Charge puts women at risk

It is a decision no woman should have to make. But next year, thousands will have to choose between negotiating the dark streets at night in the safety of a car, or enduring a precarious, inefficient public transport system and a potentially dangerous walk home afterwards.

On Monday, actress Samantha Bond announced she was spearheading a campaign to scrap the congestion charge, saying that women in low-paid jobs would have to choose between their safety and paying £25 a week. Emilia Fox, who appears in Roman Polanski's latest film, The Pianist, added that late-night taxi fares were now so "outrageously expensive that you don't have much choice but to walk when you get off the train or the bus nearest home".

Ken Livingstone may be planning to devote all the money raised to improving our pathetic, limping buses and the Tube, but in a scenario where even he admits there will be no visible improvements for three years, many women will be caught in an impossible situation.

Dirty, deserted stations, badly lit streets, Tube carriages full of drunks, and teeth-grindingly long waits at Tube and bus stops are just some of the easier problems to be confronted. At the other end of the scale is the palpable fear many women feel after dark: the fear of being mugged, raped or even killed.

I was attacked late one night in the City - supposedly one of the safest spots in London - and the experience made me realise how drastically the stakes change after dark.

It sounds ridiculous in a world where emotionally, mentally and financially women are becoming increasingly fearless, but for many of them - and some men - it is horrifyingly routine to feel that tightening of the muscles along the spine when the footsteps come closer and closer behind them on an almost empty street, or experience that chill in the stomach when the drunken stranger lurches up on the Tube.

It was about 10pm, and I had just been to see a play at the Barbican. I decided to take a 10-minute detour, and walk to see my parents, who live near St Paul's. I was quite blasè about walking late at night on my own, and did it all the time. I noticed that a man was following me as I walked through Smithfield, which was deserted.

I wasn't particularly frightened - I wasn't carrying a handbag or mobile, I was wearing sensible shoes, and, not thinking of myself as a typical victim, I looked confident. I reached my parents' house, rang on the bell and waited to be let in.

I became aware of a shadow moving slightly unsteadily in the shadows nearby. My father is a clergyman, and it's not unusual for homeless people to come to his house for sandwiches and a cup of tea, so even then I wasn't unduly alarmed. The door wasn't being answered, I rang on the bell again, and then my attacker came round the corner.

He was young, tall, and smiling pleasantly. Ludicrously, in retrospect, my thoughts at that moment were that he was better turned out than most of the weathered, oddly dressed, often pungent men who would turn up at the door. He walked up to me and said: "Can I ask you a favour?" Then the smile flicked off, and in a lightning movement he grabbed me from behind.

"Can I kiss you?" he said as I started to struggle. It was obvious from the way he was holding me that he was going to rape me, and I could hear screams - in my shocked state it took a while to realise they were coming from me.

Suddenly the front door, which is operated by electronic intercom, opened. We both fell in, him on top of me. I screamed again, and he slapped his hand over my mouth. "Shut up," he growled, "and just get on with it." An explosion of shouting burst out from the top of the stairs. My father had seen what was happening as he let me in on the video intercom, and had rushed to stop the attack, calling out for my brother to help him. I was lucky - my attacker decided I wasn't worth the fight, and turned his energies to making a speedy getaway.

We called the police, who turned up very quickly, but they weren't able to trace him. Physically I was unharmed, but psychologically I was thrust into a state of constant, terrified alertness.

Any time I had to walk down a road after dark, my eyes would scan the people walking in the same direction, working out frantically who looked safe enough to keep close to, and who might pose a threat.

I became completely dependent on hiring taxis to ferry me to within millimetres of my front door, and to wait for those few, heart-stopping seconds
while I fumbled for my keys and then slammed it shut behind me.

As a theatre critic, I frequently travel home at the same time as the actresses, nurses, bar staff, cleaners and waitresses whose plight Samantha Bond and Emilia Fox are highlighting. Now that I live in Tufnell Park, in north London, it costs between £20 and £30 to get a black cab home from the West End.

I believe passionately that it is a fundamental right for women not to have to negotiate that carriage full of late-night drunks, or to have to take the gamble of being followed down an almost deserted dark road. I am in a position where I can assert that right - at a cost. But many women in low-paid jobs who work shifts won't have any other option but to travel by public transport.

Ken Livingstone has an unenviable task in rebuilding our capital's crumbling infrastructure, but he must be forced to abandon the congestion charges and inflated taxi fares that indirectly will put women in danger.