improvement District to implement a women's safety charter in the city, to make it a more welcoming and safer place for women: _"W_e decided to use the model of the London night safety charter that already exists and create our own safety charter here in Essex...
"We want to have clearly identifiable safe spaces in Chelmsford across the city so that women know places that they can go...
"Within the safe spaces we'll have trained members of staff who know how to deal with these issues."