A schoolgirl felt "uncomfortable" when a grown man "complimented" her outside Home Bargains.
Alexia, Camille and Cara helped craft Liverpool Council's new strategy for tackling violence against women and girls. They're only 15, and already they speak openly about the risk of rape and sexual assault. Sat around a table in St Julie's Catholic High School, they reeled off experience after experience of men and boys harassing them, belittling them and making them uncomfortable - "low level" behaviours that can become something worse.
They told the ECHO about the grown man sitting next to them on an otherwise empty bus. The boys calling them ugly if they reject their advances. The middle-aged men asking where they're getting off the train. The group of lads huddled around the door of a shop, laughing, pointing and making inappropriate comments. And a flurry of messages from boys if the girls dare challenge their mate's behaviour.
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Often they're in school uniform when men and boys do these things. Often the acts are so subtle, they feel unable to challenge them lest they be accused of causing a scene. Camille remembers a man in his 60s telling her "you're beautiful" as she walked into Home Bargains. She said: "I am a child. He probably meant that with the nicest intentions, but it made me feel so uncomfortable. You think, 'Ew, why's that the first thing that's come into your mind?'
"I didn't say anything back - I usually just go and rant to someone about it later - but if I were to say something back, he'd probably just be like, 'Oh well I was only trying to pay you a compliment', which you find is the reaction with lots of people. It's never anything to do with your intelligence or how you are as a person, it's always to do with your appearance."
At the all-girls school in Woolton, they feel safe. "The time when they don't feel safe is on the journey to and from school", according to Kate Rooney, head of St Julie's lower school. Just thinking of the bus ride fills Alexia, Camille and Cara with "dread" because they don't know what they'll face.
It could be jeers from boys attending other schools, or a grown man giving "weird looks" and trying to make eye contact. Or they could see adults nodding along as young boys express support for Andrew Tate, a self-proclaimed misogynist influencer currently detained in Romania over allegations of rape and human trafficking.
Trish Chisam is a pastoral support worker at St Julie's and the school's domestic abuse champion. She deals with problems students have outside of school, helping those who live in domestic abuse environments and who've been victims of sexual assault.
The school also has sixth form students who act as a go-between if students feel uncomfortable speaking directly to a member of staff, something St Julie's plans to extend across year groups. Trish said: "It's hard because we don't know what our young people go home to.
"Once they leave us, we don't know what experiences happen to them unless, obviously they tell us, so the thing we try to do is make school a safe place for them, where they would feel comfortable to disclose if they were worried or if anything has happened to them."
When they're not listened to, or their experience is downplayed by the adult they confide in, or they're even blamed for it happening, it knocks their confidence and fills them with doubt. Cara said: "I don't carry on with trying to explain the situation. I feel ashamed. If that's constantly happening, fewer and fewer people are going to speak up about it."
Camille added: "You feel embarrassed and stupid because you're like, 'Oh, was it really that minor a thing I just brought up and made a big deal about?'. Like Cara said, you just think, 'Well, if something like that happens again, I'm not going to bring it up', and then something worse could happen."
Left unchecked, men's attitudes towards women can escalate into physical violence, leading to the murders of marketing executive Sarah Everard, Zara Aleena and Sabina Nessa in 2021 and 2022. Or in Merseyside, three mums - N'taya Elliott-Cleverley, Rose Marie Tinton, and Helen Joy - were murdered in their homes by men they trusted in the space of just four days in January 2021.
There were 34,421 domestic abuse-related incidents reported to Merseyside Police in 2020-21, roughly 94 a day on average, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Police recorded 26,789 of these as crimes, more than double the 11,766 recorded in 2015-16.
After the murders of Olivia Pratt-Korbel, Ashley Dale and Karen Dempsey last year, Mayor Joanne Anderson warned of an "epidemic of male violence against women and girls", saying "we cannot allow girls to grow up in a climate of fear". Data recorded by Liverpool Council found roughly a third of women in the city will or have experienced violence in their lifetime.
Each example leaves a mark on the students and teachers at St Julie's, who think confronting misogyny should start even earlier in primary school, when some of the narratives and attitudes that follow them through life first appear. Trish said: "If we nip it in the bud at low level, then it never escalates. If you deal with that vocabulary, that 'banter', then the rest of it is so far away.
"It's the age old saying, if a girl gets pushed over on the playground by a boy, 'Oh it's only because he likes you' - that's instantly telling a young girl at that age that if somebody likes you, they will be violent or abusive towards her. So it needs to start from the bottom."
Earlier this month, Liverpool Council announced a three-year strategy for tackling violence against women and girls. It has five key aims - securing sustainable funding, improving responses to victims, survivors and perpetrators, strengthening governance and accountability, and changing the narrative to allow women and girls to feel confident calling out and challenging victim shaming, misogyny and inappropriate behaviour from boys and men.
Alexia has already received backlash - amid much praise - for participating in the council's consultation on the strategy, and speaking about it in an interview with ITV Granada. She said a boy she didn't know came up to her after the interview broadcast, asking her "What's your opinion on rape?".
She said: "You don't hear that in school, so to hear it from someone you don't know who's your own age, you don't know how to respond because if you say something back, they will just come at you. It's just sad they don't have that same level of education on it. If there's only a couple of girls and a big group of lads, they'll all come up and try to intimidate you."
There's work to be done, and the staff and students who spoke to the ECHO at St Julie's are clear men and boys have a role to play in challenging inappropriate behaviour, even if they don't blame all men. But between them, they could only think of one example where they saw a boy stand up for a girl not related to him.
A boy on the bus used to shout Alexia's surname "every single time" he saw her until another boy told him, "Oh shut up, it's not even funny". Alexia said: "Ever since then, he hasn't done it. He doesn't say anything, he doesn't even look at me. If people did that more often, it'd make a huge difference."
Camille added: "That's all it takes, just going, 'Stop it, that's not funny'. That's all it takes. We're not asking for a lot, we're asking to be kept safe."
Kate hopes, by changing the narrative, the strategy will change men and boy's understanding of the impact and consequences of their own behaviour, because they may not know "if nobody tells you that's our experience". The head of St Julie's lower school said: "Highlighting that level of fear that you've got travelling to and from school allows the young boys to make better choices that are simple and have a massive impact on how safe you feel on your way to school."
The schoolgirls are glad something is being done to tackle the problem of violence against women and girls, even if it has taken until Liverpool has women in each of the roles of Mayor, Police and Crime Commissioner, and Merseyside Police Chief Constable.
Camille said: "It's nice to know that something is being done and we are making a difference. If we're 15 now, then hopefully by the time we're older, if we have children, we know that they're in a safer environment than previously or now."
Kate said: "What was so powerful about the strategy is it felt like you'd been heard, like you were able to have a voice and you were able to contribute to something which has been shared across the city. The majority of men are respectable, on your side, listening to you, so for them to have those little bits that will make a massive difference is important."
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