Warsaw. He attacked a woman in Ochota, she recorded him, he was arrested

The woman described the situation on Tik Tok, where she also shared a video of the incident. It happened on Saturday at 5 a.m., on the corner of Grójecka and Daleka, right next to the Ochota district office. As she said, that's where she ordered a taxi to get home safely.

“While waiting for a taxi, a man approached me, intoxicated and shirtless. I immediately sensed danger because the guy was very pushy, constantly trying to get my attention with various texts. I didn't react to his innuendos or provocations, constantly walking away in the opposite direction because I didn't want to give any signals of interest. The situation started to deteriorate because he started getting very close, constantly asking me to go with him. So I took out my phone to document it because I felt that something very dangerous could happen,” we read in the description of the film.

On the recording, Nina can be heard firmly addressing the man. “Stop following me,” she asks. Annoyed, she also uses vulgar language, but the man is not discouraged. “Let's go to the off-licence together. Let's go,” she urges the woman. Even the warning that he is being recorded does not deter him.

“In the recording I couldn't take it anymore and started screaming for him to leave me, but he still wouldn't let go, until he finally lifted me up on the pedestrian crossing. Then he lowered me and dragged me by my legs. Let me remind you that this was in the center of Warsaw, none of the people passing by decided to help me. After I screamed for help, security guards from the building opposite ran out, screaming at him to let me go, so the man let go and ran away,” wrote Nina. Her terrifying scream can be heard in the recording.

Nina wrote that she immediately called the emergency number 112 after the incident. The police arrived and wrote down what she had said. “Unfortunately, they were not interested in watching the recording of the entire situation. The police left me shaken at the scene, informing me that if I wanted to file a report, I should go to the police in my district. When I tried to file a report, I unfortunately learned that according to Polish law I would not receive any help. Because there was no rape, beating or kidnapping. This shows how in our country, as long as there is no bloodshed, everything is fine,” she concluded.

On Monday, the woman reported that she had been contacted by a police officer who advised her to come to the police station to have the case reviewed. He also said that the man had been arrested.

The same day, the Warsaw Police Headquarters responded to the case. As reported in a statement on Platform X, on Saturday, the police received a report that a man was harassing a young woman in Ochota. When the patrol arrived at the scene, the perpetrator was no longer there.

“Due to the information that the man could pose a real threat to other people, the police officers immediately went to investigate the area to determine where the man was. The woman was informed by the police officers about the need to file a report,” the Warsaw police reported. As a result of the actions taken, the man was found an hour and a half later and taken to the police station. “The examination showed that the 25-year-old, a Latvian citizen, was intoxicated, and was also behaving irrationally and aggressively. After calling an ambulance to the scene, the paramedic determined that the person qualified for placement in a sobering-up center,” the KSP statement continues.

After being placed in the room, due to his “unstable behaviour” the man was transported by ambulance to a psychiatric hospital, where he is being kept under observation.

“Today (Monday – ed.) in the afternoon, the injured woman filed an official report of the incident. As soon as the doctors agree, the 25-year-old will undergo procedural activities under the supervision of the Warsaw-Ochota District Prosecutor's Office, in the direction of Article 191 of the Penal Code, i.e. (forcing to a specific behavior)” – the police concluded.

This is not the first case harassment of women on the streets Warsaw. In July, we described the story of Magda, who was grabbed by the buttocks by an unknown perpetrator and fled. In this case, the young woman was returning from work along a busy street in Warsaw's Wola district.

As we reported at the time, L'Oréal Paris, together with the international organization Right To Be (and in Poland with a local non-governmental organization – Women's Rights Center), initiated a joint campaign against harassment in public places. As part of it, research was commissioned in 15 countries.

In Poland, it was conducted by Ipsos in March 2021 on a sample of two thousand people. The data showed how little awareness there is of what harassment is. In the first, spontaneous answer, 41 percent of respondents answered affirmatively to the question of whether they had experienced harassment. However, their first instinct was not to classify many behaviors as forms of harassment. “Harassment is not just physical assault. To talk about it, it does not even have to cross the boundaries of physical intimacy. It does not have to involve touching. Harassment can be a gesture or a word. And this is not so obvious,” we read in the report.

The research also showed another sad truth: 87 percent of Polish women are afraid and avoid returning home late in the evening and at night. 75 percent of Polish women and men believe that women are often blamed for being harassed, with comments such as: “She wanted it, since she dressed like that!”, “Why did she go there at night?”, “So why did she drink alcohol?”, “She probably liked it, since she didn't react.”