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lLike most women, I too did not want to report What happened to me earlier? I was embarrassed, ashamed, and largely convinced that it wasn’t worth escalating the controversy. After all, I was probably being dramatic. I am free from any signs of permanent damage. And worse things had happened to other people. Maybe I overreacted.
This was a stream of consciousness that ran through my mind for several days immediately after the incident. All of those thoughts told me to do the same thing: say nothing, get over it, and find a way to move on. But I didn’t do that. And because of that, a man was convicted of the criminal charge he deserved. and in which case this is an extremely rare outcome victims of any type of violence against womenMy feelings of violation were vindicated by the court.
Last year, when I was getting dressed in Selfridges a man came into my changing room. I wrote about what happened At the time, describing how I had initially noticed him staring at me on the shop floor while I was standing in front of the changing room curtain checking how a dress looked in the mirror. This freaked me out, but I didn’t think anything of it until a few minutes later, when the same man opened the curtain of my changing room while I was trying on another dress. Thankfully, I was mostly dressed and facing her as I was about to walk out and asked a shop assistant to help me tie the dress at the back. If he had entered a few seconds earlier, I would have been nearly naked, facing away from him, and certainly in a much more vulnerable position.
Shaken, frightened and generally upset, I walked out of the store and started crying profusely. But that had as much to do with the event itself as the reaction to it, all of which made me feel like it was something I should have just ignored. A shop assistant just shrugged when I told him. The other one, called security, who came quickly and took some details from me. Later, I called customer services, which were equally ineffective. A representative for the luxury department store said in a statement at the time: “The safety and well-being of our customers and team members at Selfridges is our top priority, and we do not tolerate any unacceptable or threatening behavior towards anyone. We are working with the police to assist in the investigation of this incident and are actively committed to promoting a safe and welcoming environment within our stores.”
When I informed the police, two officers came to my house to take my statement. However, still, since the man was not caught in the store and no one knew his identity, it might have ended there. Except that wasn’t the case. I explained what happened to my contact at the fashion rental service Hurr, who had arranged for me to go to Selfridges that day to pick out the dress for the Christmas party. “Glad you found a dress!” The contact person replied before saying they were “sorry to hear” about what happened and introduced me to the store’s floor manager. Because of this, my claim was escalated, and eventually I received a long email from Archana Ramaswamy, the store director of Selfridges at the time, who came to meet me at a café near my home to personally apologise.
There is a pattern of violence escalation. How many times do we need to be reminded of this?
It was the first time that anyone associated with Selfridges made me feel that they understood the gravity of what had happened. Even though I was obviously not harmed, this man could see my nearly naked body and, if I had been facing the other way, who knows what he might have tried to do. Because of Archana the man was caught; She saw him again in the store a week later, recognizing him from the CCTV footage. None of us could believe he was back: was he planning to go to someone else’s changing room?
Thankfully, he never got the chance. The security personnel immediately caught him and he was taken for police questioning. I was told that he has apologized and that he has been facing a lot of difficulties recently. Less than a year later, he was convicted at Westminster Magistrates’ Court of watching a person perform a private act. He has confessed his crime. His sentence included a community order, a rehabilitation activity requirement and a one-year ban from Selfridges. He was also required to register with the police for five years in accordance with the Sexual Offenses Act 2003, meaning he would remain a registered sex offender for half a decade. I will also be compensated £150. He is currently appealing against the sentence.
It was a bittersweet moment when my case officer told me all this. Of course, I was thrilled to learn that this person would face justice for his actions, and relieved to know that I hadn’t overreacted or made a big deal out of anything. In fact, I reacted exactly the way the law tells us we should, and took a reasonable-sized deal for something criminal, and hopefully also prevented this guy from causing any further harm to others. All this felt good. What was less felt was the anger that came with it.
I was angry that no one was monitoring the changing area on the women’s floor. And when someone saw a man going in that direction, no one thought of raising alarm bells. I was angry that the shop assistants had no idea how to handle the situation, and the man was able to leave the shop that day without being caught. I was angry because if Archana herself had not seen him, he might have survived. I was also annoyed that the customer service assistant I first spoke to on the phone ended our conversation by thanking me for coming to Selfridges. And the Hur representative told me he was “sorry to hear” about what happened to me, but he took no action, nor did anyone else at Hur. And I was angry that I felt like no one understood the seriousness of it.
according to 2022 victims survey The survey, conducted by the then Victims Commissioner, Baroness Newlove, found 91 per cent of women were not confident that reporting a crime against them would bring them justice. Nearly four in five women (79 percent) did not trust the ability of the police to thoroughly investigate crimes against them, and after their experience reporting a crime to the police, 59 percent were unsure or reluctant to report again. Combine this with a number of other statistics, and it paints a grim picture, as according to the Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW) for the years ending March 2017 and March 2020, less than one in six victims (16 percent) of sexual assault by rape or penetration (including attempts) reported the attack to the police. Meanwhile, ONS data found that for victims who told someone about the abuse but did not report it to the police, the most common reasons given were embarrassment (40 per cent), they did not think the police could help (38 per cent), and they thought it would be humiliating (34 per cent). A quarter of victims also thought that the police would not believe them.
Judging by the way I felt after leaving Selfridges that day, I had every reason to feel that I should not have reported what happened to me. The only reason I did this was because, as someone who writes about violence against women fairly regularly, I am familiar enough with the above statistics to know the importance of taking your experiences of violation seriously, even when other people may make you feel like you shouldn’t. I also know that sexual predators exhibit patterns, whereby a so-called “small” offense, like the one I experienced, can lead to another, far more significant offense.
Take Met Police officer Wayne Couzens, who was charged with indecent exposure in 2015, six years after he murdered 33-year-old Sarah Everard. In 2023, a Met PC was found guilty of gross misconduct after carrying out an “unfortunately poor” investigation into Couzens following two incidents of flashing in a McDonald’s in Kent just hours before Everard’s abduction and murder. During the trial, Paul Ozin Casey, for the Met Police, said that after the incidents were reported to the force, they were recorded as “less urgent” than other issues they had to deal with.
There is a pattern of violence escalation. How many times do we need to be reminded of this? I don’t know the answer. Nor do I know what the man who came into my changing room was planning to do to me that day, or what he might have been able to do to other women if he had gotten away with it. What I do know is that he committed a crime against a woman, which should have been taken seriously by everyone as soon as it happened. Because how do we stop dangerous people like this? And what might the consequences be for all of us if we don’t? And why does it often feel like so many of us aren’t asking these important questions?
A spokesperson for Selfridges said: “We have a zero-tolerance policy towards unacceptable or threatening behavior within our stores and following this incident, our Oxford Street store was placed on high alert for the suspect, who was later successfully identified by an employee, restrained by store security and arrested by police. We are reviewing all of our store operations to ensure the safety and well-being of our customers. “Continually assess and strengthen protocols and procedures.”
Independent Hurr has been contacted for comment.