Women Are Sharing Their Public Safety Fears After Disappearance Of Sarah Everard

And they've been pouring out their anger and sharing the fears that her case confirmed online. All women have similar stories, not necessarily of disappearing themselves, but of being harassed, intimidated, and attacked in public spaces while they just try to go about their lives.

While for many men it's jarring to hear, for women, as one person pointed out on Twitter, it's all too commonplace.

"This week is so unrelentingly bleak," @laurapaddison wrote. "I can’t stop thinking about Sarah Everard & all the women who are sharing their stories of harassment, assault and violence. We ALL have these stories and it’s so horribly normalised."

It's also a matter of Everard having done so many of the "right" things for her own safety and still being attacked.

"This Sarah Everard situation is really scaring me, because she literally spoke to her bf on the phone, wore really bright clothing, walked on a main road, was outside before 12am, and she still got killed?" wrote one person. "Do you know how scary as a woman it is to know that?"

And it's not just a list of improvised (and very much not improvised) weapons — although there were a lot of those, from tasers to spray deodorizer to keys to spray paint to guns.

"Do men realise women share their addresses - or the addresses of bars/parks/date locations - with each other on WhatsApp, to keep themselves safe?" wrote one person. "We set up calls with our friends, too. 'If you haven’t heard from me by 11pm, call me. If I don’t answer, call the police.'"

After all, they're the ones we're supposed to be able to trust. But, even when they're not perpetrators, police often come up short in their investigations, as many, many women shared.

"I was walking home one night in Brixton, not far from where Sarah was taken (panicky, looking behind me, as we always are) when three men circled round me, one of them groped me, and they tried to pull me into a car. A passer by came along thank god. The police did nothing," one person wrote.

To which many pointed out that, sure, not all men will attack or harass women — but how do you tell them apart? The suspect in the Sarah Everard case is a police officer!

"Of course #NotAllMen," wrote one person. "But how are we supposed to know which ones? There’s a reason every single woman I know is currently tweeting about #SarahEverard - it’s our worst nightmare come true."

In the wake of the Everard case, U.K. Member of Parliament Jess Phillips read out the names of every woman killed in the nation in the previous year in which a man was convicted or charged as the primary suspect.

It took her four minutes to do.

The lessons on what are the "right things" to do to feel safe, the protocols with friends, the looking behind yourself when walking at night — or not going out after dark at all — the harassment, the violence, it's all wrong, all of it. Women shouldn't need to take such precautions just to exist. And we shouldn't need another victim to bring all that to the fore.