#WeSayNoToMazepin
Tags: Sexual Assault, Wesaynotomazepin, Running, F1

I wrote the piece below in August 2014 after I was assaulted. It lived on a blog I wrote when I was studying sport psychology. I thought I had moved on from the incident, but seeing the news about new F1 driver Nikita Mazepin brought it all back. It also brought back some long-buried memories of incidents when I was even younger — being surrounded and groped in a nightclub by a group of men in my first year at university when I was on the way back from the bathroom to find my friends. Realising that the kneading sensation from behind wasn’t my bag digging into me on a crowded tube train but a man having a deliberate feel. The older man who I thought was my friend who kept touching me in intimate places even when I told him not to. I don’t know a single woman that hasn’t experienced something of this nature, or worse.

I now have teenage daughters who have got into F1 this year. I had a conversation with them last week about the behaviours. They don’t know any of the stuff that happened to me — yet. At some point I’m going to have to address that.

“I was assaulted yesterday during my Friday morning run.

It was 7:20am and I was one kilometre into a planned 8–9 k run. I was going towards the park, along one of the nicest roads in the area. I noticed that there were four men on the pavement. It looked like they were waiting to be picked up to do a day’s work on a building site. They were all casually dressed in dark blue clothing: hoodies, sweatshirts and combat/manual labour-type trousers. They were laughing and joking around. I knew I’d probably get a bit of ‘chat’ from them as I ran past.

I subconsciously picked up my pace as I got nearer to them. As I went to run past, one of the men crouched down and grabbed (gripped — I couldn’t wriggle free) my hips from behind. Then I felt a sharp crack across my backside as he slapped me forcefully. The other three men were laughing.

My instinct was to keep moving. I knew I shouldn’t stop. I found my voice and yelled: “YOU FUCKING WANKERS! HOW DARE YOU! YOU WANKERS!” back at them as loud as I could as I ran away as fast as I could. They were standing outside a building that had a downward slope and large bins in front of it. I had to get away in case they tried to drag me down there and do something even worse.

At this point my brain presented me with two options:

1. Carry on, complete my run, put the incident to the back of my mind and keep it to myself

2. Get help. Tell as many people as I could.

Then I asked myself a question: was that a sexual assault? I realised that I didn’t quite understand the definition of that term in that moment. I knew it was an assault, but was it actually sexual? I ran along the road a bit further, round a bend so that the men couldn’t see me, stopped and rang 999.

I was asked which service I needed. Police. The operator asked how she could help. I said, without thinking, ‘I’ve been sexually assaulted’. She stayed on the line talking to me and I started crying. A police car appeared a few minutes later and I thanked the operator for looking after me.

The police were great. They were very calm. They asked me for descriptions of the four men and of the man that grabbed me in particular and I simply couldn’t remember a distinguishing thing about any of them. The policewoman asked me if would be able to pick him out of the four and said that I couldn’t. We drove back past the place where the incident happened and then men had gone. Apparently there isn’t CCTV on that part of the road and without a meaningful description they can’t arrest.

The policeman asked me a few questions about my running routines: did I vary my routes? Yes. Would they have known I was coming? Unlikely. He advised me to knee an attacker in the nuts next time. I asked if this would result in me getting arrested. He said he didn’t think a single police officer in the country wouldn’t be on my side in that situation.

I didn’t want to be alone so I asked my husband to forego work to be with me. I didn’t feel comfortable when he was out of my sight and I’m still feeling vulnerable on my own so he stayed at home today as well. I can still feel where the man touched me. There is no physical evidence so it must be psychosomatic. At the moment I don’t like being approached from behind”.

I managed to go out for a run 48 hours after the incident. I was extremely anxious but I got through it. I started doing Bootcamp and Boxing classes to make myself physically and mentally stronger. The police recorded the incident so that they could see if there was a pattern. It happened about 50 metres from a secondary school (empty; it was the school holidays) and I couldn’t bear the thought of them doing something similar to a child. Victim support phoned me and offered counselling but the woman I spoke to was oddly rude so I said no.

I told everyone I could about the incident, both online and in real life. 95% of people were wonderfully supportive. An egg profile on twitter told me I’d made it up. Someone on a local parents’ group on Facebook said I should run in the gym instead to keep myself safe, implying I’d deliberately put myself in danger.

I didn’t run down the road where the incident happened for 15 months. I used to wake up in the night with a start, sweating, for no reason. I have carried on running. Since then I have run half-marathons, marathons and an ultramarathon. I cross the road to avoid groups of more than two men when I’m out running. I still jump and yelp with fright if my husband (the gentlest, kindest person I’ve ever met) enters the room I’m in without making a noise. In 2016 I had a breakdown, work-related, but I’m fairly sure the incident I’ve described fed into the deterioration of my mental health.

I’m going to end this piece with the final paragraph of the post I wrote in 2014:

“We must not let them win. There are more of us and we are stronger and better than them. We must stand up to them and report incidents of this nature whenever and wherever they occur. This behaviour must be challenged and eradicated”.