Chch women will form watch groups

Press, 27 June 1983, Page 1

Chch women will form watch groups

• Christchurch women plan to follow the example of a group of Aucklanders by setting up neighbourhood watch groups to curb the number of violent attacks against women. The Christchurch Y.W.C.A. has called a public meeting next week with the aim of setting up neighbourhood watch groups and telephone networks. The executive director of the Y.W.C.A., Mrs Anne Evans, said yesterday that the meeting had been prompted by similar meetings in Auckland in the last two weeks. The Auckland meetings, which led to the formation of neighbourhood watch groups in several suburbs, resulted from a violent attack on a St Mary’s Bay woman. Mrs Evans said the Y.W.C.A. had been worried about the growing number of violent attacks on women for some time. Women and violence had been chosen as the organisation’s theme for 1983. She said the size of the problem of violence had been brought home since the Christchurch Rape Crisis Centre shifted to the Y.W.C.A.’s rooms in Bealey Avenue in April. “The number of calls they

get on any one day brought home just how many attacks on women there are. It is about time we did something about it,” she said. At the meeting, which will be held on Monday, July 4, at the Y.W.C.A., at 7.30 p.m., a crime-preven-tion officer will give advice on home security, self-de-fence instructors will speak about self-defence, and a Rape Crisis Centre spokeswoman will give advice on the help and support services available to

the victims of violent attacks. Mrs Evans said that if enough women were interested, they could set up neighbourhood watch groups, telephone networks so that women could keep a check on one another, and a system of marking “safe houses,” where women could go if they were in trouble. She was still waiting to hear what measures the women who met in Auckland had decided to take.