even women survived attacks by Peter Sutcliffe, who killed a further 13 between 1975 and 1981. They are, as one of their number phrases it, members of “an exclusive club you don’t want to be part of”. Each faced unimaginable challenges in the years following their attack. Repeated surgery on appalling injuries left them with consequences ranging from severe memory loss to having to cut their own hair because salon workers couldn’t deal with the dents in their skulls. St Kitts-born Marcella Claxton was expecting her third child when she was attacked in Leeds during the spring of 1976. She required extensive operations on her brain, and lost the baby she was carrying – a crime for which Sutcliffe would never be held legally responsible. Suffering with chronic depression, Claxton was told that the headaches, dizziness and occasional blackouts that plagued her would be permanent. “It’s like my brain is bursting and hitting the inside of my head, often all day,” she explained. Other women temporarily lost custody of their children owing to sudden bouts of anger caused by the psychological fallout of survival. All suffered debilitating nightmares as a result of their attacks. New mother Theresa Sykes was 16 years old when Sutcliffe left her for dead within sight of her Huddersfield home on Bonfire Night 1980. “I used to go up to my bedroom of a night and put the wardrobe behind the door, put the dressing table behind the door. I had to sleep with a knife under the pillow, which my mum used to go barmy about, but that was the only thing that made me feel that bit safer,” she said. She later broke off her engagement to the father of her child because of a newfound terror of men. Olive Smelt felt equally repulsed: “I couldn’t stand a man near me. I rejected my husband completely. If he made any sort of advance, I just shuddered in horror.” Smelt’s marriage endured, largely due to her determination to overcome that fear; she took a cleaning job at a men’s hostel “so that I would be forced to see men, to talk to them, help them and mix with them. I am glad that I did. I am still not back to normal. I don’t think I ever will be, but at least it’s a major step.” Every woman felt the impact of West Yorkshire police’s decision to divide them into two groups: “prostitutes” and those who were “respectable”. Sexism led to women who used sex work to survive and those who chose to live outside the boundaries of acceptable female behaviour being lumped together under the former dismissive category. “A woman of loose morals” was how detectives ignominiously described Maureen Long, citing the fact that she was cohabiting with a man since separating from her husband, and often enjoyed nights out alone. Close to death and in the early stages of hypothermia when two women found her on a rubbish-strewn wasteland in Bradford, Long remained in hospital for nine weeks, fully conscious but on a ventilating machine. Shortly after being discharged, she courageously accompanied a detective around local nightspots in an attempt to identify her attacker. Detective Sergeant Megan Winterburn recalls Long being “mortified that people were saying she was a prostitute, which wasn’t true. You had this very naive and pleasant lady who was leading a normal life, with an active social life, labelled by the press as a prostitute.” This attitude also informed the public relations surrounding the case, with authorities telling women, rather than men, in the north to stay at home. Despite extensive physical and emotional wounds, every survivor collaborated with detectives to find the killer. They worked on photofits, giving often piercingly accurate descriptions of their attacker; took part in reconstructions; participated in a Newsnight special in which they addressed their assailant directly; and fought to persuade obtuse police officers that the tape sent in by a hoaxer with a north-eastern accent was nothing to do with the killer. Those who had spoken to their would-be murderer could never forget his soft Yorkshire accent. Yet they were unanimously dismissed as “unreliable witnesses” by the men investigating the case. With little support and no counselling, the survivors nonetheless took up the threads of their lives and wove a new existence. News of Sutcliffe’s capture and his conviction came as an overwhelming relief, but the damage done to the women’s reputations as a result of institutional sexism brought agonies of their own. Anna Rogulskyj, whose July 1975 attack in Keighley was the first known, declared herself “fed up with being associated with the list of women killed by this man. I’ve been afraid to go out much because I feel people are staring and pointing at me. The whole thing is making my life a misery. I sometimes wish I had died in the attack.” Yet these women persisted in rebuilding their lives, and they succeeded. Mo Lea had been a student when she was bludgeoned about the head as she walked home in Leeds in October 1980. Sutcliffe was never charged with her attack, but West Yorkshire police is certain he was responsible. Now an artist, Mo declares: “I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and there are all sorts of things that I struggle with because of the attack. But he didn’t break me, and he never could. I’m a survivor, not a victim. Nothing can break me. He can’t take my art away and he can’t destroy who I am. I’m lucky to be here, and I want to make the most of it.” • Carol Ann Lee is a true crime writer whose book about the Jeremy Bamber case was adapted for the award-winning drama White House Farm