465 - (FREE TO READ) Aggressive street harassment: "At first he was just staring at us..."
Women's experiences of street harassment - part one
Copyright © 2022 - 2024 by Jeth Randolph
All Rights Reserved.
Third-party information and viewpoints do not represent my personal views or work.
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This is the first part of a series including shared experiences of street harassment from Journal readers both here in the UK and abroad and also my analysis of these and other situations.
If you would like to contribute a personal experience to this series, you may do so anonymously by emailing me at:
info@forcenecessary.co.uk
(My occasional comments are in brackets - Jeth)
Part one: “S”
(“S” is 50 years old, and describes herself as slight in build. She works for a national newspaper and lives in the centre of a city with her husband and daughter).
“I was walking at night in my neighbourhood, near (location removed) at about 12 – 12.30 am – there were still plenty of people around on the main streets. I was with my friend (name removed) and we turned into the quiet side street near my flat and stopped to talk.
We were standing with our backs to the road by some parked cars. As we were talking, I turned and noticed a guy walking towards us from the corner of the main street.
I just glanced and knew straight away that something wasn’t right. I had a really bad feeling. he seemed to have pants over his trousers and was topless, carrying his t-shirt in his hand. I remember he was walking really fast and strangely and looking at us.
I don’t get hassled by guys, but my friend is more noticeable than me - boobs etc haha! and used to be an airline hostess. She wasn’t dressed up but smart. I just knew he would notice her, and it might be a problem, so I tried to move her on the pavement to make more space, hoping that he would just pass by and keep going. I didn’t want to just start running, the cars were in the way, and I just felt this would guarantee trouble.
Of course, it didn’t work…
Instead, he stops in front of us. maybe 2 feet or so away..
He is topless and very muscular, strong-looking, maybe 30, and just creepy. His chest looked waxed. At first, he was just staring at us and then he started screaming manically at us, it was terrifying.
At first, I couldn’t understand anything he was yelling then he was accusing us of hurting his arm and something like:
“You touched my arm and destroyed it!!!”
As he carried on it seemed he was referring to a woman who had shot him up and fucked up his arm (Drug use).
We were both shitting ourselves. I felt that we couldn’t get away from the guy.
My friend was terrified and just looked at the ground, she huddled her body next to me and was holding her hands and looking down at them, really frightened.
For some reason I just looked at him completely impassively, I felt almost half asleep while looking at him. I’d had such a long day at work and so many problems that day and now this, I just went blank.
There was no possibility to run – where? – he would catch us. He didn’t look at me at all, just (friend’s name).
He would go silent and staring and then, randomly start screaming again.
And all the time this was going on, I continued to just look at him in the eyes with a dead expression. There was nothing I could do, I just waited for whatever was going to happen next, to happen.
And then suddenly, he turned and he just walked away.
I think this whole event lasted maybe a few minutes. But to me, it seemed like years.”
This is a repost of this series with updated video links in some parts due to some issues. Further parts will follow. Jeth