I also recall my grandma around that same era also voicing her concerns about my brother who had started venturing into town in the evenings with his mates and strangely she was more concerned about my brother walking through the pedestrian alleyway linking the top corner of our estate with the main road while he was walking both to and from town, and that some thug(s) might had been waiting up there ready to rob him or beat him up, but strangely never mentioned anything about the late-night drunks down in the town centre.

Although I don't wish to tempt fate by saying this and of course we can never say never, but out of the near-40 years we've lived on this very same estate, to the best of my knowledge I've never once heard of any violent 'stranger-on-stranger' attacks in neither said alleyway nor anywhere else on the entire estate, plus my brother has luckily never had any direct encounter with any aggro whilst out on the town, neither then nor now.

Of course young people should by all means be made aware of potential risks and hazards while out and about and learn about basic common sense 'dos and don'ts' all within reason, but not have the fear of God put into them over the minutest of potential 'bogeymen', to the point of often unwarranted paranoia.