Clodagh Finn: Don’t just ask for Angela, demand action on abuse

The emergence of a market in glass covers to stop someone popping a date-rape drug into your drink is a stark indicator as to how weary women feel at night. Picture: iStock

It’s a well-intentioned and noble move, yet I can’t help feeling a bit deflated by news that the ‘Ask for Angela’ campaign is now being extended to music festivals.

The initiative aims to encourage anyone who feels unsafe in a social situation to discreetly seek help by going to the bar and asking for Angela. Then, all going to plan, trained staff will help them make an exit.

What’s not to praise in a scheme that offers women and girls — men too, but let’s be honest, it’s mostly the former — a way out of a threatening situation?

It was considered such a good idea when first introduced in England in 2016 that it has spread to several venues here. Since December, some 350 bars and clubs in Northern Ireland have also signed up and, this week, the PSNI announced it was being extended to music festivals.

Nobody could disagree with this sentiment from chief superintendent Davy Beck: “Everybody should be able to attend local festivals and cultural events this summer and feel safe. Unfortunately, we know that that is not always the case due to a small minority of those who target vulnerable people with predatory behaviours.” 

But haven’t we got the whole thing the wrong way around?

Rather than helping women and girls find their way out of potentially threatening situations, shouldn’t we be tackling the people threatening them in the first place?

Of course, anything that helps a potential victim to dodge a potential harasser is a good thing, but when will we start to tackle the root cause of the problem — that is, the person behaving abusively?

In the US, the campaign is a little different. Anyone who feels intimidated can ask for an angel shot, a shorthand request for help. Bar staff are also trained to scan the venue and offer an angel shot to anyone who looks uncomfortable.

Laudable as the Ask for Angela and angel shots campaigns are, they are victim-makers rather than perpetrator-tacklers

While this is admirable, why are they not trained to call out the bad behaviour of the person who is responsible for that discomfort in the first place?

Having said that, putting so much responsibility on bar staff is fraught and you don’t want a situation where a thuggish patron takes it out on a member of staff. That makes two potential victims. 

And, laudable as the Ask for Angela and angel shots campaigns are, they are victim-makers rather than perpetrator-tacklers.

Why put the onus on the person being wronged to take action, rather than call out the wrong-doer? If threatening behaviour is not tolerated in social situations, it won’t be long before it changes — for the better.

And women — alas, it is too often women — are so weary. For many, many decades, it has fallen to them to protect themselves on a night out.

Don’t wear a neckline too low, or a hemline too high. Travel in twos and threes. Don’t leave your drink unattended. Don’t leave with a stranger. Carry a mobile phone/personal alarm/key with the blade bit held between your whitening knuckles.

The list goes on and on and with each defensive action, the world gets a little bit more restricted, a little bit smaller. The protective measures are amended, often very imaginatively, any time a new threat appears on the horizon. 

The emergence of a market in reusable glass covers to stop some degenerate popping a date-rape drug into your drink is just one sad example.

You can also get coasters, nail varnish or special cups to detect the presence of certain drugs. I can’t even articulate the spirit-deadening effect of such a trade, although if it helps just one person, it’s a win.

On the other hand, it is a real step forward to see the Government is tackling drink-spikers in new legislation that will make it a standalone offence, punishable by up to 10 years in jail. At last, the blame is being put firmly on the guilty party.

In Northern Ireland, the Ask for Angela campaign is being extended to music festivals. File picture

Back in the summer-festival mosh pits, I truly hope the Ask for Angela campaign will make a difference. If nothing else, it heightens awareness of the hoops so many women (and some men) have to go through on a daily basis just to feel safe.

Feeling safe, however, is not at all the same as being safe.

I recall being at a large outdoor event along with a veritable throng of other women. But safety in numbers there was not.

As the dancing and the jostling and the communal celebrations hotted up, we went with it until a crowd-crush toppled a few of us.

Within seconds, a group of nearby men were down too, engaging in a sickening grope-fest. It lasted maybe a minute before the collective strength of the female group tilted back and forth like one of those roly-poly, round-bottomed dolls and we were all upright again. We were able to see off the lowlifes and chalk it down to experience.

What interests me now, many years later, is the mindset of those men. How quickly they acted when they spotted an ‘opportunity’ to manhandle. There, perhaps, is the nub of it; the idea that a woman’s weakness is a man’s advantage. Did they go home that night and think that they ‘got lucky’, or had nearly done so?

I wonder, too, what became of those men and how they treated the women in their lives in the many years that have elapsed since then. More generally, I have thought about how to tackle attitudes like that, on an individual level and as a society.

Calling it out is a very important first step. That doesn’t start at the bar counter when you are asking for Angela, but many decades before that.

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For some time now, we have been talking about the need to update relationship and sex education in schools.

Here’s hoping we don’t get convulsed in a conversation about the rights and wrongs of talking about pornography in primary schools, or the too-explosive-to-handle topic of transgenderism.

What we really need to start talking about everywhere — in schools, at home, in the community — is how to teach our children to show dignity, respect, and empathy.

Here’s a 2022 statistic from the UN to ponder. “ Violence against women and girls remains the most pervasive human rights violation in the world, affecting more than 1 in 3 women — a figure that has remained largely unchanged over the last decade.” 

It might be naïve, but I still hold out hope we can do something to change that in the next decade. To do so, we will have to do more than just ask for Angela; we’ll have to stand up and demand that the blame be shifted to those responsible.