There is a Stand Up Against Rape march tonight in Heaton Park

At 7pm today a march isbeing held in Heaton Park against rape. The Facebook march event created by Katie Liddle was started because of the horrendous news of a rape occurring in Heaton Park last weekend.

Katie created this event at the start just to get a few women together to stand up get the message across to the perpetrator that they were not scared and would not be pushed out of their local park.

“I want to reclaim the park to tell the person that you haven’t scared us off”

We chatted to Katie to ask her a bit about the march and what she wanted to see happen and change within the local area in regards to cases like this.

When horrific things like this happen in area’s there tends to be this a stigma towards it and it’s a place that people then avoid

Exactly, that’s why we are going to reclaim it to tell them, that no you haven’t scared us off.

What is your wider aim with this march?

I wanted to do it just to get some women together obviously men as well too, to say enough is enough and I’m absolutely fed up with the rape culture in the UK. There are things that we can do to change this, but nobody seems to be doing it. I would really like to get a partition going to Northumbria Police to say let’s get people into schools talking to boys about consent. We can’t allow it to continue like this.

Unfortunately rape is one of those subjects that commonly is seen as a subject that we just don’t talk about because it’s not given grounds generally for a wider conversation

Well it’s about time people did go there and I’m going to speak to all the women tonight and I’m going to get a petition to Northumbria Police to try and get them to go into school and teach kids. Lets talk to the boys about how to treat women  and consent. We need to go in and help them understand how to treat women.

Obviously Roosh V was a ‘pro-rape’ supporting male who was going to be coming to Newcastle this past month, obviously that got cancelled, what are your opinions on this?

The power of the people, everything was pulled because all of these women took to the streets. Essentially it was thrown back at his face. Did you see all the insults he threw about, talking about all Newcastle girls? There’s a big petition at the moment to get his books taken off Amazon at the moment.

There’s also recently been the case about Kesha in the news and there’s not actually been really any male celebrities that have been publicised really standing up and saying that this isn’t right and it’s almost as if this is a taboo subject for males to talk about.

There’s a go fund me actually being set up to buy her out of her contract, I’m going to put some money in when I get paid. There is 85,000 women that are raped in the UK every year and 11,000 men the figures are huge.

We want lads not to join in with the lad-ish culture, we want guys to stand up and say that this isn’t right and that to be the good thing in life.

Please do go and join together on this march to stand up for changing our culture and to creating a society where rape will not be stood for and we won’t stand here in silence.

Get more information about this event here and sign the petition against Roosh V books being sold on Amazon here.