I was sexually abused...but was it clearly criminal/illegal?

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@Richard_Parker

One person’s credible account of inappropriate sexual touching of a client is a perfectly sufficient to fire an employee, and indeed the failure to do so may well open the owners of the studio up to liability for any future assaults.

The prudent thing for the owners to do would be to ask the instructor for his side of the story and then, absent a very credible and compelling story that basically denies everything the OP said (which seems pretty unlikely), fire him. They should lean toward firing him, since the likelihood of some random person inventing this story to get a yoga instructor fired is much lower than the likelihood of it simply being true, all else being equal.

Do you limit that to a “account of inappropriate sexual touching of a client” or any accusation of wrongdoing? That seems to give enormous potential for abuse, in which people can get other people fired based on a variety or motivations, or misinterpretations. If that can indeed open business owners up to liability, then I think some laws need to be changed, possibly.

@MandaJo

I don’t think people realize that it’s not uncommon to get a creepy/weird vibe from a guy, ignore it, and then it goes away because it turns out you were mistaken. That’s common. It’s part of normal caution about the world. I swear to god, we have had thread side-by-side where the same people were arguing “It’s appalling and sexist to assume a guy is a threat” and “Why didn’t you trust your instincts? You shouldn’t put yourself in a position to be assaulted with a guy you don’t trust.”

As a woman, if I avoided every person who gave me a bad feeling, or did something that seemed off and potentially inappropriate/threatening, I’d have meaningfully limited my personal and professional life. And most of the time, what seemed like a potential problem melted away. So don’t chide a woman for taking a “wait and see” attitude with a guy who had some questionable behavior the first time. It’s a pretty reasonable reaction.

I agree with this. Especially since it was cumulative (until the erection part, anyway).

[I once had an incident when I was having a medical procedure done. I was lying on my back and the anesthesiologist came in with various parts of his apparatus, and he put them down on me. Which wasn’t completely weird in its own right, since it was a pretty cluttered room and there wasn’t that much space elsewhere. But what was weird was that he put it down on my crotch area, such that when he picked them up again he kind of grabbed a bit extra. I’m not sure if this was deliberate. On the one hand, it was such minor contact that I wouldn’t think a guy would get off on such a thing, and maybe he was just a clueless doofus. OTOH, you would think that a guy who wasn’t motivated to do this deliberately would be careful to not do it. So I don’t know. Bottom line, my feeling was and is that if the guy meant nothing then fine, and if the guy did do it deliberately well then if a guy is so pathetic that he needs to resort to that then OK, whatever. My point here is just that sometimes things can be hard to interpret definitively, though at some point they may become clearer in a cumulative fashion.]

[Ann_Hedonia]

@HoneyBadgerDC

Without question he crossed the line ethically. What I have some doubts about is his motivation. Some guys are not good at reading signals or will read what they believe to be signals. He most certainly was unprofessional and will likely at some point end up in trouble over this. Once a man starts thinking about sex his signal reader starts to go a little haywire. I would not press charges but would report him to his boss and probably call him on the carpet for a long talk.

One time I misread what I am still pretty sure was a signal and set myself up for some embarrassment. I was giving a girl bow making lessons. I was trying to teach her how to use a draw knife. This is a two handed knife we pull across the wood while sitting on a bench we call a horse. She just wasn’t getting it so I sat behind her and put my hands on top of hers guiding the knife across the wood. It was obvious she was responding so I quickly readjusted my position behind her as to not make so much contact. She kept asking me to show her this move over and over again and came back the next day wearing perfume. Now I started getting turned on and kissed her on the ear. She immediately acted insulted. I was highly embarrassed and ended the session right there. learned my lesson.

Hmm…well I’m glad you were embarrassed and learned your lesson but this seems kind of creepy…maybe.

Were you just giving the cute neighbor girl informal lessons or was this a formal paid class?

If the former, never mind. It actually seems like a good way to get the attention of a girl you like.

But if this was a formal class and the young lady had responded to your advances and you had made out or screwed or whatever- would you still have charged her for the class? Because if you didn’t, she might feel like she was paying in trade. And you maybe might wonder if that was her intention.

But if you charged her she might wonder just exactly what she was paying you for. Or would you have gotten dressed, looked at the clock and pulled out your calculator to prorate the class fee? That would seem weird as well.

Seems to me that making passes at your students can get complicated. Maybe better to avoid it.
.

[minlokwat]

@Ann_Hedonia

And I can definitely see being uncertain about the initial inappropriate contact, because I might assume that the teacher was going to adjust my upper leg but maybe I moved in a way he didn’t anticipate causing him to “miss”, especially if the touch was glancing.

You seem like a reasonable person. So might I ask how you would have responded after this?

Would you have stuck around after the class was over?

Would you then allow yourself to be alone with this instructor?

Would you then come back two days later and take another class with this instructor?

Would you then stay after that class was over?

Would you again allow yourself to be alone with him?

Would you accompany him to a different, more private room alone?

Would you, after observing that he was in a state of sexual arousal, allow him to massage your back?

I am sincerely asking to determine at what point a reasonable adult would address the situation and not allow it to continue on.

[Shodan]

@MandaJo

I don’t think people realize that it’s not uncommon to get a creepy/weird vibe from a guy, ignore it, and then it goes away because it turns out you were mistaken. That’s common.

And sometimes it turns out to be a creepy yoga teacher with a boner.

The OP said -

it started to become more clear this was a predator using his position to find ways to touch me by instructing me into compromising poses and pretending it was necessary to have a lot of contact with me. All this became painfully obvious when I noticed he had a full-on erection plainly visible through his shorts. Shortly thereafter he let out a bizarre (slightly muted but still clear) sexual sounding moan. Finally he ask me to do a pose by lying on my chest and then he random gave me a 4 minute back/neck massage that I in no way asked for or even gave permission for.

Sure, you’re right that often it’s nothing. It’s a judgment call. OTOH if he’s moaning and he has a hard-on and wants you to lie on your face so he can rub you, I would be hesitant to say “he probably doesn’t mean anything by it”.

YMMV.

In case I wasn’t clear, the advice isn’t “run like hell at the first hint of suspicion”. It’s “pay attention. Don’t dismiss it as probably nothing. Maybe it is nothing. But don’t dismiss it.”

Regards,
Shodan

[Richard_Parker]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

Do you limit that to a “account of inappropriate sexual touching of a client” or any accusation of wrongdoing? That seems to give enormous potential for abuse, in which people can get other people fired based on a variety or motivations, or misinterpretations.

I think the criteria would involve: (1) How supervised/independent the employee is; (2) what kind of mischief the employee can easily get into under the circumstances, including one-on-one contact, intimacy of normal job duties, etc.; (3) the severity of the accusation; (4) your Bayesian prior about the likelihood of a false accusation of that type. Maybe there are other factors, but those seem sufficient for now.

Here, you have an employee who operates without supervision; whose job involves physical touching of yoga practitioners, sometimes in private spaces; who is accused of something in the neighborhood of sexual assault; and the allegation is made by a client with no known connection to the employee or any apparent motivation to make something up (i.e., no significant monetary damages, no apparently basis for social prejudice, etc.). You also have what is, in my estimation, a totally credible narrative.

Under those circumstances, you obviously have to investigate to the extent possible. But assuming all you have is a credible accusation and an equal-or-lesser credible denial, then the prudent action is, at a bare minimum, removing this employee for a position in which such actions are possible (which could involve a change of duties or more supervision even if just by video cameras and rules about private interaction). Simply putting a note in the person’s file seems dangerously imprudent to me.

@Fotheringay-Phipps

If that can indeed open business owners up to liability, then I think some laws need to be changed, possibly.

If the employer should reasonably have known that an employee represents a threat of harm, and fails to take reasonable action, then someone harmed by the employee has an action against the employer.

So the question is what amounts to facts that put an employer on reasonable notice of an increased threat of harm. Whether one client’s prior report, resting solely on their own testimony, is enough to make the employer liable for a subsequent assault is basically a fact question for the jury, since it would really depend on the credibility of the report and the facts of the case.

More likely, such liability would arise because there were other details in the employee’s past that could have been discovered. The nature of litigation is that there’s very often other evidence–something weird the employee said to another, some other minor criminal history, a prior change in jobs that you failed to investigate, etc.

All that said, I tend to agree that this area of law needs reform. It sets up some pretty bad incentives for employer behavior, especially when one of the best ways or reducing crime is to make sure people who have committed crimes get jobs. I’d like to see blanket immunity provided if employers take a standard set of statutory steps, including liability insurance coverage, appropriate training, incident reporting requirements, etc.

[Helena330]

@minlokwat

Agreed.

To recap, the OP was felt up by the instructor, an experience that had never happened in the previous hundreds of classes.

She then sticks around after the class has ended and is even alone with the instructor.

She then comes back two days later for another class.

She stays after class again and is alone with him. Again.

She then moves into a private room with him, notices he is sporting a hard-on and still allows him to give her a back rub.

I mean for fuck’s sake, come on.

If you see this as victim-blaming, have at it. I say you don’t deliberately put yourself in a vulnerable situation. I can see with the first class, she may have been too shocked to know how to respond. But to come back two days later and have it play out all over again? Why the hell would you put yourself in harm’s way?

You’ve got to be male. You don’t know how old the OP is, or her experiences in life like whether she’s been verbally or physically abused, or has taken to heart how we were raised: to not make a fuss.

[Corry_El]

@minlokwat

You seem like a reasonable person. So might I ask how you would have responded after this?
…
Would you, after observing that he was in a state of sexual arousal, allow him to massage your back?

This was the point at which I wondered, just wondered no accusations of ill deeds, whether it’s a hypothetical story to see how far you can go and still have anyone questioning it called ‘creepy’ or a ‘predator’ themselves.

Assuming it’s all for real of course the instructor is a big problem waiting to happen for the employer, probably even without the boner/moaner part of the story. The fact that one particular student stuck around for a long back rub that wasn’t asked for after seeing the boner doesn’t put the employer in the clear if things eventually go where they seem to be headed with this instructor, whether with this student or somebody else, civil liability wise.

But it does seem strange somebody would just stick around rather than bolt at that point. I get the part about having to give benefit of doubt or else fear being accused of over reacting…to potentially ambiguous things. It just seems very unambiguous at that point. And it seems that might enter in if trying to stretch this situation into a criminal case, which does seem a stretch.

[Ann_Hedonia]

@minlokwat

You seem like a reasonable person. So might I ask how you would have responded after this?

Would you have stuck around after the class was over?

Would you then allow yourself to be alone with this instructor?

Would you then come back two days later and take another class with this instructor?

Would you then stay after that class was over?

Would you again allow yourself to be alone with him?

Would you accompany him to a different, more private room alone?

Would you, after observing that he was in a state of sexual arousal, allow him to massage your back?

I am sincerely asking to determine at what point a reasonable adult would address the situation and not allow it to continue on.

Well, I’m 60 years old and I take an average of 6-90 minute yoga classes a week so I’m not really sure how my answers are relevant.

Yes, I probably would’ve stuck around after class and spoken privately with the teacher. I always do, at least for a few minutes. Since I always request not to be touched at all, I might bring this up.

And yeah, I probably would’ve come back. I take 6- 90 minutes classes a week at a place I consider safe, I don’t always pay attention to who the scheduled teacher is. I wouldnt skip a good time slot because the teacher once accidentally brushed my thigh.

I would’ve been suspicious of the private room because I know how the yoga studio operates and I know the teachers need to prebook the rooms. But I wouldn’t expect anyone to know that.

But I do know that when people are assaulted or if a situation takes a nasty turn like Andreas did, you don’t always react like you think you would or should. It can be paralyzing. You can sort of freak out and shut down. That’s why I, as a reasonable person, never try to Monday morning quarterback how a victim reacted to an assault.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@Richard_Parker

Under those circumstances, you obviously have to investigate to the extent possible. But assuming all you have is a credible accusation and an equal-or-lesser credible denial, then the prudent action is, at a bare minimum, removing this employee for a position in which such actions are possible (which could involve a change of duties or more supervision even if just by video cameras and rules about private interaction). Simply putting a note in the person’s file seems dangerously imprudent to me.

If the employer should reasonably have known that an employee represents a threat of harm, and fails to take reasonable action, then someone harmed by the employee has an action against the employer.

So the question is what amounts to facts that put an employer on reasonable notice of an increased threat of harm. Whether one client’s prior report, resting solely on their own testimony, is enough to make the employer liable for a subsequent assault is basically a fact question for the jury, since it would really depend on the credibility of the report and the facts of the case.

This is all theoretically correct. But on a societal level, it’s very bad IMO to have a situation where one person’s allegation can get another person fired. It would also render them effectively unemployable, at least at their current type of position, which might be something they’ve spent years and years on. (Imagine - some guy accused you of some legal-related crime and that’s it, your legal career is over and you need to start digging ditches.) So it’s worth undoing.

[minlokwat]

@Helena330

You’ve got to be male. You don’t know how old the OP is, or her experiences in life like whether she’s been verbally or physically abused, or has taken to heart how we were raised: to not make a fuss.

Yes as per the last time I checked.

All I know about the situation is what the OP provided. If we are going to open this up to unconfirmed, hypotheticals then I’ll bow out of the conversation.

[DrDeth]

@GreenWyvern

I’ve thought about this a bit more.

The guy may argue - very justifiably - that you didn’t reject his advances at any time, and that he thought you wanted them.

Consider it from his point of view:

[ul]
[li]He ‘inadvertently’ touched your groin, but you said nothing and didn’t seem to mind.[/li][li]You then stayed with him alone after all the other students had left, and didn’t object to his unnecessary ‘help’ which involved lots of physical contact.[/li][li]“I said I’d see him in two days for his next class, and he said he hoped so because he was disappointed I had skipped the last one.” i.e. He indicated very clearly that he was interested in you. You didn’t reject this.[/li][li]Two days later, as you were leaving, he said “Don’t you want to stay behind to receive extra help?” - alone. You accepted immediately.[/li][li]He offered more unnecessary ‘help’ which involved physical contact. You made no objection, said nothing, and didn’t indicate in any way that this was unwelcome.[/li][li]He then invited you alone into the next room, and you accepted.[/li][li]He continued to touch you. You didn’t ask him stop, or tell him that you were at all uncomfortable about this.[/li][li]You noticed he had a ‘full-on erection’, and he gave a ‘sexual moan’, but you still made no move to leave the room. You still chose to stay there alone with him. You said nothing, and didn’t indicate any discomfit at all with the situation.[/li][li]He then (presumably still with his erection) gave you a ‘4 minute back/neck massage’ which had ‘nothing to do with yoga’. 4 minutes is a long time. You allowed him to continue without saying anything, and without indicating in any way that it was unwelcome, or that you had any objection.[/li][li]Then, still saying nothing to him, you suddenly and without warning filed a complaint about being ‘sexually abused’.[/li][/ul]

I assume that you’re at least in your 20s. Can any woman really get to that age and be so utterly and totally clueless? This is far beyond naive.

On reflection, I’m starting to wonder who the predator was here.

I’d certainly like to be in court to listen if you ever get cross-examined about this by any halfway competent lawyer.

I dont know about that. He was clearly in the wrong, but it is possible he misunderstood.

Toga teachers having a “thing” with a student is hardly unusual.

I suggest either:

1. Tell him, in no uncertain terms that it made you uncomfortable and he must stop.

or
2. Getting another studio/teacher.

I am not sure if legal recourse is your best bet.

But he was clearly in the wrong here.

[minlokwat]

@Ann_Hedonia

Well, I’m 60 years old and I take an average of 6-90 minute yoga classes a week so I’m not really sure how my answers are relevant.

O.K. You’ve presented a very reasoned and reasonable analysis. I’ve repeated myself several times throughout this thread. I’ll wait for the OP to check back in before adding further.

[Banquet_Bear]

@minlokwat

You seem like a reasonable person. So might I ask how you would have responded after this?

Would you have stuck around after the class was over?

Would you then allow yourself to be alone with this instructor?

Would you then come back two days later and take another class with this instructor?

Would you then stay after that class was over?

Would you again allow yourself to be alone with him?

Would you accompany him to a different, more private room alone?

Would you, after observing that he was in a state of sexual arousal, allow him to massage your back?

I am sincerely asking to determine at what point a reasonable adult would address the situation and not allow it to continue on.

…do you really think that people respond the same way in real life as they do to a series of clinical questions on the internet?

I’ve often thought about what I would do if I got caught up in a mass-shooting situation. I’ve played out scenarios where I could possibly flank the gunman and take them out with a well timed rugby tackle. But in reality I’d probably be a cowering mess in the corner: paralysed and unable to move.

Story time. Had a door-knocker once. It was a young woman doing a survey. I was busy at the time, so I asked her to come in so I could keep working and answer her questions at the same time. I bought her into my home office and I took my seat: which also happened to be semi-blocking the door. (Oh, and my home office also happens to be my bedroom.)

And it was then that I had realized what I had done. The look on her face made it painfully clear. You see: these survey’s are normally done at the door. You stand there for a few minutes and answer a whole lot of boring questions. But in just a few seconds I had turned a very normal situation into one that was very scary one. I bet you that if you had asked this survey-taker “if a strange man asks you to come into his house, would you go? If he asked you to go into his bedroom, would you go with him?” the answer would be “no.” But here she was, standing in my bedroom/home office: with me blocking the way to her escape. And it had taken seconds for this to happen. (To finish the story: I bought her back out to the hallway so that she was close to the door, and I completed the survey there.)

Things escalate so quickly. “Spidey sense” really doesn’t work the way it works for Spider-man in real life.

I worked in hospitality for fifteen years: more precisely I worked in the conference and events industry. And my most important resource were the people I worked with. You had to understand what makes people tick to get them to do what you need them to do. I once turned a room from classroom-to-dinner style for 300 people in just under 15 minutes: a process that normally takes an hour, and I did that because I had learnt how to manipulate people. I can do scary things. Not up to the “Derren Brown” level of scary. But if I’m in the zone I’m pretty damn good at getting people to do things they might otherwise not have done.

And do you know what predators do very very well? They manipulate people. They study people. They understand how people work. They know how to push the limits. Make you doubt yourself. Targets are not random, but carefully chosen. What happened to Andrea was no accident. It was the deliberate actions of a predator who knew exactly what they were doing with every single escalation.

Predators know what actions set off peoples “instincts”: so they modify their behaviour accordingly. When you break the decision making process into clinical, component parts, for some it sounds so absurd. But the “absurdity” is simply another weapon in their arsenal. Because it works. Just ask Bill Cosby or Terry Richardson. It is a mistake to think that in situations like this all people will react “logically” and “rationally.” Because we are humans, not vulcans, and if you want evidence that humans don’t always think “logically” and “rationally” I’ll simply direct you to the people who voted for the current President of the United States.

[Lamia]

@minlokwat

I am sincerely asking to determine at what point a reasonable adult would address the situation and not allow it to continue on.

Why? What difference does it make? The OP refers to her own behavior as stupid, but her question wasn’t about what she should have done but whether what happened to her was illegal.

FWIW, she doesn’t sound unusually naive to me. It’s fairly common for women to freeze up or fail to react in these kinds of situations. That’s not necessarily because we’re afraid of the assailant, but because we don’t want to cause trouble for someone who maybe didn’t mean to do anything wrong and anyway we’ve all seen what happens to women who speak up. We have good reason to expect that we’ll be blamed and/or disbelieved, as can be seen in this very thread.

I like to think that at this point in my life I know enough about sexual predators and have enough faith in my own judgment that I would have identified this yoga instructor as a definite creep before the OP did, but I’m not 100% certain of that.

[minlokwat]

@Banquet_Bear

…do you really think that people respond the same way in real life as they do to a series of clinical questions on the internet?

These aren’t “clinical questions on the internet” but exactly how the situation played out.

I’ve often thought about what I would do if I got caught up in a mass-shooting situation.

You do realize that, let’s say, the stress levels of theses two situations are not exactly analogous.

if you want evidence that humans don’t always think “logically” and “rationally” I’ll simply direct you to the people who voted for the current President of the United States.

And that’s where you lost me for good. I can’t take seriously people who comment on a situation and can’t keep themselves from taking some stupid political jab.

[Banquet_Bear]

@minlokwat

These aren’t “clinical questions on the internet” but exactly how the situation played out.

…nope. “How the situation played out” was how it actually played out. The exact opposite of asking clinical questions in a message board thread.

You do realize that, let’s say, the stress levels of theses two situations are not exactly analogous.

You don’t fucking say. Two different situations are not exactly analogous? Thank fuck you are here to point that out to me. Whatever would I have done without you to point out the bleeding obvious?

And that’s where you lost me for good. I can’t take seriously people who comment on a situation and can’t keep themselves from taking some stupid political jab.

Replace the “stupid political jab” with any other example of “non-logical non-rational” behaviour that you see every single day from nearly every single person. A reasonable person would have understood the jab in the context of the rest of the words I had written. That nearly half of those that voted in the United States made what I happen to think was a “non-rational” “non-logical” decision. My point-of-view is relevant to the example.

[minlokwat]

@Banquet_Bear

You don’t fucking say. Two different situations are not exactly analogous? Thank fuck you are here to point that out to me. Whatever would I have done without you to point out the bleeding obvious?

Then what -pray tell- was your point? We were discussing a situation with a yoga instructor and you bring up your potential course of action during a mass shooting. Can you connect these points a little more clearly, bub?

[Lamia]

@minlokwat

Then what -pray tell- was your point? We were discussing a situation with a yoga instructor and you bring up your potential course of action during a mass shooting. Can you connect these points a little more clearly, bub?

He was saying basically the same thing that Ann Hedonia and I said. It’s easy enough to imagine that you’d do a good job of dealing with a hypothetical difficult situation, but in real life it’s not always so easy.

[Sterling_Archer]

I think this is a tragic case of a guy who is unable to
Flirt verbally and a girl who is unable to speak up for herself.

Think of it from his perspective, and imagine that he’s a little bit shy about being forward enough to ask this girl out so he hides his flirtations behind his yoga tutelage. And maybe the first touch was an accident? Or just a really bad idea?

“I’ll let her know that I noticed she missed a class, then she knows she is special to me.”

“Ok she didn’t seem weirded out by that, she must like me, I’ll invite her to stay after class for extra instruction and then gradually touch her more to see if she likes it.”

“Man this is working great, she is letting me touch her so much, she must be really into me.”

“I’ll make a sexual pleasure noise so there can be no doubt I am definitely into her in a more-than-instructor way… she didn’t leave, she must really be into me, I’m sure she would enjoy a back massage.”

And so on. I would bet that if she had spoken up at any point or simply said “no thanks” when he offered to show more poses, or take her to a private room, or any of the crazy poses he asked her to do… then it would have stopped. Hopefully. I agree this guy was a minor creep but I think it is more due to social awkwardness and a very unfortunate communication barrier that things got so unwelcome for the OP.

[andrea_green]

Hi All,

Thank you all for your thoughtful, passionate and helpful responses. I sincerely appreciate your support and guidance during this complicated time. I’d like to start by sharing an update (mostly good news) and then I can try to address some of the comments that particularly stood out to me. I apologize if I miss replying to a few of you but please know I appreciate all your time and thoughts!

First thing this morning I electronically delivered an extremely detailed complaint and timeline of events to all the upper executives of this company as well as the managers. The manager followed up a couple hours later with a short carefully-worded email that said:

**We take these concerns very seriously and are conducting an investigation so that we can appropriately address the situation. We will reach out to you if we have questions.

I will plan to follow up with you once the concerns have been addressed appropriately.
**

They also CC’d another manager and an HR person.

So I went back today (because I go almost every day) and tried to goto a different class (but was late) so decided to practice Yoga by myself. I ended up practicing in the ‘little yoga room’ that I was previously coerced into when the cleaners interrupted the teacher during the last incident. The first thing I noticed was this!!! It appears even the small room as a serious-looking camera system. As to whether it’s fully-functional is another question but it was a huge relief to discover.

In no small part due to the supportive feedback I received in this thread but also on the basis of knowing there are actually cameras in both rooms where the assault took place, I decided that I had enough potential evidence to escalate this to a police report and so this afternoon that’s exactly what I did. Officers came and took both my verbal statement as well as my extremely detailed letter of complaint to the gym and things are now in motion (and being referred to the SVU).

I think those are those are all the latest updates for as of this evening, the police are on it and the studio acknowledges their own internal investigation too.

Now onto a few replies.

@AK84

To the OP. Go to the cops, You are right it was a (blatant) sexual assault, where he employed a position of power to get his way and lied about the nature of the act.

Thank you for helping me make this decision, your words made a difference!

@Bad_News_Baboon

He could turn it into a she said/he said thing, plus he would say that she returned the next day of her own volition…But I suggest going to the police for two reasons. It will leave a record should he do this again and maybe it will be a wake up call to him that this is not acceptable. For all we know, he might be getting worse with this behavior and he’ll continue this with others.

Thank you, this logical way of thinking was also very helpful to me.

@alice_in_wonderland

1. This was not your fault.

2. See above.

3. Insist on this person losing his job.

4. If he does not, name and shame the studio.

5. Go to the police if you choose. It’s a big step that could be cathartic or could create a huge wave of shit for you. Sadly, as this thread aptly shows, women are seldom just believed in these situations. They are blamed, shamed, and made to feel like they ‘wanted’ the attention, or they were ‘asking for it’. This is bullshit of course, but it’s something to keep in mind when deciding to pursue legal options.

6. I’m very sorry this happened to you. It’s not your fault.

I sincerely appreciate your support!

@Bullitt

andrea, I am really sorry this happened to you. I truly am. How has the studio and its managers responded? I hope they have been supportive and reticent. Did they say anything about other women complaining against that creep?

Thank you.

@Banquet_Bear

…do you really think that people respond the same way in real life as they do to a series of clinical questions on the internet?

Things escalate so quickly. “Spidey sense” really doesn’t work the way it works for Spider-man in real life.

Everything you wrote, including the shooting analogy, resonated with me, thank you.

A few last general comments: I think my story when describes in the manner I told it makes it very obvious what was going on here. But in reality, these events took place over three hours over two different classes. I have also been very fortunate in the past to never have had anyone try anything remotely like this before even outside of yoga so I was not at all attuned to looking for predatory behavior. I also have some self-esteem issues and wouldn’t consider myself beautiful enough to be a probable target for sexual assault. Obviously this way of thinking was a mistake and perhaps the man even targeted me for some of these reasons, I have no idea, I just really wasn’t expecting it and clearly missed numerous warning signs. I also doubted myself so even towards the end when I had suspicions and saw an obvious erection I was questioning myself and wondering if it was a coincidence or something…yes I know it was stupid but I have never experienced a sexual assault and this one was carefully disguised so I really wasn’t sure what was happening until it was over.