Harasser makes woman distrustful of men

I am an English as a foreign language teacher. For personal reasons I moved to Barcelona (I am from Argentina). As an immigrant it is very hard for me to get a job here, even having a legal residence. I’ve tried many jobs, I’ve been interviewed a few times but with no luck. I thought that a chance of getting some money was to work by myself, giving private classes, so I put an advert on the net. I started working with a family with three children, and some people even wrote emails to me to find out more about the classes.

Then I started receiving phone calls. These are some things that happened to me:

One of them was of a boy about my age who wanted me to give him (and his male friend) some private classes in his flat, and by the tone of his voice I noticed that he had been kidding, so I said that I only worked with children.

Another man phoned, and he said that they were four men who wanted to learn English in his house. I said that I only worked in public places (a café or something of the sort). He told me not to be afraid, that they were good people and that they were married with children and all that stuff. I didn’t take that job.

This is the worst that has happened to me up to now. A middle-aged man sent me an email, he said he wanted classes, I wrote him back and sent him my mobile phone. He phoned 5 minutes later, I was happy because he lived in the neighbourhood so I didn’t have to take the tube. We met next day at a café I proposed and we started the class. There was something strange, because as I lived in the same place, he wanted to know exactly my street, which, of course, I didn’t tell. At the end of the class, we arranged another class for the following week.

The problem started two days after, when I received this sms: “Hello darling, how are you? Kiss.” As I thought it was from a friend of mine whom I hadn’t seen from some time, I asked this person who she was (just to be sure it was her). This was the answer: “Hi! It’s a student who is very lucky to have such a beautiful and sexy teacher. I like you a lot and I’m happy to be your student. Kiss.”

I felt disgusted at those words and although the number didn’t match with the number this man had given me, I knew it was him for he was the only adult student I had at that moment. Some hours later he sent me another message inviting me to his house, because he was alone. This continued for a some days, until it stopped, but he made me feel scared of going out, because he lived three blocks from home and I didn’t want to meet him. Through some personal investigation on the net, I found some adverts in which he said he had spare rooms for rent at his house, that he was a good and honest man looking for a woman to live there, or he asked for some classes of whatever. What a jerk, probably he did this to many other women…

After this episode, I decided not to work with adult men, just with children, which is sad, because I lose jobs and money because of this. In fact I have rejected many possible students just because they were males, which is unfair since not all of them are like this idiots.

– A South American immigrant in Spain

Location: Barcelona, Spain