A young woman who says she was sexually harassed outside a Health Centre in Dulwich by a delivery driver in an assault that saw her break both her arms has gone public about her ordeal to spread awareness.
According to Charlotte Hensman’s mother, Aileen, on 21 July at 11 am her daughter was leaving Tessa Jowell Centre on a bike when a Gorillas (German on-demand grocery delivery service) rider touched her inappropriately, then rammed his electric bike into her bike, causing her to fall off and break her arms.
Aileen Hensman said on her Facebook page: ‘I want to highlight this assault to prevent someone else becoming a victim. Too many businesses preach about doing the right thing but don’t practise it.’ Charlotte’s mother shared a description of the attacker’s appearance and what happened to her daughter in her Facebook post on East Dulwich Forum, which led to more stories to unveil in the comments.
A user shared a story of how she was on her way to the gym in Peckham when a man started pursuing her and throwing inappropriate comments at her, verbally abusing the woman. She was only safe when she ran into the gym and there was a staff member. Yet the question arises, what would have happened if she was not so lucky as to run into another person?
A report released in March 2021 by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for UN women identified that women and girls faced similar challenges in public spaces; regardless of the society we live in, women still suffer day to day from from sexual harassment and abuse, and more times the system silences the voices of victims. Key findings for UN women YouGov survey show that 71% of women of all ages in the UK have had an experience of some form of sexual harassment in a public space; the number rises to shocking 86% among girls aged 18-24. But most of the instances of sexual harassment are kept untold of.
Incidents of sexual harassment are barely reported (over 95% of all women did not report their experiences of sexual harassment. Source: YouGov). Almost half of the women who were asked said that they didn’t think reporting it would help.
Charlotte and her mother both expressed their hope that by sharing the details about the perpetrator and giving publicity to the case they could help and prevent the same from happening to others.
Gorillas’ response to South London Lines about the allegation of lack of action was: “We will look into this internally and get back to you as soon as we have updates.” Aileen Hensman has been receiving the same reaction for months. “Nothing is done until it’s too late,” she says, solemnly.
