Victim status

I was riveted to read about Ione Wells, an Oxford student, aged 20, who was savagely attacked on a London street. She then wrote about the experience for her university paper and has now hit the national news, prompting other students to write about their experiences too. Ione has kick-started her career as a journalist, and discovered that a woman reporter can often do well by cannibalising her own life, as long as she is a good writer, which Ione seems to be.

Her story was interesting to me because in 1982, just after I came to London, I was attacked while walking home in south London. It was a violent assault; the perpetrator tried to strangle me before attempting rape. Like Ione, I was rescued by a local person.

I was attacked by an Afro-Caribbean youth at a time when mugging and assaults on women were rife in south London. As a new arrival, I was astonished and dismayed by the violence on the streets around Brixton and Stockwell.