On Saturday night, a woman named Azmina says she was walking around central London with her boyfriend when a stranger ran up to her and punched her in the crotch. Azmina, who works as a women’s-rights campaigner at a human rights organization, yelled at her attacker that he had just sexually assaulted her, but he was unfazed.
In a Facebook post that’s since gone viral, Azmina writes that he responded by telling her to fuck off, and attempted to get into a fight with her boyfriend. She tried to get a hold of police, but when that failed, she went off on her assailant. He eventually admitted he attacked her because she was “attractive and he was intoxicated.”
She wrote:
When he realized I was seriously standing up for myself and had actually been calling the police he very quickly sobered up and began to apologize. He told me he had never done it before, that he was stupid, an idiot, and so sorry for what he had done, and that he will never do it again. How could I believe him I asked? Why should I just accept his apology and pretend this didn’t happen? I told him that he made me feel unsafe on the streets of the city I call home, in a public place, where all of us (women included, because you know, we are human too) should feel some basic form of protection. Despite profusely apologizing, he continued to antagonize me when he told me to not make such a big deal out of it.
Eventually, Azmina forced him to apologize on camera.
It’s pretty clear from this incident that her attacker simply didn’t think what he did was wrong in any way — which is likely the attitude of most street harassers. And while this isn’t the most sincere apology we’ve ever seen, at least it’s something.
