WATCH your drink. Accompany your friend to the bathroom. Stick to well-lit streets. Carry your keys in your hand.
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Newcastle Domestic Violence Committee secretary Colleen Mullins and Lake Macquarie Domestic Violence Committee chairperson Louise Hawkins said women have been encouraged since childhood to take safety precautions their male peers aren't.
"Taking photos of the taxi ID and sending it to your friend in case you're raped on the way home," Ms Mullins added.
"I think it's in the UK recently where they've launched a buddy system where you can call a helpline and say you're walking home alone and keep them on the phone for the whole walk," Ms Hawkins said.
"These are things we should not have to do. There's still that victim blaming, we're still preparing women to keep themselves safe from a very young age."
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Ms Mullins said discussion after high profile assaults and murders often focused on what victims might have been wearing, where they were walking and how late at night it was.
"This is the real concern because our most significant statement is men shouldn't rape, it shouldn't matter what you're wearing."
Ms Hawkins said rape existed in the 1950s, when women wore pleated skirts below the knees and the 1800s, when women wore several layers of clothing,
"Rape has nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with rapists, but we still comment on how she looked... it still plays on that narrative that somehow the woman was to blame."
Ms Hawkins said statistics showed one in three women have experienced some sort of sexual assault before the age of 18 - and those are only the assaults that are reported.
"If you think about your own social circle and how many people this experience has touched, it's really, really quite significant."
Ms Mullins and Ms Hawkins are helping to organise this year's combined Newcastle and Lake Macquarie Reclaim The Night event, which is being held online.
The event Facebook pages feature regular posts, some with guest speakers, this week. People are asked to post a selfie on Friday with a poster (templates are available) and the hashtag #reclaimthehunter, explaining why they are participating.
"The concept of Reclaim The Night is really a protest march to say we should be able to walk our streets wearing what we want and whatever time of night and still be safe," Ms Mullins said.
NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research figures showed there were 274 sexual assaults in Lake Macquarie and 256 sexual assaults in Newcastle from July 2020 to June 2021.
There were 244 indecent assaults, acts of indecency and other sexual offences in Lake Macquarie in the same timeframe and 221 in Newcastle.
Ms Mullins welcomed school sectors signing up to a shared Statement of Intent to tackle the issues of consent and sexual assault.
"We need to change men's concept of their entitlement and what consent is and if we can shift that concept in our adolescent generations now, then hopefully we will be seeing different statistics in the future."
Ms Hawkins said men also needed to "call out other men".
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