Active or passive?
Last week I attended an online event being hosted by the VAWG (Violence Against Women and Girls) Community Safety Officer of my local council. The title was ‘Become an Active Bystander’. We have all found ourselves in a situation where we are concerned about a woman’s safety in a public setting, but do not know what is the best approach. We might see them being harassed or worse by a man, but are unsure if intervention is appropriate.
The woman leading the event started off with a brainstorming exercise: what examples could we give as barriers to intervening? They included:
- Not wanting to make things worse
- A personal fear of getting hurt
- Other people are also observing but doing nothing
- Hoping that someone else will step in
- Not knowing quite what to do
- Having previous experiences of intervention that did not improve the situation
- ‘It’s nothing to do with me’
- It is triggering memories of a personal experience
We were introduced to a ‘Bystander Toolkit’. This had three levels of intervention:
Disrupt
The main aim of this approach is to create a distraction. Examples might include pretending you know the person you perceive at risk, so going up to her and saying excitedly: ‘I don’t believe it – it must be two years since we left school/were on that girly outing together/Lizzy will be thrilled to know I’ve bumped into one of her old uni friends.’
Another option is to go up to the person and ask to check the time/where a street is located/where to change stations if on the tube etc.
If on the tube or a train you can offer the person a seat or move to physically stand in the way of her and the person who is bothering her.
Involve others
There are many options here depending on the circumstances. If in a pub or other public venue you can involve the manager or any staff member. Speaking discreetly to another bystander is an option, which might lead to getting other people engaged in what is happening. A group of people showing concern or interest is obviously much more powerful than an individual. And one can always call the police.
Direct
This option is only viable if you consider it safe to intervene: you can challenge the offensive behaviour by calling someone out, for example by asking them to stop or move away from the woman. You can take the woman to one side and talk to her, thus breaking the flow of abuse or threats.
I was discussing all this with my daughter and she proposed a tactic that draws attention to the disruptor themselves rather than focusing on the woman or the abuser. You set an alarm on your phone to go off immediately with the sound set as loud as possible. The noise serves as a distraction and you follow it up by apologising loudly to all and sundry (including the person you are concerned about) with comments such as ‘Oh no, I forget to take the washing out/am late to collect my son/I’m supposed to be at the vet with our dog’. The options for these are endless.
Postscript: I gather there was a recent episode in The Archers where a woman approaches the barman in a pub and ‘asks for Angela’. Sadly he has no idea what she is talking about but tells his female colleague, who springs into action and rushes over to the woman and disrupts the threatening situation with aplomb.