Six years have passed, but Holly Tang, a Sydney-based lawyer, still remembers the details of that traumatic night.
Key points:
- A new report on street harassment in Victoria shows many Asian women are experiencing multiple types of abuse
- While incidents of street harassment declined during COVID-19 lockdowns, racialised abuse was more prevalent, it found
- Around 90 per cent of respondents who reported incidents of harassment said they were dissatisfied with the outcome
She was on her way home from the train station in Campsie, in Sydney's west, at about 10:00pm when she heard someone behind her.
"A drunken man ran up behind me and held me down while he felt me up," Ms Tang wrote on Facebook in 2017 – inspired to finally speak out about the 2014 incident as the global #MeToo movement kicked off.
"At that moment I knew I was about to get raped when I stopped struggling and prayed to God for help."
But the attacker stopped and ran off.
Ms Tang reported the incident to police, who classified it as an indecent assault.
"I still had the smell of his alcohol on my body," Ms Tang recalled.
Ms Tang told the ABC this was not the only time she had been sexually harassed in public.
Now a mother of a four-year-old daughter, Ms Tang said she was 12 when somebody pinched her bottom on the bus.
As she grew older, she said she was often approached by men who yelled "ni hao" at her.
"These events are hand-in-hand with the way I grew up and my cultural identity.
"Racism was normal, bullying was normal, being called names was normal, so why wouldn't sexual abuse also be normal?"
Street harassment as both racist and sexist acts
Ms Tang's experiences are likely shared with many other women, according to a new report released today on street harassment in Victoria.
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)Conducted by advocacy group It's Not A Compliment (INAC), the report surveyed 343 respondents who had experienced harassment like catcalling, whistling, honking, gestures and unwanted touching in public spaces.
It found 91.4 per cent of respondents who had experienced street harassment identified as women, with 89 per cent of them experiencing sexually motivated harassment.
Around a quarter of them identified as women of colour, with South-East Asians the largest ethnic group, followed by South Asians and East Asians, according to the report.
Natasha Sharma, INAC's researcher and policy officer, said while the report had its limitations the data indicated street harassment wasn't just motivated by sexism, but also other identity markers such as race.
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)She said women of colour including Asian women could have "very different" experiences of street harassment compared with Caucasian women because there were also racist undertones.
In a testimony shown to ABC, a complainant told INAC she was stopped by a man on the street who told her: "I love brown girls, I'm not racist" and "I'd love to have you."
"We're trying to show people that street harassment can encompass a wider range of experiences than what is typically considered harassment," Ms Sharma said.
COVID-19 and anti-Asian racism
INAC's survey found there had been an overall decline in incidents of street harassment during the lockdowns to curb the spread of COVID-19.
But for Asian women, harassment continued. There were fewer sexualised comments — but more racial harassment.
The survey found 6.1 per cent of respondents faced an increase in harassment in relation to the coronavirus pandemic, with the majority of them from Asian backgrounds.
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)Sarah Tan, a Malaysian artist now residing in Melbourne, said when she was moving out of a Sydney suburb in March, one removalist claimed her furniture was "infected by COVID".
When ABC contacted the removalist company to verify the claim, the journalist was told to "fix your English", and that police would be contacted about the phone inquiry.
Ms Tan said in addition to her race, she felt she was also treated that way because she's a woman.
The INAC report was also in line with the Asian Australian Alliance (AAA) report into COVID-fuelled racism against Asian Australians last year, which found 66 per cent of respondents identified themselves as women.
Erin Chew, convenor of AAA, said most incidents experienced by Asian women were reported to have taken place in shops, in shopping centre car parks, or on the street while they were walking.
Frequent experiences but low rates of reporting
The INAC report found that before COVID-19, more than a quarter of the respondents were harassed in public "a few times a month".
And for those who had reported incidents of street harassment, more than 90 per cent said they were dissatisfied with the outcome.
Ms Sharma from INAC said many people didn't feel safe or confident enough to report incidents to the police, while some found it was "not very effective".
"The police aren't really trained … to handle incidents like these," Ms Sharma said.
Ms Tang, who went to the New South Wales Police in 2015, said she felt frustrated and further traumatised by the experience.
"I went to the police straight away, but I didn't realise that I would have to sit in the police station for the next two to three hours to give my statement," she said.
"I didn't realise that I had to strip [for] the police to take photos, you know, that experience was actually quite traumatic in itself."
A year-and-a-half later, however, NSW Police said they had closed the case because they had been unable to find the perpetrator.
"NSW Police take all reports of crime (including assaults) seriously and we encourage anyone with information about an alleged assault to come forward and contact police," a NSW Police spokesperson said.
Social work Professor Cathy Humpherys from the University of Melbourne said as part of evidence gathering, police could ask victims whether photos could be taken carefully and privately.
Many police services have been trained in trauma-informed work and how to best provide specialist services for sexual assault complainants by working with medical and social workers, she added.
Ms Tang said she was determined to "do everything" so her daughter didn't have to face similar experiences in the future.
"Sometimes, I wished my half-white, half-Asian child looked a bit more like her father so that she wouldn't be a target herself," she said.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMicWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIxLTA0LTE2L2FzaWFuLWF1c3RyYWxpYW4td29tZW4tZGVzY3JpYmUtZXhwZXJpZW5jZXMtb2Ytc3RyZWV0LWhhcmFzc21lbnQvMTAwMDY4MTM00gEoaHR0cHM6Ly9hbXAuYWJjLm5ldC5hdS9hcnRpY2xlLzEwMDA2ODEzNA?oc=5
2021-04-15 18:46:13Z
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