I was walking down the street with a friend who also has restricted growth, we were quite happily talking away when my friend went quiet.  She’d clocked that a young man was taking too long to pass us and our small strides.  We turned around and sure enough, he was fiddling with his phone.  We challenged him and he vehemently denied it, though his girlfriend had walked off looking acutely embarrassed and not wishing to be associated with the situation he had created (who would entertain such a relationship with such an arsehole?!?).

I’ve never been filmed in such a way before (my friend had) and I’ve never felt so violated in my entire life.  It was such an invasion of privacy. Devastating.

Though I was disgusted at the vile bloke, afterwards, I realised that I was most angry with myself.  As I’ve got older, I’ve prided myself on not going to places where my height would attract any undue attention. I was just walking down a large high street, in major city, granted it was an evening,  but there were lots of people about and not an area that had lots of bars or pubs about, and I felt relatively safe because of this, I thought I might be immune.

Obviously not.

I couldn’t speak for over an hour with the shock,  just trying to process what had happened.  I phoned my best friend and she was amazing.  Helping me to calm down and talk it out of my system, for which I will be eternally grateful.

One really tip she suggested was so simple, yet in the intense situation I didn’t even think of and I would like to pass onto other people of restricted growth, is this…

Get your mobile phone out and take a photo of them.  That way if the footage or photos they have taken end up on the Internet – you can take it to the police and report it.

Keep safe.