Asking for Angela four years on: Are you safe?

Has this innovative safety scheme really helped people feel better protected?

The latest ONS statistics show that the number of sexual offences recorded by police is still on the increase for the fourth year in a row. Part of the response by venues was to apply a pioneering safety scheme from 2016 onwards. 

Fired up by seeing the increase of reported sexual assaults while working with the police, Hayley Crawford launched the award-winning campaign.  

The codeword: Angela. 

The idea: a campaign poster inside every pub’s bathroom to give both genders a codeword to notify staff when they’re in danger or feel uncomfortable. 

“Every bartender,” Hayley suggests, “should be trained to get customers out safely if somebody says the codeword.”  

Adele Bonavita, a bartender of 3 years, however, has never received any special training in all the bars she has worked in. “I know we support the initiative because I saw the poster in the bathroom,” she says. 

"We’re trained for fire emergencies, but this much-needed safety scheme isn’t implicated enough.” 

Fortunately, neither she nor her colleagues have ever been asked for Angela. 

Sophie Walker, Chief Executive of the Young Women’s Trust, wants to see more than staff training. 

She says: “I’d like to see a world where we’re removing men from pubs and restaurants for making women feel unsafe, rather than it falling on women to find ways to remove themselves from those spaces.” 

The news story was written for a pilot magazine called Fired Up. Along with my role as picture editor of the magazine, I produced pieces adopting a solutions-based approach to global issues.