Anecdotal Assault

This is just a story I have decided to share here in the community. It’s about a friend of mine who was assaulted on Sunday, her birthday, actually. 

I am currently studying abroad in a medium-sized city in the south of France. The university I’m studying in is very small, only a branch of a bigger institute because it’s a more intense curriculum. There are 13 students, all American, only one of which is male. 

Sunday, my friend was walking home from the train station after dropping off a friend who had been visiting. A young man, about our age, approached her and asked to use her phone. (This was all in French, by the way.) She allowed him to call his friend and when he hung up he said that he could tell she had an accent and if she wanted, they could walk and talk a while and he would help her with her French. 

As they were walking, he started walking into a alley. She stopped and said that she didn’t live there and walked back out. When they got to her door, he pushed his way through and began touching her. He asked her to sing for him (she mentioned she sang classical music) and she did, scared, and hoping it would make him leave. 

He went in for a hug and she let him, again thinking he was leaving, but when she felt him press his face into her neck, she pushed him away and started running up the stairs to her apartment. He pushed her down and started “humping” her (her words) until she screamed and the neighbors opened their door. He ran away. 

She went to the police that Sunday. They said they were too busy. She went again on Monday and they told her it wasn’t violent enough to be a crime, that she didn’t have any marks, she shouldn’t have talked to him in the first place, etc.

They wouldn’t take the information he had, his name, where he said he was from, the number he called, anything. 

When she told us at school that Monday, I told her to tell Madame Directrice, who would be able to raise a storm to the police. We did and Madame was incredibly sympathetic. She told the girl that it wasn’t her fault, that she hoped this didn’t destroy her faith in humanity and that she (the girl) was only trying to be nice by lending out her phone to someone in need.

And then, Madame Directrice sat back and said that she’d been waiting for my friend to tell her that the man had been Arab. (He had been.) Madame said it wasn’t a thing of race, that there wasn’t even a reason to call them Arab since most were actually of French citizenship and birth but Arab ethnicity, but that it was a socioeconomic issue that made it more common for Arab young men in France to prey upon young women. It probably didn’t help that she was so clearly foreign, not to mention American, where the stereotype is that American girls are easy. Madame also told us that many sketchy people hung out near the train station.

Madame is writing back to the police, making an official complaint. 

At the end, Madame asked us what she and the university could have done to make us more aware of the dangers in our city. I think up until we explained to her, that she hadn’t been aware of just how difficult it is to understand and interact through the thick barrier of a different language and culture. The French don’t leave as much personal space as Americans do. French men are MUCH more forward, French women are MUCH colder. My friend pointed out that she hadn’t even realized he’d been hitting on her until he started touching her because of the language and customs. She mostly knows academic French only and little conversational French, let alone what to say to someone who begins attacked her or making her feel uncomfortable. 

I’m not sure exactly why I’ve brought this up. It’s an example of intersectionality, most definitely – this wasn’t just woman/man, this was cultural, racial and likely economical. The police dismissed her experience. Part of me feels that there’s no point in writing this, but then maybe it’ll stir awareness somewhere. An example that women being assaulted is global.