A CONCERNED mum has set up a support group to help young women deal with drinking problems, but it has a rather unusual name.

Wash My Pink Jumper is the brainchild of Kym-Marie Cleasby, 50, of Witney, who was inspired to act after watching her daughter, Betti, 24, go through problems with binge-drinking alcohol when she was a teenager.

Mrs Cleasby hopes to recruit volunteers to act as “big sisters” for young women who join.

She said: “One of the things my daughter told me was that binge- drinking seemed completely inevitable – that she had no choice – because all her friends did it.

“In this culture, young people feel that the right thing to do is to go out and drink to oblivion – to have a blackout.

“The biggest risk for young women of this – which is what my charity concentrates on – is sexual assault.”

She said the issue is under-reported by victims.

She added: “Wash My Pink Jumper is not for alcoholics. It is for young women who want to escape that binge-drinking lifestyle.

“Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are full of middle-aged men. They are not so up to dealing with young women.”

The group is now on the search for up to 10 “big sisters” to help support the women.

Mrs Cleasby said: “They will nurture these young women and show them what a life looks like without being blackout drunk for most of the weekend.”

The group hopes to meet weekly in Witney. It held a launch event at the High Street Methodist Church in the town on Tuesday night.

The name Wash My Pink Jumper comes from a coded phrase Mrs Cleasby and her daughter agreed to use so her daughter could escape peer pressure.

Whenever Betti felt pushed into a situation she would phone her mother and say the phrase. Her mum would then know that Betti wanted her to be pick her up.

Betti estimated that she was drinking 240 alcoholic units – equivalent to 120 pints of lager – a week while at Southampton University studying fashion photography. The national guideline is two to three units a day for women (14 to 21 units a week).

She said: “It probably started when I was 18. I had just broken up with a boyfriend who was not very nice and I was in a new area.

“The friends I made were all lovely people but the culture in Witney was very much to go out to the pub and drink. It would be that every night.

“I was still in that culture when I went to university.

“I would wake up and there would be people in my house and I did not know how they had got there. It was quite scary.”

On the behest of her new boyfriend, she stopped drinking and joined an Alcoholics Anonymous group in Southampton, but found it to be unwelcoming.

She said: “They did not think I was supposed to be there because I was a young girl and they were middle-aged men or older women who had ruined their lives, lost their jobs and spent time on the streets because of alcohol. I had not got anywhere near that.

“There is not really anything nationally to help women, and be a big support network.”