Rosie, 25, said she was walking through a forested route in Portugal earlier this summer when she came across a man with no trousers on who was masturbating as he watched her. The local police did not pick up when she tried to call them.
“It was terrifying,” said Rosie, who asked that her full name not be published. “I just felt completely alone at that point.”
The incident had left her feeling unsafe, making her realise her unique vulnerability as a lone female pilgrim.
Because you’re a lone woman on a very rural part of a pilgrim trail. You are, you see, alone?
It’s also worth putting this into context:
Lone female pilgrims walking the Camino de Santiago have spoken of being subjected to “terrifying” sexual harassment in near-deserted areas of rural Spain, Portugal and France.
In interviews with the Guardian, nine women alleged they had experienced harassment while attempting the pilgrimage route over the past five years, with several saying they had feared for their lives.
9 over 5 years.
A pilgrim approaches Castrojeriz in Castilla v León, Spain. More than 230,000 women are said to have walked the Camino last year.
There are suburban high streets worse than that….
Poor chap. Goes into the forest to crack off a crafty one and some harridan in sandals and backpack interrupts him.
Hope he called the cops.
Nice to see a story about Christianity in the guardian for once.
Every now and again you are going to bump up against nasty people. The correct response is to take a picture and walk away, being ready to respond physically if necessary. You need to be robust, not moaning about being “unsafe”.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding the purposes of a pilgrimage but have they ever thought about walking in groups of say 10 to 20 women? Safety in numbers?
Is there any description of who is doing this, other than ‘men’?
@JuliaM
The lack of trousers skews the description of what they look like.
I was going to write; she was lucky he wasn’t of a certain religion, then I realised she was 20 years too old…
Its a bit presumptuous blaming men, how do we know it want’s a woman showing off her lady penis?
And here I was wondering how close to Tim’s place the pilgrimage route goes.
Ha, yes, very good. Which prompted me to actually look it up. Not that these birds will have started on the south coast – that’s a 1,000 km walk and that, alone? But there’s one path of it that goes about 40 km east of here through, I think, Serpa. And another pathway from Faro that goes about 8 km south of here, through Aljustrel to Alvalade.
And that does also explain something I’ve seen, groups walking along the road from Castro Verde to Aljustrel. We’ve driven past and wondered what they were doing. There’s no network of small back roads here, it’s 25 to 30 km between the two towns and there’s really nothing that you’d go to see in between. But if it’s that through traffic of a group doing the whole thing then, yes, that works.
So, with that, to brush up on my lurking skills, right?
A religious re-enactment of the Biblical story of Onan, it would seem.
FWIW, the image of a “forested route” makes me tend to think that even if the police picked up immediately, she would still be in a wee bit of peril. Response time – 10 minutes, 15? Not sure the unsafe feeling is gone when they pick up.
Curious to know if she had anything other than a phone to defend herself with (good size rock or stick, pepper spray, something jabby), carried discreetly?
I walked the French section of the Camino (Via Podiensis) from Le Puy to the Spanish border last year. It’s hard to be alone, as most people start around the same time from the usual stopover places. Most walk in groups or join together as ad hoc groups along the way. You are missing out if you walk on your own…
I met 2 German men who had started in Heidelberg (sp?) & were planning to go the whole way- 4000 km!
I knew a Czech who’d done the whole thing. From Czechia. But, as he admitted, two weeks of holiday at a time…
Aye, she should have dressed herself in a kilt, with a dirk in her stocking and a pepper spray in her sporran.
She could even have affected a fake ginger beard and a bonnet with a feather in it. She’d have had terrified Portugeezers fleeing the woods.
guardian journalists (Ashifa Kassam and Mabel Banfield-Nwachi) might have thought to ask “Rosie” whether she knew how to call the police in Portugal (perhaps she dialled 999?) and whether her language skills were adequate to get across the reason for her call?
This story sounds to me like what she claims to have seen.
Oh come on. No-one is called Mabel Banfield-Nwachi. That’s as implausible as Gugu Mbatha-Raw or Barbie Kardashian.
in Castilla v León, Spain.
Is this about football again?
I knew a Czech who’d done the whole thing. From Czechia
There’s several of these things aren’t there Tim? There’s one runs a bit north of me starts over Portugal way goes I believe to Rome. Or maybe it’s the other direction. Why I haven’t a clue. I only know about it because of a section in Granada Province I read about. Supposed to be a short walk from where I was living at the time. Seemed odd because the Alpujarras was still a Muslim enclave into the 1600s
Many pilgrim ways, yes, but the one most talk about is to Santiago de Compostela. Galicia. And there are many of those too. They all end at the same cathedral, obvs, but there are trails and tendrils leading all over Europe.
As to Islam etc, they usually let pilgrims through. And the Order of Santiago is the big order of Spanish knights today, founded to protect the pilgrims and then became the major crusading order within Spain. 12 c or maybe 13th start to it.
Appallingly, I have just remembered this
https://youtu.be/cveZR4e91kU?feature=shared
Just remembered there are Jakobswege in Austria. They used to be advertised by the local parishes.
One of them starts at the Cz border at Drasenhofen south of Brunn ( Brno ) and through down my old part of the world to Krems and then along the Danube where it meets up with the southern route.
The Santiago routes are marked (in towns) by bronze cockleshells (emblem of St James) set into the pavements. You come across them in quite unlikely locations.
Rather a disappointing piece of news, since I assure female potential pilgrims of the safety of the various caminos. The sense of camaraderie amongst pilgrims is very strong – irrespective of age, nationality or religious denomination (if any), so help is generally readily available.
Who is this plonker?
They should probably get a gun.
At least he was jacking off at a bird. I have an audio recording regarding a bloke wearing black tights “masturbating as the trains go past”………