HOMICIDE chief Michael Hughes has warned women we are not safe in parks and shouldn’t jog alone, and while he no doubt has our interests at heart this, to some implies that women are responsible for their own assaults.

Just like the “women shouldn’t walk alone at night” talk that’s followed brutal murders and the warnings that we shouldn’t wear headphones while exercising after a series of sex attacks on women in the west, the message here is “it’s your job not to make yourself a victim”.

It echoes the bad old “women should not get drunk at parties lest they get themselves raped” line wheeled out after American teen Daisy Coleman was lured to a small party of boys, given strong alcohol and raped.

I have the utmost respect for the work of police to try to prevent violence against women, but telling us to restrict and change basic habits like taking a stroll near our suburban homes in daylight to prevent ourselves becoming targets sends the message if we put ourselves in harm’s way we made the problem.

Obviously, making good decisions is paramount and most strive for this in everyday life.

The message should be loud and clear that men must not feel entitled to prey on women.

It is not the job of women to creep around in a permanent state of paranoia, it’s the job of society to crush the sense of entitlement to assault, molest, or even murder women out of the minds of would-be perpetrators.

How blatantly arrogant to assume you can do what you like to a woman who can’t hear you coming, or can’t see you in the dark, or can’t make good decisions as she has consumed alcohol.

Yet crime statistics show that significant numbers of men still feel entitled to do so. That is the real problem here, not the hour, day, time or location of where women are as they go about their daily life.

Detective Hughes, who sounds like his team has done brilliant work towards solving 17 year-old Masa Vukotic’s murder as she walked near her Doncaster home this week, told ABC radio: “I suggest to people, particularly females, they shouldn’t be alone in parks.

“I’m sorry to say that is the case. We just need to be a little bit more careful a little bit more security conscious.”

Why should we? Why shouldn’t it be perpetrators who feel unsafe in their intention to violate women’s rights to go safely about their lives?

It is perpetrators who are transgressing when they take advantage of their victim, not victims transgressing by just being where they are, wearing what they’re wearing or even being intoxicated.

I don’t attribute any negative intention to Detective Hughes, but I think it’s vital we agree that women are not the ones who need to contort their routines or behaviour in order to avoid harm; perpetrators are entirely to blame.

I will not be telling my little girl that it’s her job to stay away from or suspect men; but I will tell her there are bad people in the world who could tempt her to live in fear — which she must’t.