The Aftermath of Assault

It is never really over

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Good times in the Sahara with half of our guests. November 2022

You can’t just walk away

My thoughts were to put this assault to bed with the newsletter from last week. I knew I would need to revisit it when Will finished editing the Morocco vlogs (we are about 4 weeks behind) as he wants to address this at the end of the series, but for now, I wanted/needed to move on. I am undecided if I want to relive it in a vlog. But, here we are today discussing it again because some of you had questions and the answers were worth sharing with a greater audience. If one person has the question, it is likely others do too. In addition, I think it is important to share what happens after an assault from my experience. I hope what I share today offers some insight and strength to those who choose to address assault in a public forum.

Thank you!

I must start with a huge thank you. It has taken me a week to respond to the 100s of messages I have received in support and the 5 messages I have received that did not offer support. To those of you who led with compassion and understanding, I cannot even begin to explain how humbled I am and so dam grateful. I was nervous to share this and you made the sharing so much easier. For what it is worth a good third of the support came from men. Some men we are good friends with, some complete strangers. I appreciate you and your thoughts as it takes all of us, the men and the women to fight abuse against women across the globe. Thank you for seeing this. To all the women who reached out in support, outrage, sharing, and much more. Thank you. I will elaborate more on this below, but I wanted to thank you all properly here. My goodness, I love this community.

Hammam Rose Bonheur

(written Dec 14) Read the whole thing as there is a happy ending. 

I did finally get a response, 14 days later and it was not the response I had hoped for. I am going to share my return email below so you continue to have the full scope of what I have and still am going through with this situation. As I said above, you don’t get to just walk away once you share assault, of course, you can, but it is not always an option. I am not whining, complaining, or looking for sympathy, but just sharing the reality.

Hello Samira,

Thank you for responding, however, I must admit I am a bit disappointed it took you 14 days to respond to my very detailed account of what happened on the premises of your business. 

There has not been a misunderstanding. What happened did happen. I was assaulted by Jawad. 

And just to be noted there was an older gentleman (in the office) who seemed to have authority over Jawad and was the decision-maker. He too, saw the whole incident unfold and did NOTHING. So clearly you have several men in your organization who do not know how to treat women. 

A suspension (for Jawad) as I understand the definition of the word is a temporary withdrawal from work. This leads me to believe that he will still be working within your establishment, at some point to some degree. As much as I am undyingly sympathetic to the path you have taken as a woman business owner and what you had to endure it is disappointing to see that you are not doing more to protect women and your employees, but rather taking the side of the man. Are there no women that you trust to take on his role? 

As far as your female employees, they are just lovely, but the responsibility for their welfare lies with you, not me, and the insinuation that I hold their future in my hands is just disgusting. You brought this man into work in your business and continue to employ him (and I doubt this has been the first incident) and as a result, their income could be impacted because of that choice. So although my heart goes out to your female employees the burden lies on you. Their safety and income are in danger with Jawad continuing to work in your businesses. When men like this are allowed to keep their job they will do it again because they know there is no punishment. If I had it to do over I would have called the police and had proper action taken.

If you have had to fight through the male-dominated world why would you care to protect a man that does this?

This decision is me “thinking of the women” who work there and all the other women who are quiet when they are assaulted. I am no better than Jawad if I chose to ignore this as I am helping perpetuate abuse toward women. 

And I too built a business from the ground up and what happened at your Riad will greatly impact my income because I am choosing to no longer bring groups to Morocco, but I made the choice to stand with women rather than against them. Mother to mother, you said you have a daughter, I am also doing this for her and all other young women across the globe.

I think we both know my reviews are not going to affect your business as you have plenty of positive reviews so please don’t use the women who work for you as bait. I can see right past that. 

Good day,
Jessica

(written Dec 16) And my final correspondence with Samira and the happy ending.

Samira,

Thank you for your reply. 

I thank you for taking action to remove two men from the organization who behave poorly towards women. Replacing them with women within the organization can only help build morale and dedication from the women you employ because they can have hope that one day that might be them. I can only imagine the events that have unfolded as a result of this, but hopefully, your business and women employees will come out in a better spot as a result. 

You would be shocked at the number of women who have reached out to me to share their travel and assault stories, it is alarming. I don’t regret sharing, even if it comes at a cost to my business. And I truly appreciate your effort to protect women as well. I know it is not an easy task in a male-dominated country. I respect your actions.

Thank you for your apology. Much success in the future. 

Jessica

The end for that chapter of the assault.

Your questions

You shared the before, the during, and the immediate after. How are you feeling now about the assault? Any PTSD or other reactions that you feel comfortable sharing?

What the newsletter did not share was that Largo and I took a last-minute flight to France to take care of some things which delayed our return flight from Morocco to Colombia. As a result, we had to return to Morocco for 1 night after France. We returned to the amazing Riad Nesma via taxi. Getting in a taxi was hard where it had never been before because the driver was trying to overcharge me, I know the price. The next day I had to return a pouf that had oil spills on it and pick up two other items for Will. I could not. I did not have it in me to negotiate, fight for the damaged good that was given to me, or even venture more than a couple of blocks to my favorite vegetarian restaurant. My last 24 hours in Morocco were unpleasant because I was scared because of what happened, not because the people are scary.

I then carried that with me to Colombia. I had another incident in a cab where a driver told me one amount and when he made a wrong turn that took him 5 minutes out of the way he tried to push the cost onto me. I have him a 50 and he would not give me change. I had to call Will and get him involved as my Spanish is not good in the “stand my ground” world. I hated that I had to call him and I hated that I could not resolve this, all of which gave me anxiety and has made me not want to take a cab now. BTW, this is not my natural persona and usually, I am completely fine on my own.

I am tough and don’t like to have to depend on anyone. I am committed to moving past this, but I know it will take a little bit of time.

Also, if you know me you know I am very social. I have withdrawn from social in our marina and whenever Will brings it up I just don’t want to be involved. It is not because I am scared to go outside or be around people nor do I think the people are going to harm me, well, frankly I don’t know what it is…but I am honoring it. I think these things just take time. Plus, this has been emotionally taxing and maybe my body is just saying “give me some rest.”

How have people responded positively to what you shared?

As I mentioned above the response has been very supportive from both men and women. What has been surprising to me is how many women have reached out and shared their travel stories of assault. I had no idea how many women are assaulted around the world, in male-dominated counties while on vacation every year. Most of these women did not take action, left the country once their vacation was over, and swore it off forever. Pretty much the same thing I did, the only difference is that I swore off business in Morocco, as well as I don’t plan to return anytime at this point. And many of these women never told anyone until they shared it with me. Some knew it was not ok what happened to them, but they did not know what to call it. For some of them the first time they called it what it was, assault, was in a message to me. I have been simmering on this and so far I have not come up with anything, but how can I help? How can we make the world safer for women travelers? Staying home or only traveling with a man is not an option, so what do we do? I welcome your suggestions in the comments. 

How have people responded negatively to what you shared?

First, let's talk about things you should never say or do to someone who has been assaulted.

- you were not assaulted: I was assaulted and anyone telling me I did not clearly does not know the definition or is trying to normalize this behavior.

- why do you make yourself lose out: I don’t consider that I am losing out if now I do not feel safe in a country. I am actually listening to my body.

- it is part of the travel experience: Ah, not it is not. I have visited around 65 countries and have never been grabbed like that. Do not let anyone tell you this is normal or acceptable behavior for women to endure while traveling.

- so now you hate Morocco: Gosh no, but people will see what they want to see. I still love Morocco and its people, but I no longer want to do business there.

- India is just as bad: I have not experienced this and until I do I cannot judge.

- don’t cut your nose off to spite your face: I hate this statement in general. It says to me “don’t honor what you are feeling”. I don’t feel like I am missing out on not going back to Morocco. I don’t want to go back. I want to see friends and people I liked doing business with, but I don’t want to do business there.

- so you are only canceling countries where you have had personal trauma: Ah, yeah. Trauma is a funny thing. It can be buried and worked around and then one day BAM! It shows its face, at the least opportune time. I don’t want to put myself back in the place it happened and risk that. I am already dealing with enough.

- oh is that it, I thought you were going to share something serious: This is serious, not as serious as rape, but clearly serious enough that I took the time to share it. Saying it is not serious is damaging to the victim. It is asking them to downgrade their feelings and action about what happened.

- a bit of a knee-jerk reaction don’t you think: Again, ah, no. Someone assaulted me. They put their hands on me and pulled me towards them and I was scared. We are not talking about swearing off a restaurant because of a bad meal. Again, trying to downgrade what happened and making the victim feel as if they are overreacting. Not cool.

- I guess you are not as inclusive as you share online: We are never, ever, ever inclusive of anyone who does not operate from a standpoint of equality. He would have never done this to a man. And any type of abuse does not get included in our life.

- and my favorite…aloofness: When I tell someone what happens and they are like “oh, that is unfortunate” or “thanks for sharing”. Unfortunate is food poisoning or being late to an event, unfortunate is not being assaulted.

I have also been shamed for not being strong enough, not being fair, not being a global citizen, and more. The tactic of guilt was also used on me, but I am 100% immune to guilt as I think it is ugly, ugly, ugly. I should feel bad for people listening to what I am saying and judging the whole country. I should feel guilty for the women who work at the hammam who might be financially impacted by this. I should feel guilty that I am not behaving as a global citizen. Of course, no one uses the word guilt, but that is the angle.

So as you can see it is not as easy as sharing an incident of assault, writing a bad review and then I get to move on. This has occupied a considerable amount of my time and as a result, other parts of my life, work, and family have suffered. I still do not regret my choice to share, but I want to keep it real with all of you.

I have only had 5 people message me with a negative response and I would prefer to not draw attention to that. 2 were females and the other 3 men. One female just said she disagreed with me. The other shared that this had never happened to her in these countries. I cannot stress enough how it is very different being a tourist spending money in the country for a week than a woman running a business. Of course, it can and has happened in both cases, but often in a group, you are protected. The 3 men, well, a lost cause. Frankly, any man who takes the time to message me in lack of support for what happened isn’t anyone I am interested in investing time in. I did respectfully defend my position, but going forward I will not have communication with this type of behavior. Just another example of how a victim is re-victimized.

Why would you offer a trip to India? I hear it is just as bad.

One of my biggest travel pet peeves is when people don’t go to a place because their brothers-friends-cousin was there for 1 day on a cruise and had a bad experience. I believe in finding out for myself. 99% of the time what someone else has told me about a country is grossly inaccurate. Being a vacationer in a space is very different than a full-time traveler and/or doing business. In addition, I don’t believe what I see on the news or social media accounts. A lot of this is over-sensualized for views, profit or to project fear.

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Have a fabulous weekend. I will share one more newsletter before the holidays which will either address our year in review or social media haters. Not sure yet, would like to end the year on a positive note so might do the year in review. Which would you prefer? 

I always welcome your feedback and sharing in the comments. Let’s get this community chatting about all the things.

xoxo,

Jessica

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