As an effort to make women feel safer walking alone on ‘National Rape Day’, Cardiff University’s football team offers to become chaperones for the night.
The Cardiff University football club led by president Ben Marett helped women get home safe after the social media trend that labelled Saturday, 24th April as National Rape Day.
“Having seen the potential threat to girls on Saturday evening in Cardiff, I personally think it’s disgusting and the football club are here to do something about it” says Ben Marett the President of the Football club in Cardiff on Facebook.
This post was in reaction to the viral videos people have been posted on Tik Tok that claim 24th April to be ‘National Rape Day’. Although this was proved to be a hoax, Ben and his team, not willing to take the risk, decided to help chaperone women back home on Saturday evening.
He said, “Initially, a friend had a recent scary experience with a man in Bute Park which led to me worrying about her and then the wider female community in Cardiff. Then seeing the scary rape day hoax I decided to put a message to the wider community to help”.
The team helped 30 women get back home safely and received a lot of positive feedback from everyone on social media that helped raise important questions as to why this was needed in the first place.
For Ben, this step was a first in changing the ‘jock culture’ associated with sports teams. Partying, drinking, womanizing, rape culture are often associated with football teams and Ben aims to remove the stereotype that all sports teams promote this culture.
He says, “It is a small minority that causes the stereotype for all the other football clubs across the nation. I hope this initiative is the start of change which will mean other clubs to follow in the same footsteps”.
Ben Marett, President of the football club 
Boys from team wearing their team zippers to help people can identify them
On asking him if women were hesitant to ask them for help because of the kind of stereotype attached to sports teams he said, “I assume many women would have been hesitant to help due to the nature of being males in a situation where males were the problem, but we were extremely grateful to be able to help so many women.”
He believes this is a positive start to achieve the greater goal of removing the stereotype. He adds that, “We are actively trying to remove this stereotype by showing men can also do good things and be the start of change. We are trying to be positive members of society”.
The football team makes a conscious effort to maintain a healthy culture in the team by encouraging boys to talk about mental health and have also started a podcast to get more people to open up about mental health in sport.
He says, “It’s overwhelming really, knowing that this could potentially be the start of better things and people focusing on mental health.”