I was sexually harassed with my 4 year old daughter and I hate her

Article published in September 2021

Street harassment really spares no one. This is what I told myself last weekend, during a very simple walk in the Bois de Vincennes, alone with my four year old daughter.

A banal Sunday afternoon, in the midst of onlookers who came to feed the ducks of the lake, Sunday runners and families who did exactly the same thing as us, that is to get some air away from the Parisian asphalt.

Naively, I didn’t think we could be in danger, my daughter and I. When you walk in a public park with your child, you think the worst that can happen is breaking the margoulette by climbing tree trunks or rocks, falling headlong into the lake trying to touch a swan (no, it’s not a cat, it may not being stroked), or walking in a dog’s poop that its owner hasn’t bothered to remove.

I did not think that another kind of danger could strike us, a danger that usually concerns only me, when I walk alone on the street. It’s still, having a child does not guarantee immunity from street harassment and makes it even more annoying.

Street harassment: I am familiar with leases

Street harassment, I know. I have been sexualized by men since I was eight, I know what it’s like to be afraid to walk late at night, to choose my outfit based on the mode of transport I use to get home from a night out, to put headphones on too. on the subway if I don’t listen to music so I stay alone, stay alert.

I know what it’s like to walk around with keys in my fingers, I always have pepper spray in my bag, I know how to deal with the people around me to get out of a situation where I mean in danger. I also know how to open my mouth and not be fooled, because the road is mine as much as it is for men.

I have been reading Madmoizelle for more than ten years, I read and recognize myself in all the articles that could talk about this wound. I say.

But what I didn’t know before being a mother and having a baby is that it could take on another dimension, which I personally found even more shocking and scandalous.

My four year old daughter and I were sexually harassed

As I told you above, we were both in the Bois de Vincennes, not isolated in the trees for all this, and we were playing “cat”. I was already short of breath from sports and I’m 24, but I was happy to run after my overexcited daughter who needed to let off steam and play, like any kid her age.

I have not thought of others I was not on guard, I did not feel “in danger”, all the signs were green. I took advantage of the moment, focused on the game, on my heart that was already beating fast, on the smile and red cheeks of my daughter who was too happy that we could have fun together on a Sunday afternoon.

And there, a few meters from me, I heard it: he whistled at me three times in a row. In the end no, she whistled at us, my daughter and me. I turned to see where he came from, check if he was addressed to me and I saw him, the lewd look, a filthy smile on the lips of his disgusting head. I say “disgusting”, but today I wouldn’t recognize him if I were to meet him again. I just remember his expression that it meant nothing good to me.

When we’ve been harassed countless times, we know how to recognize bad looks. We know very quickly when there is danger, we feel the heartbeat and the blood freeze, sometimes even without exchanging words.

There I knew, understood, saw. At the moment. I wanted to ignore him, thinking that he would go away on his own, seeing my indifference. This was not the case. He did it again, once, twice, thrice, until I turned back to him. And there, he showed me a somewhat isolated grove with a nod, still smiling.

Without saying anything, he made it clear that he wanted me to follow him behind that fucking bush. I guess it wasn’t to start a frantic game of Uno, but to get to know me, in the utmost calm. Did he already have a plan in mind?

He thought I would tell him oh yes, great idea, let’s go and sexually mix behind this grove holding my daughter’s hand for the next seven minutes, this is just what I was dreaming of, thank you dear forest stranger “ ?

What rubbish.

A reflex: protect it

By myself, I would probably have screamed very loud as I usually do in this type of situation. In these cases I insult, scream, humiliate publicly, I take the people around me to responsibility. It generally scares the guys who harass me, to see that I don’t let myself be fooled and that I’m not (anymore) afraid of them.

Sometimes I chase them even as I keep insulting them screaming. It’s my technique. I am not saying that it works every time and that it is applicable to everyone, everyone reacts in his own way and there is no right way to do it.

But in these moments it’s my guts and my anger that takes over, even if it means looking crazy. At the same time, this is who I am: furious.

But this time my daughter was there. My tiny little girl, innocent, pure, who still doesn’t know anything about this facet of the world. What if I started yelling at the boy and he defended himself by physically attacking me? What if he has a knife? What if he gives me a peach? What if I can’t defend myself? And, the worst for me, if he takes it out on her?

I didn’t know what she could be capable of and couldn’t risk putting her in danger. I wanted her to be spared any violence and I wanted to protect her.

I looked at the boy, he showed me the grove again with a nod of his head, he continued to smile, and began to approach us.

I grabbed my daughter’s hand and squeezed it tight, and we walked in the opposite direction, fast, very fast. The boy followed us, continuing to whistle at us, calling me a few nicknames, one more delicate and charming than the other, and I was very happy that my little girl still didn’t have a good range of swear words in her vocabulary and that she didn’t understand what she was about. he was saying.

It lasted many minutes, until we got out of the woods, found the sidewalk and a larger crowd, people allowing us to mingle with them and get away from him.

Once among the others, I was able to ease the pressure on my daughter’s hand a little. We were out of danger, the boy had lost sight of us and we could go home, always in a hurry.

But of course, my daughter’s questions began to arise: Why did we have to leave in a hurry? Because a strange guy wanted to annoy us. Why was he weird? Because there are people who are not very nice and who want to hurt others. How do you know a man is weird?

I struggled to answer this last question.

The time for questions has come

How to explain instinct to him? Experience? The danger ? How to teach him to trust others while remaining on guard? How do you explain to her that guys can be dangerous sometimes, especially when you are a girl? All without frightening him and without making generalizations?

She is four years old. I thought she was too small for hers, I wanted to save her a few more years, I didn’t want her to have to face him at her age.

When we are parents, we know that we must prepare our children, inform them as well as possible of the dangers, give them weapons and lead them to know what is good for them, or not.

We know that we have to talk to them about intimacy, consent, respect for others, even sexuality, with good words, adapted to their age.

But then I wasn’t ready, and I did what I could to explain to her, in words she could understand. I told her she had to trust what she was hearing and that she always had to, as she had just brilliantly done during this bad episode, listen to what I was saying to her and follow me.

That maybe she was too young to understand that a situation could be dangerous, but that I knew it, and that I was there to protect her. That it was my job as a parent to make sure no one hurt her.

We got lucky on this trip, since in the end nothing “serious” happened. We were not moved, we were able to go home safe and sound, and even if he continued for a few days to tell me about this “strange gentleman”, in his head there will remain nothing but a somewhat confused memory of a time when he felt my fear.

But how to prepare it without frightening it to relive it for the next few years? How to explain it to him?

The worst ? It will surely start again

I’m crazy. I want to find this guy and physically hurt him, I want to spit on him and humiliate him publicly. I want to hurt him because he prevented me from defending myself by attacking me while my daughter was there. I want to yell at him, tell him he’s nothing more than a piece of junk that doesn’t deserve to exist.

It ruined my time with my daughter where we cared nothing but ourselves, where we didn’t think about the danger, where we played ball and laughed. She wasted this perfect moment to impose a sexual, imposed, inappropriate, belittling and degrading view on him, mixing my son’s innocence.

He came into our sphere to dump his filth, and I think I might kick his ass for it. His sexual violence awakens my physical violenceit is a defense mechanism like any other.

But the worst part of all this is that if this situation were to repeat itself and I was accompanied by the one I gave birth to, I would certainly have the same reaction, which is to flee as far as possible to save her. Each time, he or another will win. And that makes me so mad, if I knew.