466 - (FREE TO READ) Aggressive street harassment part 2: "It's now my daughter"
Women's shared experiences - part two
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Part two
This is the second part of a series of articles including shared experiences of street harassment from Journal readers both here in the UK and abroad.
I will write a fuller commentary later in a separate post as I wish the main focus at this stage to be the actual experiences being shared by the women themselves.
As before, identifying names and locations are removed and any comments I make are in (brackets).
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
Jeth
(“M” is 45 years old and shares this experience of being in a town centre with her teenage daughter).
“I was sitting with my daughter (name removed) on a bench in (street name removed) street outside (business name removed). We’d been looking around the shops and stopped to sit and have a break for a few minutes. It was a hot day and I was really tired. It was about 11 am and it was busy with people.
We literally just sat down, and I saw a guy walking towards us.
He was walking straight towards us but looking at my daughter, I suppose the way he was walking made me notice him and the way he was looking at (daughter’s name).
He had long dark hair in a ponytail, wearing black, clean looking. I would say he was in his 40's.
He had this kind of hyper, tense way about him, and I knew something wasn’t right.
He was walking fast from across the street, all jittery,
I knew he was coming to us. I just acted straight away and got my daughter and our bags and stuff to move. We were on our feet to leave when he reached us and started saying “Good morning” in this creepy way while looking at (daughter’s name).
I was so fed up, I just wanted to be able to enjoy a moment, just the two of us and we have to put up with whatever this asshole wants.
I said:
“Morning”
angrily without really looking at him and we left and walked off.
He seemed confused and was saying something like
“I just wanted to say hello?!”.
Like we were the ones with the problem.
We kept walking and I was looking around, but he was gone. If we hadn't? I don't know, I just knew he’d be hassling us in some way, and it would be worse.
I used to live in (location removed) years ago and had constant hassle from men in the street.
A couple of experiences were really bad - I was sexually assaulted by a group of men in a public place during the day once.
They crowded me and were groping me, and no one helped me.
I managed to get away from them to try and get help, but nothing was ever done to catch them.
Like it’s just “something that happens”.
You get really hardened to it and almost expect it everywhere. I would never speak to people in the street, just get where I was going as quick as I could.
I felt especially vulnerable this time though as it was directed at my child.
It was the first time this situation happened to me and I realised it's now my daughter that the guy wants. She’s a young teenager but looks a bit older so gets noticed but this was something else.
I just made an instant decision and left.”
This is a repost of this series with updated video links in some parts due to some issues. Further parts will follow. Jeth