Kate

When I was 18, I was walking home at night from the train station after a missed train. I took the ‘safe route’ through my parents’ neighbourhood instead of the fast route through the park. It seemed like the wise decision… However, a guy followed me and grabbed me, only 20 meters from my parents’ front door. I was lucky and managed to break loose, the guy ran off and I sprinted home. I was extremely upset, so despite it being half past 12 at night, I woke my parents up to tell them. My mom comforted me, while my dad went outside and drove around the neighbourhood, ready to beat this guy up if he found him.

I am in my thirties now, and recently I realised something about this experience that really shocked me to my core – even after all this time. In this entire ordeal, one big thing was blatantly missing: police involvement. At no time were they called, or did it occur to me or my parents that it might be worthwhile for me to give a statement about the events.
I still can’t wrap my brain around it: a predator was on the loose in my neighbourhood, and apparently, that was not worth bothering the police for their time for.

The other day I asked my mother about this, why the police wasn’t involved, and she didn’t have an answer (even if she, too, was visibly upset about the realisation of it). Violence against women is apparently so normalised that no one is outraged anymore. In fact, no one even realises it’s a crime.