A British student who was attacked while walking home in London has waived her right to anonymity by writing a powerful open letter to her attacker.
Ione Wells, 20, describes how the man followed her, pushed her to her knees, smashed her head against the pavement and tore her bra in half by grabbing her breast, before running away when her neighbors and family came out. Her 17-year old attacker has admitted sexual assualt and is due to be sentenced on May 6.
Wells tells her unnamed attacker:
I don’t know who the people in your life are. I don’t know anything about you. But I do know this: you did not just attack me that night. I am a daughter, I am a friend, I am a girlfriend, I am a pupil, I am a cousin, I am a niece, I am a neighbour, I am the employee who served everyone down the road coffee in the café under the railway. All the people who form those relations to me make up my community, and you assaulted every single one of them. You violated the truth that I will never cease to fight for, and which all of those people represent – that there are infinitely more good people in the world than bad.
The 800-word letter was published in Oxford University’s Cherwell newspaper to kickstart the #NotGuilty campaign, encouraging others to come forward about sexual assault.
Read her letter in full here.
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Write to Naina Bajekal at naina.bajekal@time.com