Clapham protester is not same woman injured in Parsons Green Tube attack

16 March 2021
What was claimed

The woman arrested at the Clapham vigil for Sarah Everard is the same woman who was injured in the 2017 Parsons Green Tube attack.

Our verdict

This is false. They are different women.

It has been claimed in a post shared hundreds of times on Facebook that a woman who was arrested during the vigil for Sarah Everard on Clapham Common in March 2021 is the same woman who was injured during an attack on a London Underground train in Parsons Green in 2017. The post also suggests some kind of conspiracy between the two events. 

In fact, these are two different women. 

On 13 March 2021, a vigil was held in Clapham Common, south London, following the death of Sarah Everard. When the vigil was broken up by police, photographs of attendee Patsy Stevenson being restrained by police officers were shared by multiple news outlets

On 15 September 2017, a bomb partially exploded on a London Underground train at Parsons Green, west London, injuring around 50 people. Several news outlets carried pictures of an injured red-headed woman in their reports of the attack. She was later identified in news reports as Victoria Holloway, when she and other passengers gave evidence to court about what they witnessed. 

Ms Stevenson and Ms Holloway both have red hair, but they are clearly not the same person.

This is not the first time Ms Holloway has been the subject of a conspiracy theory. In 2017, fact checking organisation Snopes disproved false claims that she was really the American actress Nora Kirkpatrick and that the attack on the train had been a hoax.

Full Fact fights bad information

Bad information ruins lives. It promotes hate, damages people’s health, and hurts democracy. You deserve better.