Sabina Nessa was named on Tuesday as the woman murdered in Kidbrooke, South East London last week. Now that she’s been named, we have to keep saying her name. She’s Sabina Nessa, and her life was taken too soon.
Sabina is no longer just another headline. She’s a local teacher, beloved by pupils and described by the headteacher as kind and dedicated. She’s a sister, daughter, cousin, cat-owner, friend. She is loved, she is missed, and she will always be. Although the murder barely made the headlines when her body was found, flowers had already started to be left by local women, below the police tape cordoning off Cator Park.
According to the Metropolitan Police, a 38-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of her murder. A woman is killed in the UK every three days by a man. Each and every one of them, like Sabina, was loved, is missed, and should be remembered. Each woman killed is too many women lost to male violence.
Many of these tragedies take place behind closed doors. As the recent tragedy in Killamarsh shows, when Terri Harris and her children John Paul, 13, and Lacey, 11, and Lacey’s friend Connie, 11, were killed during a sleepover, most violence against women and children happens at home.
But while police try to reassure us by saying murder or abduction from a public place is rare, the string of women murdered when they were just walking home feels increasingly regular.
The disappearance of Sarah Everard in our local neighbourhood in March was what prompted me and other women in Clapham Common to start Reclaim These Streets and organise a vigil. Her face was on every tree, post box and lamppost on my street, and I felt afraid and vulnerable. It was a constant reminder that there are certain streets that, as women, we avoid, places we don’t go after dark, steps we take to stay safe, and that even the places we think are safe to walk through or go to, the worst can happen.
Since her death, the list of women killed in public spaces has kept growing longer – Julia James, Maria Jane Rawlings, Sabina Nessa. And whether or not the worst happens on our own walks home, women are always afraid that something might. Every woman I know has experienced street harassment, or been followed home, keys clutched between fingers. We’ve all asked our friends to text us when they get home. Because for women, keeping safe is a constant burden.
And just as cops told women in the 1970s, when the Yorkshire Ripper was at large, to stay indoors for their own safety, police knocked doors around Clapham Common suggesting women stay home after dark. In Kidbrooke, police handed out advice to a community meeting after Sabina’s death suggesting women avoid walking alone at night and stick to well-lit routes.
Women said it decades ago in Reclaim The Night marches, and we’re saying it now too: it’s wrong that the response to violence against women still requires women to behave differently. We’re tired of always carrying that burden, and we know it doesn’t work.
Tragically, women who stick to the main roads still go missing.
For the community in Kidbrooke, nothing will bring Sabina back. They feel shocked, afraid and angry that their neighbourhood no longer feels safe. For now, they’re focusing on organising the vigil to honour Sabina and express solidarity as a community. On Friday, I’ll be joining them at 7pm to light a candle in Sabina’s memory. Together, we’ll stand in defiance at the idea that ending violence against women should be women’s problem alone to solve.