For the Power of Women festival 2022 celebrating International Women’s Day, our CEO Deb was invited to speak at the opening event. The theme is ‘Reclaim and Reconnect’ which prompted this reflection on the Reclaim the Night movement.

What I have to say is not easy so please bear this in mind before reading…

Reclaim the Night was brought to the UK 40 years ago in response to the horrific murders of women in that year in Yorkshire.

The key policing protective response was to tell women to stay at home. So, women collectivised to reclaim the night, to say that placing responsibility with them for violence against women was not acceptable.

Sutcliffe’s 13 known murder victims were:

• Wilma McCann

• Emily Jackson

• Irene Richardson

• Patricia “Tina” Atkinson

• Jayne MacDonald

• Jean Jordan

• Yvonne Pearson

• Helen Rytka

• Vera Millward

• Josephine Whitaker

• Barbara Leach

• Marguerite Walls and

• Jacqueline Hill

There are 10 women he is known to have attacked one of whom was Marcella Claxton – she was four months pregnant when she was attacked and lost the baby she was carrying.

Those women were not seen as important enough to elicit a quality response – they were written off as women of the night, somehow they were seen to have deserved what happened to them.

I was asked to speak about the work of Oasis, so I asked the team what things the women they work for tell them that they have to contend with so that you can hear about the problems we are always working to resolve.

This is what we are told:

• I do not feel safe on the street or at home. I am tired from always feeling unsafe. I have to walk on eggshells to avoid being hurt in my home but am the one who must solve this problem. I have to find the strength and the courage and resolve to leave, knowing that this could see me murdered. I might choose instead to live in fear, because this person does love me sometimes and I can’t be sure whether leaving will go well. I don’t feel that I will ever be free. I don’t want to do this on my own. I want this relationship, in the way it was supposed to be. I have to pretend to be okay. I have to stay alive.

• I have to ask for help but that means I have to admit things that I struggle even to tell myself, things I bury or ignore because they hurt too much. Things I don’t recognise as abuse because they have been my life’s experience. Maybe I will shout too loudly for help, maybe my pain will overspill and I will scare you.

• Maybe you will shy away from me and see me as damaged, dramatic, aggressive, a risk. Maybe I will find my tiny voice and you will not hear me, will dismiss me, will say ‘all relationships are hard’ and then I might never speak up again.

• If I do reach out, make change, take the risk of leaving, I have to face a mountain of responsibility. I will be trying my best but will be focussed on surviving, you will speak to me of confidence and the great life I could be having. I will be stuck in my traumatic stress and will not be able to see your grand vision of me.

• I am exhausted, and embarrassed and often do not feel believed. Nor am I, I am blamed – ‘why didn’t you?’ and shamed, and told I am not good enough by them, by you. I don’t match up to your beautiful life, your ability to avoid this harm. I must deserve or have deserved what happened to me, they told me it was my fault and I still feel that it was.

• I may have to keep children safe, to find somewhere to live that I can afford, to give up all I own, my friends, community, family close-by. I have to justify my decisions to keep my children safe, suffer being called spiteful and resentful as I avoid them coming to harm – being labelled as someone who alienates a parent from their children. I am compelled to send them to contact, despite their fear and mine, and sometimes they are removed from me and given to them, the person that hurt us.

• I have to fight when I am at my most vulnerable, fight for basic resources, fight my trauma, fight for my children, fight for my voice to be heard, fight for the right to be safe at home, to be safe on the street, for the right to wear what I want to, to not live in fear, for money to support my children and/ or myself. I have to count pennies, and sometimes live on coffee.

• I have to say the right things to get what I need, the truth is not enough, I have to keep repeating what has happened to me, and every time I do I have to contend with the physical and emotional responses my body stores from those memories. I have to fight against my own feelings of vulnerability to keep going.

• I have to endure long court hearings, listen to others describe my life, be judged and categorised. I have to keep retelling my story.

• I have to keep going even when I feel I can’t so that I can rebuild my confidence, and learn to love myself once more, whilst coming to terms with the losses I have faced. I have to do so much and yet still, I am here.

Oasis teams work so hard with all of the issues and experiences faced by women, they inspire me each day as do the women we work for, because I do not know if I could ever be as strong as they are.

The reality for us is that 40 years ago when that murderer in Yorkshire was acting out his misogyny 2 women a week were being murdered by someone meant to love them, and today 2 women are still being murdered each week. Sadly, many more take their own lives because the fight is just too hard.

This is tough stuff to hear, so I thank you for listening… we’re here if you want to talk.