Mother of murdered student urges young people to 'speak up and keep each other safe'
Lisa Squire is visiting schools to share her daughter’s story
The mother of a university student from High Wycombe, who was raped and murdered in Hull, is educating young people about sexual offences, the importance of reporting harassment and how bystanders can help prevent harm.
Lisa has been visiting schools and sharing Libby’s story to students in Years 10 to 13, encouraging them to look out for one another, speak up and challenge behaviour that has become normalised in society.
Libby was murdered in Hull in 2019, and Lisa says one of the most important messages she delivers concerns the 18 people who walked past her daughter that night.
“We’re not asking anybody to be a superhero,” she said. “What we’re asking people to do is, if it is safe to do so, to go in and just ask somebody, ‘Are you okay?’”
Lisa also stresses the importance of staying together when going out, telling students: “If you go out together, you come home together.”
Another key focus of her talks is non-contact sexual offending, including inappropriate images and online harassment.
She believes these offences remain widely underreported and that young people need to understand the importance of reporting them.
“If they don’t know anything about it, they can’t do anything about it,” she said of the police response to such offences.
Lisa also wants young people to understand that harassment is never acceptable, whether it happens online or in person.
“To the young girls I speak to, I say it’s not okay, you shouldn’t have to experience that and you should be reporting it,” she said.
She believes hearing directly from someone whose family has experienced such a tragedy can help young people engage with messages they might otherwise overlook.
“I don’t think they’re getting the messages,” she said.
“Having somebody whose family have gone through, or whose daughter has gone through, the things that we sort of warn children about, it does kind of make them sit up and listen.”
Lisa’s motivation comes from a conversation with Libby during their last car journey together, just days before her daughter was killed, when Libby told her mother how much she loved learning.
Lisa believes educating young people is something Libby herself would have done.
“Everything I do, from the day she died onwards, is to honour her,” she said. “I do it in Libby’s name and I do it for Libby, because this is the way I parent her now.”