Girls Learn About Personal Safety from an Expert

5 Jun 2019 10:56
Published by: Daniel Almond

Former pupil Christine Morrison who now runs CMA Training, a personal safety and crime prevention consultancy, returned to Bolton School to advise Y10 girls on how best to stay safe.

The girls learnt how 1 in 5 women and 1 in 10 men, during the course of their lives, are stalked. They also discovered that the most common date rape drug is alcohol. They were warned of the perils of Facebook and how it will regularly change its privacy settings which makes it difficult to know how visible your details and photographs are to the general public. The advice was to go to your settings in social media and make sure everything is on maximum privacy levels.

Christine, who was formerly a Police Sergeant with Merseyside Police and trainer for the Home Office, told of the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh, an estate agent who went missing in the 1980s and how her body has never been found. She told how the person she had been due to meet was called Dan Kipper (an anagram of 'kidnapper') and that she had perhaps been too trusting. The prime suspect is John Cannan, who came across as charming but had a history of turning nasty and a conviction for rape. Christine warned the girls to always be cautious and to PLAN (Prepare; Look confident; Act to avoid risk and danger; Never assume it won’t be you) and also told of the government’s 'run, hide and tell' anti-terrorism campaign.

In an interactive presentation, she apprised girls of places that they are vulnerable such as on social media, on your own, on your phone (the number one crime in London is phone theft), in unfamiliar places, on holiday and when you have drunk alcohol. She told them they could reduce risk by thinking about their appearance, the area they are in, the accessories they are carrying, how confident they look – she advised them to think about how you come across and to try to not look vulnerable.

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