While details of the accused have not been released, the implication is this is an attack by a stranger.
Unfortunately, for many women and girls in New Zealand, being attacked by someone they know is far more likely and therefore harder to avoid.
The inherited practice of walking on a dark street with your keys between your fingers is not going to help you in your own home.
Tom Meagher, the husband of Irish woman Jill Meagher murdered in Melbourne in 2012, wrote a compelling piece, The Danger of the Monster Myth, for the Irish White Ribbon campaign.
He was overwhelmed by sympathy and support after his wife's murder and, after some time, he wrote a blog to acknowledge that for the majority of women suffering violence, there is no archetypal villain, like his wife's killer, and most victims suffer in silence, their perpetrators known to them.
Meagher wrote: "The silent majority whose tormentors are not monsters lurking on busy streets, but their friends, acquaintances, husbands, lovers, brothers and fathers ... We cannot separate these cases from one another because doing so allows us to ignore the fact that all these crimes have exactly the same cause - violent men, and the silence of non-violent men."
The #YesAllWomen is designed in response to the defensive "but not all men are violent" some people feel compelled to state. And, as Meagher notes: "The monster myth creates the illusion that this [putting down women in jokes and comments] is simply banter, and sexist horseplay."
A tweet using #YesAllWomen suggested we discuss these experiences of women feeling vulnerable with our sons to help them avoid being naive of the extent of harassment, intimidation and violence.
My boys at 2 and 4 are too young, but I know their father and I will talk about consent when the time is right.
We already have to challenge Mr Four on his - I hope temporary - world views of what girls can and can't do.
One anecdote I read on Twitter was about how some men have felt threatened when hit on by other men - it was an insightful exchange:
"You are afraid, because the first time in your life you have found yourself a victim of unwanted sexual advances by someone who has the physical ability to use force against you.
"As a woman you learn to live with that from the time you are fourteen, and it never stops ... Every man walking through the parking garage the same time you are is either just a harmless stranger or a potential rapist."
The writer said the boys in the group seemed genuinely shocked by these revelations. "So think about that the next time you hit on a girl. Maybe, like you in the taxi, she doesn't actually want you to."
We - men and women - are part of transferring the responsibility for women feeling safe from being primarily with women to being primarily with men.
And to end with a quote from Maya Angelou, who passed away this week at 86: "I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it."
Nicola Young is a former Department of Conservation manager who now works for global consultancy AECOM. Educated at Wanganui Girls' College, she has a science degree and is the mother of two boys.
