“At worst I would have been murdered.”
Real Housewives of Cheshire star Deborah Davies has said she was “triggered” by recent coverage and conversations about male violence against women due to an experience she had years ago.
Taking to Instagram, Debbie explained how she still remembers one night in 1987 when a man tried to force her into a car as she was walking home from a nightclub.
Revisiting the spot where the incident took place, she shared a picture of herself all wrapped up on Dialstone Lane in Offerton, Stockport.
“With lots of recent press coverage about women feeling unsafe walking alone at night it triggered a memory for me that still gives me nightmares,” the medium wrote in the caption.
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“This isn’t the usual glam looking post that most of you see on socials, this is me standing in the very same spot that a man tried to take me from in 1987 and force me into his car.”
She then recalled walking home alone at about 1am when the terrifying ordeal occurred.
“A car slowly drove up next to me, a man got out and what happened next was your worst nightmare,” she said. “I fought with him as he pushed me head first into the passenger seat, I remember a rope in the footwell.”
Fortunately, a group of men in a passing car intervened and scared her attempted abductor off.
“A group of lads were in a car about to drive past and they realised something was very wrong, they did a u turn & as they pulled up behind the car the man let go of me & drove off with the passenger door still open,” she continued, predicting: “At best I would have been raped I think, at worst I would have been murdered.”
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The reality star appealed for help from her followers in tracking down the men who she believes saved her life.
“After all these years I’d like to find them & say thank you… Whoever you are you saved my life because I would never have fully recovered,” she wrote.
“Please share this to your stories, I’m sure they’ve never forgotten what they saw that night.”
Gender-based violence has been widely covered in the news and on social media recently – both here and in Britain – in the wake of the murder of 23-year-old Ashling Murphy, who was killed whilst jogging in Tullamore earlier this month.
Activists there highlighted the similarities between the “she was going for a run” narrative surrounding Ashling’s murder and the “she was walking home” narrative surrounding the murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard in South London last year.
