I've name changed for this as it is rather sensitive.
I absolutely love my job and am very good at it. I work in a traditionally white male and highly competitive industry. As a woman of colour I have navigated the industry relatively successfully over the years, but it changed a few years ago.
After a run-of-the-mill work disagreement, a colleague (let's call him "Ben") approached me after work. He was drinking in a pub which is located between my office and the tube station. I stopped there for a quick drink with someone from my team and was leaving, when this man stood in my way. Ben was extremely aggressive, telling me to watch my back, he told me that I was so disliked that bad things could happen to me after work, etc. He did not touch me with his hands but he kept moving uncomfortably close to me, our bodies touching. I kept stepping back, I kept telling him that I did not want to continue with the conversation, but he continued to step forward and lean over me. At the time there were two other male colleagues who saw the situation but did not listen to the conversation. I turned to them and said 'Can you see that this man this threatening me?', to which they laughed and said that if I ever went to HR they would deny this has happened. When I said to them that instead of HR I would go to police, they all became quiet and then one of the other colleagues took me to a separate room and had a long conversation, basically saying how Ben was a good guy, had too much to drink and that I should think about his family - the usual. He also proposed that he would take me and Ben for lunch the next day and we would sort it all out among ourselves. The lunch never happened.
At that time I was already suffering from the overall hostility of my office and already had MH issues, so I felt ablsolutely powerless and did not act on it at the time. Without going into too much detail, I knew that HR and my boss would not support me, at the same time I did not feel strong enough to go to police. Several days after the indecent, Ben approached me asking why I was avoiding him and I told him that I would not report him to HR if he agrees to keep all conversations to professional topics and that I would never meet him without other colleagues present.
That situation has been haunting me ever since. Having been assaulted in my teenage years, I developed a strong PTSD, which was partly alleviated during the pandemic, when I could work from home. Now that we are in hybrid working mode, I again started struggling with panic attacks, which can be quite debilitating. I am seeing specialists for the medical side of things, but it is quite difficult for me because I continue to be triggered on a regular basis.
I continue to work with Ben, who goes around telling everyone what a feminist he is and how much he wants to make the work a better place for his daughters. I avoid having any 'personal' chats or one-on-one meetings with Ben. However, recently he approached one of my juniors complaining that he is not able to have a 'good' working relationship with me because I avoid him. Recently he called me on my personal mobile asking if I was ok. This provoked a major panic attack in me, but first I managed to blurt out to him that I was not OK and that I was still dealing with the aftermath of his threatening me after work. He seems to have completely forgotten the incident and he kept repeating 'I don't know what to say'.
I love my job, I am really good at it, so I don't think I should be changing jobs. Any advice at all on how I could handle this?