Daisy Forster says she's still looking for answers as police are yet to identify the suspect involved in her attack. Her song, SWaN or Safety for Women at Night, aims to share her experience. Abby Hook reports.
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00:00At least one in 12 women will be a victim of violence against women and girls every year.
00:07That's two million every year.
00:09And in 2023, Daisy Foster was one of them.
00:18And this is the song she's now written to raise awareness and hopefully find closure.
00:22You get taught certain things to try and prevent it or to protect yourself
00:28and in that situation, I don't feel like we could have done more.
00:32And again, this is why we wanted to include these lyrics into the song itself,
00:38because I feel like that is something that women worldwide are told.
00:43And that itself isn't enough to stop this from happening.
00:46So this is why we say we know that it's not in the lyrics.
00:50It literally states, we know it's not all men, but one's enough.
00:53One's enough for it to be an issue.
00:54You can only do so much as a woman to prevent it yourself.
01:10The artist from Broadstairs was attacked in October 2023
01:14when she was walking down a road in Birmingham.
01:17She went to university there and she was doing, as all girls are told,
01:21walking home in a group.
01:23Daisy says one of her friends was grabbed by a man and she jumped to her defence.
01:27Daisy was then attacked.
01:29I had some injuries that I needed to get treated with in hospital.
01:34But that was it. We got the police involved.
01:37They did a search of the area.
01:39Nothing ever got found.
01:40Never heard anything back from them, really, apart from the day after.
01:45And that was the end of it.
01:47West Midlands Police said after investigating,
01:49they weren't able to identify the suspect,
01:52but said tackling this kind of violence was a priority.
01:56Daisy's swan song, which stands for Safety for Women at Night,
02:00is key to the type of awareness she's trying to raise.
02:05We've decided to put all of the proceeds from the song
02:07towards the NIA project.
02:09And when we were trying to find charities
02:12that we could put these proceeds towards,
02:14nearly all of them were solely for domestic violence.
02:18It is a massive issue and, of course, they need the support.
02:20But I think we need to see kind of an uprise of more charities
02:24that will support people that are harassed on the street,
02:27that need that kind of service.
02:30One of the only charities to offer this support,
02:33and Kent's first and only of its kind,
02:35is the Tunbridge Wells Reclaim the Night Walk,
02:38led by local councillors and activists.
02:40We can do all the right things and still be attacked.
02:45There is a commitment to bring down violence against women and girls
02:49by half in a decade, which is really positive.
02:56I do believe that there will be a cross-government,
02:59cross-department response to this,
03:01and more policing is necessary, more community policing.
03:06Staying silent can often feel like the only choice.
03:09But by Daisy sharing her story
03:11and giving her song such an elegant title,
03:14it highlights what can, in reality, be so brutal.
03:19It kind of hits home, because for many women,
03:22this could be their last moments
03:24or their final moments of the things that they remember.