A few weeks ago, a 43-old-woman was waiting to cross the street in Graz, Austria, when a man came up to her and said, “Wow, a woman with a fantastic arse, can I touch it?”
She said no, but he ignored her and grabbed her anyway.
Mad, the woman slapped him, then ran when he began chasing her and threatening her, saying he would not accept “being hit by a woman.” The police showed up and intervened, and the woman pressed charges of sexual assault.
However, this week, the local prosecutor Hansjörg Bacher dropped the charges “because the conditions that needed to be met had not been fulfilled.”
He said, “The incident itself needs to involve physical contact with sexual parts, simply touching the woman on the bottom does not qualify as sexual harassment. That would not have been the case if he had for example grabbed her breasts or touched her improperly in the sexual region.”
The woman said the decision by prosecutors was a second insult completely incomprehensible. She said that she had had to get counselling after the very public assault by the man and is demanding they reconsider the decision.”
What a horrible decision – the law needs to be updated, but good for the woman for speaking out and fighting back.
