Local MP shares own experiences of feeling unsafe on the streets
She's speaking out following the disappearance of Sarah Everard
Last updated 12th Mar 2021
Lancaster and Fleetwood MP Cat Smith has opened up about her experiences of not feeling safe on the streets after thousands have taken to social media to talk about feeling vulnerable when out on their own following the disappearance of Sarah Everard.
In a tweet the politician says she was followed home from work back in 2013 and it was a stroke of luck she saw a police officer and flagged them down.
She said: "I crossed the road, he crossed. I crossed back, he crossed back.
"When questioned, the stalker brazenly said yes he was following me. He got away with it."
That isn't her only experience. When she was visibly pregnant in 2018, a man made sexual advances after he had approached her in the street. When she declined, she was subject to verbal abuse, which she describes as "in your face".
Speaking to Rock FM, she women already modify their behaviour to keep themselves as safe as possible:
"Being very blunt, I think what needs to change is men's behaviour.
"We change out behavior all the time. We think twice about whether we want to go out on that run this evening because it's quite late and quite dark now.
"We think twice about whether to knock 10 minutes off our walk home because that's street's a bit quiet and I feel a bit vulnerable.
"There's a responsibility for men to speak to other men and there's a responsibility on parents.
"I want to raise my son so that he looks out for his female friends and understands that his behaviour could be perceived as threatening - and that's an awful thing to say as a mother but the reality is that we need to educate our sons as well as our daughters.
"For too long we've been telling our daughters, "don't go out after dark, don't wear short skirts, don't drink too much", but we need to equally tell our sons not to assault women.
Since tweeting her story yesterday, a male friend of Cat's reached out to her saying it was really awful that ever happened to her and he was shocked that would ever happen to her. But she says it's something most woman has had an experience of:
"The things I tweeted were nothing remarkable and nothing special and to be honest, they're not things I think about on a daily basis because frankly, they're so normal.
"We still have a situation where two women a week are killed by partners or ex-partners. We still have a situation where rape conviction rates are dropping. There's a lack of funding to women's refuges which means there are women who need to flee violence who are not being able to.
"There needs to be a cultural change, we're going to have to make sure that our sons and our boys are educated.
"Actually, this is not about sexual gratification. It's almost always about power, so I think we need to move the conversation into that place."