She was walking on a Paris street when it happened, not far from her home. In a scene that has shocked an entire nation, a man approached her in broad daylight, struck her in the face and somehow managed to get away.
Marie Laguerre, a 22-year-old architectural student, released CCTV footage of the incident on her personal Twitter account. It shows her rounding a corner on July 24, trailed shortly thereafter by a man who is clearly saying something to her, although the video has no audio component.
Laguerre keeps walking, but she eventually stops to confront the man, turning to look at him. He strikes her in the face, directly in front of a cafe terrace where a handful of people sit talking and smoking.
The man — who hasn’t been identified — got away, but prosecutors have since opened an investigation. Laguerre, however, took to social media to transform her experience into the latest illustration of the dangers that target women even in the most innocuous of public spaces.
“Because I responded to his harassment, a man hit me in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day, in front of dozens of witnesses. Unacceptable. Stop street harassment,” she wrote, in the same Twitter post where she released the footage.
“It’s intolerable that in France, in 2018, women are hit in the street because they refuse to be insulted as they walk. It is a fundamental question of liberty,” said Marlène Schiappa, France’s gender equality minister, speaking on France’s BFM Television. Schiappa was the lead advocate of a crackdown on catcalling.
Source: WP
