Content warning: This post deals with issues surrounding sexual assault and may be triggering for some readers.
Samantha Wills is known by her most loyal supporters as the creative genius behind her self-titled jewellery line brimming with a boho-luxe vibe and delicate pieces.
But this week, the focus is much less on the jewellery she creates, and far more about the messages she seeks to spread.
Writing on her blog for the Samantha Wills Foundation, a foundation that centres on a desire to empower women in business, Wills decided, for the very first time, to detail her experience with sexual assault on the streets of New York to kickstart conversations around women, assault and the bedrocks of sexism.
And it’s a harrowing but necessary read.
Wills writes that on the back of Taylor Swift’s sexual assault civil suit, where she sued DJ David Mueller for just $1 to make a broader point about assault, she felt it both important and necessary to share her own experience.
“A few months ago, I was walking up 6th Ave in New York City, on my way to do my daily spin class at Soul Cycle,” she wrote.
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It sickens me how common this is. It's sad but I'm sure most women can tell a story similar to hers. I was accosted by a man in his late 30s/early 40s in the homewares aisle of Target when I was about 21. After walking up and down behind me several times (clearly scoping out his opportunity) he told me how beautiful he thought I was before groping me on the back side. Target, in the middle of the day. Not some seedy club (not that it would justify it in anyway either). I pushed him away and he told me it was just a joke. After, I wished I had slapped him across the face and given him what for but you are so caught off guard and feel so violated that it makes it so hard to react. He just walked off laughing leaving me so shaken that when I approached a staff member to tell them what had happened (I was afraid he could try to do it to someone else in the store) I broke down. I did report the incident to police (they said they knew of the man so clearly he's a serial offender, yet no arrests have been made 10 years on) but felt a bit silly as it was 'just a grope on the backside' which is how society has made us come to think of sexual assault, just something that women should have to put up with. Even though no arrest was ever made, looking back I'm glad I did still report it and as more women come forward and report these assaults and convictions are made hopefully these grubs will get it through their thick skulls that it is never ok to lay their hands on someone without their permission.
I was on a packed flight and when we were disembarking and standing waiting to get off someone grabed in between my legs from behind. I jumped forward as much as I could but I froze. I didn't report it. I just kept kicking myself thinking about how I should have reacted.