A SENIOR police officer said Sussex Police had ‘got it wrong’ over its controversial anti-rape poster. I disagree.

The poster showed two young women taking a selfie before heading off for a night out, and encouraged friends to stay together on nights out with the slogan: “Which one of your mates is most vulnerable on a night out? The ones you leave behind. Many sexual assaults could be prevented”.

It was widely criticised by campaign groups for blaming victims for sexual assaults – but that is a politically correct view that doesn’t really help in a politically incorrect world.

The police operate in the real world, where criminals are, generally speaking, not politically correct – they target the vulnerable because they make for easier targets.

A rapist is, by definition, not politically correct because they are men forcing themselves sexually on women, often because they hate women.

So when campaigners such as Sarah Green, of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, say that ‘we need to get beyond police campaigns giving instructions to women on how to behave to be safe’ and that ‘we need to talk to those who may perpetrate rape and deter them’, this is not a solution to this particular problem.

Rapists do not make their intentions known beforehand because they are planning to commit a criminal act, and by the same token they are unlikely to respond to any kind of anti-rape campaign either by the police or by women because they represent the two groups they hate the most.

Sadly, there will always be men who attack women. It has always happened because, whether the politically correct like it or not, most men are physically stronger than most women, they have different sexual urges to women and their bodies possess the physical equipment that enables them to carry out rape.

Men who attack women do so because they can, and men who rape want power over women. They are hardly likely to back down and acquiesce to women who plead: ‘please don’t.’ Yes, we should try to stop men attacking and raping women and I’m sure some can be deterred but it is never going to stop it completely.

That would be living in an ideal world with ideal people, and we don’t.

With their now defunct poster campaign, I think Sussex Police recognised a very important truth: that young women out on their own late at night after a few drinks are very vulnerable to attack and that in this very non-ideal world we women should look out for our friends. What is the alternative? That we happily allow a friend to walk home on their own, perhaps through a park, at 2am after a few vodkas? That parents don’t bother to go out at 3am and collect their daughter when she calls on her mobile to say she hasn’t enough money for a taxi home?

We hear about such vulnerable young women in the news all the time, often in a murder trial. No, it’s not their fault that they have been attacked. It is entirely the fault and responsibility of their attacker.

But that doesn’t mean to say that, in the knowledge that there are men out there prepared to attack and murder women, we abdicate all responsibility in making sure that our friends and daughters remain safe. I’m not going to let my teenage daughter go out by herself late at night and sit back and say: ‘Well, there shouldn’t be men out there who attack women.’ I wish Sussex Police had stuck to their guns and defended the poster campaign. Deputy Chief Constable Olivia Pinkney described the poster campaign as a mistake but she also acknowledged that the campaign has been a success because at least it has got people talking about it. How right she is.

The police are the right people to be ‘giving out instructions to women on how to behave to be safe’ because they are the people on the frontline of crime.

They are the people we call when we face danger, they are the people who see the often gruesome results of crime and they are the people who would put their lives on the line to protect us.

We don’t have time to deter those who may perpetrate rape – after all, we haven’t managed to do it throughout the history of humanity – because women out late at night on their own are vulnerable now and they need advice now on staying safe.