Oostende –
A day in Ostend turned out to be a nightmare for twenty-year-old Debby and her friend. A video she posted on Twitter shows the two ladies being harassed by a pushy man. “He came out of nowhere on my towel and didn’t leave until he got his way,” she wrote on Twitter. “Is this still normal? Is a no not clear enough? ”
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The incident happened on Friday. The young lady from Oudenburg in West Flanders had a day off, and decided to spend it quietly with a friend on the beach of Ostend. “We were there for about an hour and a half, from 4.30 pm to 6 pm,” Debby tells our editorial staff. However, there was hardly any question of rest. “During that period, we were harassed by as many as nine men.”
The man featured in the video was the most pushy. “First, a friend of his came to us to get my cell phone number and Snapchat,” said Debby. “I said no, because I have a friend, and I didn’t want that guy to come to me.” However, the man had no ear for that. When it became clear to him that he didn’t immediately get his way, at one point he even decided to sit next to her on one of the towels.
“Go away”
From that moment on Debby started filming. “Go away”, can be heard several times in the images. “I hid behind my girlfriend, as I didn’t want him to touch me,” says the young lady. She also got hold of the man’s smartphone to fill in her Snapchat details, but continued to decline.
Afterwards the situation became completely heated. The man suddenly got up and reacted aggressively to the ladies. Meanwhile, the shout was also noticed at the nearby beach bar Blue Buddha Beachclub. “One of the employees shouted to us if everything was okay,” says Debby. “I had also threatened to call the police in the meantime.” Enough reasons for the gang to run away anyway. “In total, the situation lasted about five minutes.”
Bart Tommelein
Mayor Bart Tommelein (Open VLD) already saw the footage and was shocked. “We do not accept such behavior,” he wrote on Twitter. “If we could intervene, we could have immediately given him a place ban for Ostend.”
