Murder of young teacher Sabina Nessa makes women in London worry it could have
“Police said that she left her home to meet her friend in a local pub and it was just five minutes’ walk for her. We often go to this pub and it is also around five, 10 minutes walk for us. You feel it might have happened to you. It might happen anywhere,” Aliya Isaeva, a young mother who has been living in the area for about two years, told CNN.
Isaeva and her husband moved to Kidbrooke because it felt like a good place to raise a family; a quiet London suburb, less than 20 minutes by train from central London. As a prime commuter neighborhood, Kidbrooke has benefited from huge investments in recent years. Newly-built apartment buildings with carefully landscaped lawns surround the train station. Across the tracks, many more are being built.
Isaeva and her friend and fellow mum Sueda Ciftci said they visit the park where the 28-year-old teacher was killed last Friday at least once a week. They’ve always felt safe around there. “We chose this area because there are lots of parks. It’s a good family area,” Ciftci said.
Many struggled to hold back their tears when Nessa’s sister Jebina Yasmin Islam told them about the pain she and her family experienced. “This feels like we’re stuck in a bad dream and we can’t get out of it,” she said. “We have lost our sister, my parents lost their daughter and my girls have lost such a brilliant, loving, caring auntie.”
Gender violence epidemic
“It’s just an unending cycle of violence against women and it’s really depressing,” Jamie Klingler, one of the co-founders of the Reclaim These Streets campaign group, told CNN.
Klingler said the murder of Nessa showed nothing has changed in the six months since Everard was killed in May. “Violence against women is not [in] the top three priorities of any police department in England or Wales. We don’t even rank. Nobody is taking this seriously,” she said.
According to the safety app WalkSafe, there were 112 violent and sex crimes reported within a 1.5 kilometer (0.9 miles) radius of the park where Nessa was killed, just in July, the most recent month for which police figures are available.
“Right now the [local] council is giving out panic alarms and they’re giving out pieces of paper saying you have to walk with…
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