It's hard to miss the vivid green posters in Tralee's Institute of Technology. There's one behind the counter in the canteen alongside a sign on the blackboard advertising a daily hot-lunch special. There's another directly over the canteen's light-switch panel, which must be the last thing seen by whoever is closing up to leave at night. They're on all the noticeboards, and they all urge the same thing: DO NOT WALK ALONE AT NIGHT, reports Rosita Boland in Tralee.
In the past 18 months, there have been five cases of sexual assault reported in Tralee, and four of those have been since June. The first case was in April 2004, a few miles from the town, on the Castlemaine road, in an area known locally as the "S-bends" because of a succession of sharp bends. A teenage girl was walking alone there at 10pm, on her way to meet friends, when she was allegedly raped and beaten in a lay-by. This case is due before the courts shortly.
The last reported case of the five was on October 19th, when a woman in her early 20s was allegedly sexually assaulted by three men at a housing estate close to the town centre. The third man she was allegedly assaulted by, in the same estate, was a man she went to in distress for help. Arrests were subsequently made and a file has been sent to the DPP on this case.
You map out your own place and routes in a town or city, depending on the location of your own hub of activity: study, work, socialising, home. Tralee is Kerry's county town, with a population of 28,000. For its 3,500 full- and part-time students and 250 staff, Tralee's Institute of Technology is part of their map. It's three kilometres from town, and there is a college bus which serves the campus from 8am to 6.30pm. After that, people must make their own arrangements.
Forge Cross is a few minutes walk from the institute. Turn right and go down the hill as you leave the college and you reach the cross, which bisects the Listowel road. It's so close you can see it as soon as you start walking down the hill. It's a busy, unremarkable stretch of urban sprawl. On June 9th, this is where a young woman was assaulted in daylight, at 5pm. Just beyond the cross is a housing estate where many students live in rented accommodation.
If you turn left when you leave the college and go up the hill and then turn right, a slightly longer walk, you pass the boundary wall of Tralee Racecourse. It faces on to more housing estates, set back from the road. On this stretch of road, a middle-aged woman out walking at 8.30pm on September 8th, when it was still light, was assaulted. Continue along this road and you'll reach the area known as Ballinorig. In the early hours of September 30th, a young man was assaulted here. No charges have yet been made in any of these three cases of sexual assault. Gardaí in Tralee have said that they do not think the attacks are linked.
Although the college is on mid-term break, there are still students on campus, working on projects.
"Last year I walked home alone the whole time," says second-year student Helena O'Keeffe. "Now I wouldn't even walk home on my own during daytime, let alone night-time. It feels totally different now. The talk of the attacks is all around the town."
"Everybody walks in a group since the attacks," says fourth-year student Patricia O'Connor. She has a car, and makes a point of going round offering lifts every evening when leaving. "You'd have it in the back of your head the whole time, the attacks."
"We don't leave anyone walk home alone; we walk home together. And I only live five minutes down the road," says third-year student Bridget Fennell.
"It's changed things. You wouldn't talk to strangers - people in general, women and men - like you used to. You'd be more fearful," says Caroline Lacey, also a third-year student. "It doesn't bother the lads at all, though. If they couldn't get a taxi at night, they'd walk. The lads check up on us, though, and ask how we're getting home from college - they're good that way."
MAGGIE MESCALL AND Patricia Hegarty are both third-year information management systems students, on a break from editing the videos which are part of their course work.
"When you'd be out at night, in first or second year, you'd be far more inclined to spend your money on drink instead of a taxi," Mescall says frankly.
"Your only complaint about walking home was walking on high heels. We never worried. You'd think with a quiet town, a small town like Tralee, you'd be safe. Now we don't walk any more since the attacks."
"We always walked everywhere by ourselves before," Hegarty says. "College, nights out, the lot. Not any more. Our mothers are especially worried about us now." She corrects herself. "Well, parents are. Fathers too."
All the young women say that they will never take their own safety for granted again in the future, even when they move on from college and Tralee.
"I will never walk home alone at night ever again," declares Lacey.
"You always remember what happened in your college days, don't you?" Hegarty says.
The student union, whose president is Jerry Kelliher, put up the notices round college warning people not to walk alone at night.
"We met the guards last week to ask for extra patrols, especially on Thursday nights, as that's a big night out," he says. "And we want to bring guards in to talk to student reps about personal safety."
Third-level students are usually regarded as being at a stage of their lives where they are enjoying a certain degree of freedom, independence and lack of responsibility. So there is something both troubling and poignant in the way Tralee's students now take for granted that they will no longer walk home alone from college - even though home may be only a five-minute walk away.
FEAR IS INSIDIOUS. Vera O'Leary, director of the Kerry Rape Crisis Centre, which is based in Tralee, reports a large increase in the number of calls recently to the centre's helpline.
"These are not calls looking for help. They're calls from women in Tralee who are worried about their own safety, who are feeling afraid, and who want to express their outrage at the recent attacks," she says in her Greenview Terrace office. "They are telling us they're doing things they'd never have done before, like locking their cars when they're in them, and not going for walks in the evening. Women feel their freedom is being curtailed. They're angry and fearful."
It's a dark, wet evening in Tralee. The taxis, which have a rank on The Mall, are doing good business bringing shoppers home. Since deregulation, according to taxi driver Timothy Behan, there are now 95 taxis in the town. He's been driving taxis in Tralee for 27 years.
"I don't see people walking home at night the way I would have," he says. "All the taxi drivers have noticed that. Girls I bring home at night do talk about being afraid. I have two grown-up daughters living in Tralee - in their 30s, like - but they all make sure they go home in a group at the end of an evening out."
"Everyone is scared, of course they are. The whole town is talking about it," says one woman, standing out of the rain in a shop-front. She does not want to give her name. She is terribly upset and terribly angry. She lives close to Boherbee, where the latest attack took place. "To think that someone was in need and might have passed my window that night, and we didn't know. I can't bear to think about it. I wasn't going to come out tonight, but then I thought I won't sit at home every night because I'm afraid to go out."
She is on her way to meet friends at a social event, and has already decided she'll be asking them for a lift home.
James Prendergast is buying groceries in Garvey's supermarket. "The attacks, they'd be in your mind all right," he says. "People, parents, need to be aware of it."
He won't now even let his 18-year-old daughter come home by taxi after a night out. "I collect her myself," he says.
Nora Casey isalso shopping in Garvey's. She says the assaults have worried her, and all the people she knows.
"I was out the other night, and it wasn't that late, but for the first time ever, I kept looking behind me. I keep thinking it won't happen to me, but at the same time, you'd be a fool not to get a taxi after midnight, wouldn't you?"