A man tried to molest this US powerlifter...oh boy, did he regret it
A female powerlifter has become a viral sensation after she posted pictures of her swollen knuckles after an altercation where she punched a man in the face who was sexually assaulting her on the street in Dublin. Leanna Carr, who is from Fort Collins, Colorado, was on vacation in the Irish capital when the man assaulted her.
The 26-year-old powerlifter was rushing to catch her bus near the Aston Quay when the man assaulted her. Many women do not know how to react when they are in situations like that because it's not something that you would expect to happen on vacation. Most women also don't speak about incidents like that with anyone but for Carr, the reaction was instantaneous.
She told The Irish Independent: "I am never a violent person, and I have never punched anyone before... but I became so angry and had so much adrenaline that my reaction was to punch him. I got him on the cheekbone, hard."
"I started yelling a couple more things to him like 'Don’t ever touch a girl like that again, I could get you arrested'. He became very mad and I thought he was going to hit back." "But there was an older couple next to us who saw the whole thing and the gentleman told the scumbag to keep walking. The man started laughing again and then crossed the street to disappear into the crowd of people."
Carr then admitted that she probably wouldn't have been so confident if the assault had taken place in a quiet and dark alley somewhere but when it comes to something of this nature taking place in broad daylight and with so many people around, she felt she couldn't let the stranger get away with it.
Initially, the powerlifter thought that her reaction to the assault was going to make her feel guilty but the tweet received more than 25,000 likes and almost 3,000 retweets.
Carr said: "I didn’t think expect it to have such a large reach. It’s almost all been very positive. A lot of the responses were from women saying that I made the right decision, congratulating me and saying it was well deserved."
There were still some trolls, as is the case with almost anything posted online, who commented explaining that they have never seen or even experienced anything like what Carr went through so this meant that her account wasn't true.
Carr responded to some of them by saying: "Maybe you haven’t seen it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. No matter what country you’re in. Sexual harassment happens every day from complete strangers and most women do not know the correct way to respond."
"In the past, I probably would have felt too shocked and timid to have dealt with the situation. I probably would have just walked away... and that man probably would have continued to prey on innocent women."
"I never use Twitter and didn’t write the post for attention, but I’m glad it went viral. This is something that is very common and hopefully it encourages more women to feel comfortable and able to stand up for themselves if it does happen to them."