Street Safe Victoria: Campaign to end fear and violence in public places

A young woman was running in Melbourne when a 13-year-old teenager attacked her. Now the victim-survivor has shared her story as part of our campaign to make Victoria safer.

It was 30 seconds but it changed her life — and shattered her perception of Melbourne as a safe place for women.

Young refugee Fatima, whose real name has been withheld to protect her identity, has spoken out about the horrifying moment a teenage boy attacked her while she was running in a popular park in Melbourne’s south-east earlier this year.

Born in Afghanistan and spending the first nine years of her life living in a small valley in the rural countryside where everybody knew each other, she and her family came to Australia as refugees in 2007.

Fatima felt safe growing up in Melbourne, initially.

Though, over the years, reading news stories about sexual harassment and assaults made her start to question her sense of safety as a woman on the streets of Melbourne, as did hearing tales of her peers being subjected to racist taunts.

Increasingly aware of Islamophobic attacks and negative rhetoric about her religion, her fears morphed into being attacked due to the colour of her skin and her religious beliefs, and she began to feel her headscarf marked her as a target.

“I always assumed that if I was attacked it would be because I look different or because I am from a minority community,” Fatima, 25, told Leader.

The last two years have been exceptionally challenging for Fatima, compounded by the deaths of her friend and then her dad and her uncle within 11-days.

“I was already very fragile because of losing my friend and then my relative, and what happened in Afghanistan last year, so when I lost dad I was crushed,” Fatima said.

“It took a huge toll on my mental health.”

Fatima was going for a run when she was attacked. Picture: Stock image

The overwhelming grief plunged her into a state of depression and it became an effort for her to complete simple tasks.

On the afternoon of March 18, after visiting her dad in the cemetery, she decided to go for a run to clear her head.

Fatima would normally run at Lake Lysterfield but this time she decided to try a track at Casey Fields, which she perceived as a “friendly environment” due to the number of people around.

She arrived about 6pm, put in her airpods, turned up her music, fashioned her headscarf into a turban and started running.

She had run four laps and was about to start her last to reach her five-kilometre goal when she saw “a high school kid” in the distance ahead.

“He was wearing his school uniform, his backpack, a cap and a surgical mask,” she recalled.

He was walking in the same direction she was running, through a narrow stretch of path on her route.

She vividly remembers feeling a pang of paranoia as she approached him – triggered by being mugged of her phone by a teenager in the past – but she pushed it aside.

“I thought that I was labelling people based on what they looked like, and that this was just a kid on his way home,” she said.

As she ran past him, feeling a bit tired and huffing from the exertion, she focused on reaching a point ahead where she planned to stop for a short rest.

She had run about 100 metres past the teenager when she was grabbed from behind and two hands clasped over her mouth.

She said the attacker was much bigger, taller and stronger than her.

“I’d been in my own world, running, listening to my music and focused on getting to that spot ahead when suddenly those two hands grabbed me,” Fatima explained.

“My whole body froze.

“I was so scared. I panicked and started screaming.”

Pushing his left hand into her mouth in an effort to quiet her, he moved his right to her neck.

With adrenaline pulsing through her body, she tore his hand away from her mouth, screamed at the top of her lungs and bit him.

He punched her in the mouth, causing it to bleed. One of her fingernails was bent back during the struggle.

She estimated the whole ordeal lasted less than a minute, but she described it as “the most traumatising 30 seconds of [her] life”.

“I was in complete shock and was completely frozen. I couldn’t move for a few minutes,” she recalled.

As shock became realisation at what she had just experienced, tears began to stream down her face as she gathered the strength to move towards the safety of the open oval and other people.

She attended a police station that night, where she was interviewed and samples were taken from her body and clothing for forensic testing.

“I entered the police station about 8.30pm and didn’t leave until 4.30am,” she said.

Her detailed descriptions meant police were able to catch her attacker within 24 hours.

A Victoria Police spokeswoman said detectives from the Sexual Crimes Squad arrested a 13-year-old boy on March 19 following multiple reported assaults.

“The first incident reportedly occurred in parkland off Casey Fields Boulevard about 9.30pm on March 16,” she said.

“The second reportedly occurred on a running track off Berwick-Cranbourne Road about 7.30pm on March 18.”

The boy was charged with one count each of assault with intent to commit a sexual offence, unlawful assault and sexual assault.

Fatima was running when she was attacked

He was also charged with two further counts of sexual assault and another of assault with intent to commit a sexual offence following reported incidents in Clyde North on February 6 and March 7.

The boy was remanded in custody but was bailed on March 29 to appear before a children’s court at a later date.

“Thirty seconds was all it took but my life could have ended in those thirty seconds if he had a knife or a weapon,” Fatima said.

“It has traumatised me. To this day I’m constantly looking over my shoulder every time I go running or walking.”

But while afraid, she is also angry.

“These are things a woman should be able to do in Australia,” she said.

“Why can’t a woman go for a run or a walk without having to hold her keys to defend herself or be on the phone to somebody?

“We hear things on the news and think ‘surely that wouldn‘t happen to me’ because I am x,y,z or because I live in x,y,z but it does. It could happen.”

“I didn’t think it would happen to me. I thought the only reason I would get attacked was because I wear the hijab, that it would be a racist attack, but there you go – I got attacked. So if it can happen to me, it could happen to anyone else.”

Fatima does not believe she will ever experience that feeling of calm or peace while exercising again.

“I feel like I won’t experience that again because of what happened to me,” she said.

“So my perceptions of safety, and my perception of Melbourne being a safe place for a woman, has changed.”

Street Safe Victoria

It is for stories like Fatima’s that Leader is this week running a four-part series called Street Safe Victoria, to tell the experiences of a wide cross section of the community and to campaign for safer public places for all Victorians – no matter their skin colour, gender, sexual preferences, religion or ability.

It includes:

• Where every ‘unsafe’ place is in Victoria
• What can be done to make Victoria safer?
• How do we address the bigger issue at play?

If this story has raised any issues for you call Lifeline on 13 11 14, 1800 RESPECT or the Sexual Assault Crisis Line on 1800 806 292.