Christina Gower, 26, one of the women of Piddington, has said safety fears should “never be dismissed as fearmongering simply because they make others uncomfortable.” She said campaigners have been criticised for citing safety concerns in their opposition to plans to house 1,256 asylum seekers next to the Oxfordshire village.
Miss Gower said she was followed home by a migrant when she was 15 years old, and vowed to keep fighting to raise awareness.
Campaigner cites personal experience
Miss Gower said: “We’ve received criticism for using women’s fears about safety as part of our campaign against MOD Bicester.
“My fears come from personal experience and I will not apologise for them.
“There is a difference between creating fear and having genuine reasons to feel afraid.
“Women’s safety concerns should never be dismissed as fearmongering because they make others uncomfortable”.
She described the incident from her teenage years: “When I was 15, I was walking along a very fast road, in broad daylight, when a migrant male approached me and told me to have sex with him.
“He followed me home, but I did get home safely, thankfully.
“I believe that it's because I was on that busy road that I was safe, and we don't have that here in Piddington. We don't have that security.
“When we spoke to rural policing, they said to us that it will take up to 45 minutes for them to get here, and the best thing we can do for ourselves is to run and hide."
Police commissioner warns of crime increase
Thames Valley Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Barber said it is “naïve” not to expect an increase in “violent and sexual offences” around the proposed site.
In a letter to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Mr Barber said: “We must expect an increase in crime.
“We have seen this in asylum hotels and the size of the proposed camp near Bicester will only increase the scale of the problem.
“It is naïve to consider that such a large population of single men will not bring with it a greater risk of violent and sexual offences”.
He said in an interview on GB News: “What we've seen in the past, certainly in Thames Valley, where we've had asylum hotels in the past, they do generate some crime, if nothing else between groups of asylum seekers [themselves].
“You've got people coming from all over the world from various different backgrounds.
“There is some inevitability of an increase in crime when you put that many people in a confined space and expect them to all rub along with each other.”
Women take concerns to Parliament
Nine women from Piddington travelled to Parliament on Wednesday to demand Labour ditch the plans. They sat in the front row of the public gallery as MPs debated Labour’s plan, then met with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, weeks after she visited the village.
The women compared the Government’s silence to the betrayal of grooming gang victims, and Andy Burnham and Shabana Mahmood were accused of using “class as a weapon” to ignore warnings that they will “suffer” at the hands of men “from cultures where women are treated worse than animals”.
Miss Gower said: “So the fact that he's used that language, it really just validates our concerns and our fears. And our fears, speaking of fears, is actually something we've received a lot of criticism for.
“It's so, so frustrating to be ignored by an elected government.
“I was there on Wednesday in the gallery at Parliament.
“At any point, any of them could have come to speak to us, but they refused to.
“Seven times now, Andy Burnham said, 'Yes, I will listen to the people of Piddington,' but he hasn't.
“He's ignored us. He's ignored all of our concerns. And it's re- yeah, really, really frustrating. It's about time this Labour government put its taxpayers and its British residents first, as the priority."
