A woman has spoken of "the wave of fear, the wave of panic" she felt as a taxi driver took her to his house when she climbed into his car to return home after a party, aged just 16.
Jodie Bradley, now 29, got into the back of a taxi her mum had booked as she didn't want her daughter walking or taking the bus alone.
The primary school teacher from Brunswick said the taxi driver took her to his house, saying he needed to pick something up.
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Jodie said she was "terrified" and struck by "fear" and "panic", worrying she would have to run away and save herself any moment.
She told the ECHO : "I think to a guy, they'd normally be like, 'Oh that's a little bit of an inconvenience', but what I actually did is took my shoes off in the back of the car, had 99 dialled on my phone.
"Because I thought that he was going to take me into the house. Because why else would he have driven me to his unless he was going to abduct me?"
Jodie said the driver went inside, possibly for food, before coming back and driving her home.
She told the ECHO : "But in that moment, you're a little bit like, well, do I run? Or is that me being silly, or?
"It's that vulnerability where you can't decide if it's your brain playing tricks on you, or whether you are going to be the next person who is on the news."
This week, gruesome details of the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard, 33, under the guise of an arrest by police officer Wayne Couzens made the skin of women across the country crawl.
Their minds flashed to their own experiences of fear, violence and sexual assault at the hands of men.
Teacher Jodie was hit hard by news of the alleged murder of primary school teacher Sabina Nessa, 28, on her way to meet a friend on Friday, September 17.
Jodie, 29, told the ECHO : "It shouldn't matter what profession Sabina had, but I think just the fact that, you know, similar age, same profession, it easily could have been one of us.
"I think that's what people need to remember. It's important, really, just to honour her."
Determined to fight back and reclaim the right to exist safely in public, Jodie organised a walk through Sefton Park to 'Take back the night' this week.
She walked with other women and men through the city park, setting candles on the Obelisk at 8pm on Friday (October 1) night, two weeks after Sabina's murder as she walked through Cator Park in London.
Jodie picked a spot she would never normally venture alone at night.
She told the ECHO : "It's funny how comfortable I am with the city in the daytime. I know the city like the back of my hand. I still do feel uncomfortable. There are certain places I wouldn't go."
"We live just outside the city centre, and we do walk, but I probably just wouldn't do it alone.
"I think that's the thing about exploring Sefton Park in the dark. It's not something that I would do alone.
"But getting people together to do it, it's like we're taking back a little bit of our city.
"Because I know a lot of girls, a lot of women, even my mum would be mortified if she thought I was walking certain places on my own.
"I've got older women saying, 'I wouldn't even walk to Tesco at the bottom of the road on my own'.
"I just feel so sad that that's how people feel."
