Jaya Gajparia: Do I know I’m scared? I was in Fryent Park days before the sisters were murdered

Fryent Country Park in northwest London has over 100 hectares of rolling fields and small woods, divided in two by a busy road. This is the park where in June 2020, two women were murdered. The park is nestled in the London Borough of Brent, a borough celebrated for being one of the most culturally diverse boroughs in the UK.

Fryent Country Park, London

During the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, I visited the park most mornings around 6 am. I found the silence in nature soothing during a time of exceptional incomprehension and grief brought on by the global health pandemic. I would run through the woods, taking solace in the quiet presence of the trees in the early mornings. Once I’d reach the top of the hill, I would usually spend fifteen minutes stretching.

However, one morning, I looked up and noticed a man 5 or 6 meters away from me, perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties appearing to take photographs of me. There was no one else around, there usually isn’t. I asked him to stop, telling him it is inappropriate and demand that he deletes the photos. I don’t know if he does. The following morning, I felt a resistance entering the woods for my routine morning run. I can’t quite explain why. I lack the words. All I know is that I felt unsafe.  Still, I tried twice to enter the woods, attempting to confront this newfound fear but I quickly traded the park for the main roads. I never went back.

Ten days later, two women were murdered in this park. They are sisters Nicole Smallman aged 27 and Bibaa Henry aged 46. They are Black.

Two Metropolitan Police officers on duty assigned to the murder scene shared selfies of the murders in two separate WhatsApp groups. In one, with 17 other officers, they referred to the sisters as “dead birds”. The second WhatsApp group was titled “covid c***s”.

On the 6th June 2020, Nicole and Bibaa were in Fryent Country Park with their friends celebrating Nicole’s birthday. As the night drew to a close, their friends left the sisters to continue their birthday celebrations. Images taken from the sisters’ phones captured them dancing in the field under the starlit night. Soon after they were murdered.

A plaque commemorating Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman at Fryent Park

As I reflect on my own experiences of harm, what emerges is the significance of how we talk about them. The way harm is spoken about shapes whether we, as women and girls, are able to name it and whether we feel able to respond. It is not just the harm itself, but how it is framed, held, and communicated that determines how we come to understand it, and what we believe we are allowed to do with that understanding. Vera-Gray (2016) argues that language can either silence or empower women to identify harm while some feminist scholars insist that women should treat every instance of intrusion as potentially dangerous (Bowman, 1993; Thomason, 1994). I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been warned not to go into the woods alone. Family, friends, even strangers have shared stories of men flashing themselves, of suspicious figures loitering, of the homeless man who lives in his car at the top of the park. These stories take root in my subconscious, becoming signals of danger in public space. And yet, I believe we should collectively resist being pushed out and insist that women and girls must have access to nature, especially in urban cities. It is our human right to occupy public space whether we are navigating city streets or seeking solace in green spaces.

But we must not overlook the added injustice, which is the responsibility that falls disproportionately on the woman or girl who experiences harassment to report it, as though the burden of accountability lies solely with her, rather than with the systems that enable such harm. When she is unable to speak about it, she may internalise not only the trauma of the experience itself, but also feelings of confusion, guilt, and the fear that her silence might leave others at risk. Going back to May 2020, I didn’t even recognise that my sense of unease in Fryent Country Park stemmed from that earlier intrusion of the man taking photographs of me. It is only through writing that I uncovered this connection.

Experiences like these highlight the different ways women and girls (un)consciously strategise safety in public spaces. The online world, however, presents its own unique challenges, where the risks of harm and the need for vigilance are just as pressing if not more so. For instance, Amnesty International’s research reveals alarming statistics that women of colour (Black, Asian, Latinx and mixed-race) are 34% more likely than white women to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets and Black women, specifically, are 84% more likely to be targeted.

It is here that the term intersectionality coined by American academic Kimberle Crenshaw, is important to how we think about the diverse experiences of women of colour in urban cityscapes. The term refers to the intersecting structures of power that shape our lived experiences, highlighting how the positioning of women of colour at the intersection of race and gender makes our experiences of violence, sexual assault, and institutional response ontologically, physically, and qualitatively distinct not only from those of white women, but also from one another. This is not only about the experience of harm, but also the continuation of harm especially when those meant to protect us, the police, fail to do so. An independent review of the London Metropolitan Police in 2022 revealed that the failures to protect women and girls were compounded with a systemic culture of racism, misogyny and homophobia.

The unrelenting wreckage of misogyny and racism leaves me with old disappointment and deep despair. Is it that I didn’t know I was scared or is it that being scared has become the norm?