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A few months ago, a guy spat on my face while I was walking down Princes Street in #Edinburgh.
@ScotlandPolice quickly caught the man and asked me to come in to identify him.
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https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="đ§”" title="Thread" aria-label="Emoji: Thread"> about my experiences: (1/) https://twitter.com/DrSarahLiu/status/1288046967885619200">https://twitter.com/DrSarahLi...
@ScotlandPolice quickly caught the man and asked me to come in to identify him.
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The date for me to go in was set for weeks after the incident. I worried that I& #39;d forget his face. It seemed like a lot of pressure for me to correctly identify him out of 8 other men. So everyday until I had to go in, I replayed the look of him spitting on me in my head. (2/)
The police officer who took my statement reassured me that his appearance would stay the same as when they caught him. But when I went in, I literally could not identify him. All 9 men I saw had the same buzzed haircut, wore the same jumpsuit, had no glasses on, etc. (3/)
But I still felt awful about the possibility of incorrectly identifying an innocent man or letting the bad guy go because I couldn& #39;t remember his face. I only saw his face for a split second because my natural instinct was obviously to run away from him as fast as I could (5/)
The incident had a small effect on me. I could only imagine how countless other women experienced the follow-ups of assaults. They& #39;re asked to repeat their stories over and over again and need to remember the person& #39;s face (even if hard to see) months or years afterwards. (6/)
Yet when women who are assaulted and raped, as part of the judiciary process, they are constantly questioned for their memories. All I can say is that everything can happen so fast and everything can become a blur regardless of how hard you try to remember every detail. (7/)
