Homeless women face violent attacks and being "forced to do things they don't really want to do" with men they barely know, a charity boss who slept rough has said.
Last month, Esther Project founder Lianne Kirkman spent a night on the streets of Bristol as part of a 10-day sleepout challenge across the UK. In the rain, she searched to find a safe place to sleep - and found there was nowhere remotely safe for her to pitch up. Many women find themselves staying with often abusive strangers for this very reason, she explained - putting them in another kind of danger.
Lianne told Bristol Live that she had to find a space in her friend's back garden "because we walked around Bristol for hours, trying to find somewhere safe and sheltered to sleep, but it just felt so unsafe (and very wet) to sleep in the main city". She added: "The reality is, women often don't bed down on the streets, so women's homelessness remains a hidden problem."
On the fourth night of her ten-night UK sleepout challenge, 'Her Fight, Our Night', Lianne saw firsthand some of the shocking difficulties faced by homeless women in Britain. She met several women who admitted they only felt safe sleeping rough when they had men with them, often men they often didn't know well.
Detailing the kind of dangers this poses, she said: "One lady said she had 'got her head kicked in' a few nights earlier by a passer-by when she was in a doorway bedded down on her own. I asked if being with men they hardly knew was really 'safe,' and two of them mentioned the men would often expect and ask them to 'do things they didn't really want to do'... but being with them felt safer than being on their own."
Lianne's initiative, in aid of her charity the Esther Project, aims to raise awareness and funding for women's services. Her journey, which began in Leamington Spa on February 1, took her through a number of different UK cities, engaging with local organisations to highlight the pressing issues surrounding women's homelessness, trauma, and the lack of adequate support services.
In Bristol, she spoke with the Nelson Trust, a charity providing rehabilitation and support services for women. She explained that she wanted to "highlight the need for more women's centres and the great work already being done" while also addressing the gaps in government funding. In her journey across different cities, "the same themes" kept emerging - including lack of safety, trauma, cycles of abuse, poverty, and women caught in the criminal justice system.
Lianne’s challenge is being documented by filmmaker Laura Harvey of Vibe Immersive and will be featured at a conference on March 7, marking International Women’s Day. Funds raised from the sleepout will support women’s services in Warwickshire, including the future development of a dedicated support hub.
The Nelson Trust, originally established in 1985 as a single residential rehabilitation centre, now runs nine women's centres across the South West and Wales. The trust also runs a women’s centre inside HMP Eastwood Park – the first of its kind in the UK. Speaking of the issues highlighted by Lianne's time on the streets, Vicky Davis, head of women's community services at the Nelson Trust, said: “While this may seem like a challenge for Lianne, for many, it is a reality. Homelessness has increased drastically since the Covid-19 pandemic, and women sleeping rough face a heightened risk of violence. Change needs to happen.”
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