The Russell Brand verdict brought up memories of an incident I’ve never shared

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What lessons will my son take from a world that has become so much better at seeing sexual violence, but still so willing to accommodate it?

“Okay. Here goes. #MeToo”. The Facebook post was by an acquaintance, a woman I sometimes saw at conferences. I came across it at 4am, scrolling my phone with a baby in my arms. I remember reading friends’ #metoo stories in 2017, with curiosity, with recognition, but without much surprise. “What?” I probably thought, jostling my infant son. “You too?”

I make my way to the self-checkout as she speaks of how Brand was in many ways a predator hiding in plain sight. How did no one seem to see it? Why did his industry allow it? I slide a small pair of pyjamas across the till and fumble to pay, a little distracted, as she continues: “I’m sure, like me, there have been times when you didn’t say something to a man to keep the peace.” It’s not a question.

The summer I was 20 was spent waitressing in San Francisco. It was 2004. I was living with my brother, and my friends had an apartment with 12 other Irish students in the Tenderloin neighbourhood. One night they invited their coworker “J” to hang out. He was from Texas and looked and sounded like a young Matthew McConaughey. I was thrilled when he paid attention to me, so much that one of the other girls (who fancied him too) told him I had a boyfriend back home.

When I ran into him alone in the kitchen and he kissed me, I was happy to put that rumour to bed. But suddenly J was tugging me by the arm into one of the communal bedrooms and flipping the lock, announcing: “Race to get naked!” I felt so stupid and young then. I’d given him the wrong idea and now I was going to have to keep my big girl pants on and do some explaining. “I’m not going to have sex with you,” I said, or maybe it was “I don’t want to have sex with you”, something mortifying but unequivocal. In the end though, it didn’t matter that I’d said no.

The following day, J would ring our landline and ask to speak to me while my big brother made goofy faces, as if J were just another boy ringing to talk nonsense.

It’s just one #metoo story. It’s a story I didn’t…

Journ…

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