Assaulted in the Swimming Pool - Worth Reporting?

[RedEcho]

Name changed in case identifying.

Today I was at my local pool, which is always very quiet around this time of year. There is always one lane up, the pool was empty apart from one man swimming very slow breastroke up the middle of the lane. I headed for the lane, he saw me and so I started swimming up one side to go in the usual clockwise direction that is standard in lanes. I do a reasonably quick, efficient front crawl. The third time of doing this, he sort of paused as I passed him on the other side (I could see him under the water) and then I felt a pressure on my left shoulder and he pushed me down under the water.

I had a couple of moments of panic where you can't breathe and then he must have removed his hand and I bobbed up. Then he started shouting at me, I don't even know what. I told him to leave me alone. The lifeguard did nothing. I resumed swimming and tried not to make a fuss. He seemed to disappear after that.

At one point in my swim, I stopped to get my pull bouy at the end of the lane and he must have been in the showers opposite because the same man walked to the front of the lane and started shouting at me again. Something to do with swimming that he seemed to take great objection to and he asked me what I thought I was doing. I called the lifeguard over and he was rather blase and claimed that we had swam into each other. We had not. I actually cried out in shock quite loudly when I surfaced and the lifeguard admitted hearing this. The man deliberately assaulted me by putting his hand on my shoulder and pushing me under, and there had been plenty of room to pass. I told the man, repeatedly to leave me alone and said that I was here to swim. I had to shout at him 5 times to leave me alone while the lifeguard did nothing. Eventually he moved away.

Once I'd finished swimming I spoke to the lifeguard and asked him what he had seen/heard. He again claimed that we had swam into each other and was prevaricative when I asked why he hadn't told the man to leave me alone and why he didn't seem to understand what that meant. I realised I was getting nowhere with him as he was probably sticking up for the other man and left.

I think what happened is that the man in the lane expected me to acknowledge him, chat to him a bit or something (I really feel uncomfortable talking to strangers in pools wearing just a swimsuit) and when I ignored him and just got on with swimming, he decided to do something to draw my attention to him, like a "she's not getting away with me ignoring me".

I'm absolutely fuming though. You feel so vulnerable when you're in a swimsuit in an almost empty pool and it was a proper assault. I mean I'm not injured, but it was horrible. I won't use that pool again, I've heard of other people having similar troubles there and I'll use a different one further away, but is there any point at all in reporting this to the police? The lifeguard is obviously going to be of little or no help and the man is only going to claim I swam into him or some other made up story.

I think the biggest sticking point is nobody was there and nobody knows what happened. Even from the description it's difficult to work out the layout of the pool and who was where at the time. I can see he shouted something about the way OP was swimming and she then goes on to say the rest of the pool was filled with inflatables which paints a picture of a very narrow and restricted area perhaps not wide enough for too many people to use. On top of that the lifeguard believes he saw a collision. The rest of us saw nothing and can only speculate.

Definitely report OP! I can't believe some of the responses here. Even if it was an accidental collision initially (and I don't for one second believe it was by the way) nothing excuses the man's behaviour afterwards. Nothing.

I would report this urgently OP to the leisure centre. You need to report the man who did this to you and the lifeguard who failed to act.

I must say in these circumstances I would have got out of the pool immediately and insisted that the life guard called security/management to get the guy out of the pool and for the police to be called as well. If the lifeguard would not act I would have marched to reception and asked them to take over and the man arrested.

This guy unchallenged will simply continue to think he can assault women without any consequences (I bet he would never have done this to a big, male swimmer...).
@helpfulperson'' I'm not sure why it is the lifeguards responsibility to intervene in an argument between adults''

Some of the comments on this thread are truly shocking. A woman being physically and verbally assaulted by a man is not ''an argument between adults''. It is the life guard's job to make sure that people can swim in a safe environment and that includes removing male swimmers who think pushing a woman under water and shouting at her is appropriate behaviour.

Seriously, the victim blaming and dismissal of the OP's experience is pathetic. I have no idea why anyone would want to excuse this man's behaviour.

But it doesn't tell you he held her head underwater. Let's not re write the facts. Pushing down on your shoulder then letting go so you surface and holding your head underwater so you can't surface are two very different acts with two very different expected outcomes.

@LuckyLil you are very strange to be supporting the perpretrator over their victim. You're just in the wrong.

@LuckyLil "I think the biggest sticking point is nobody was there"

Not true; the OP was there.

No facts have been re-written. It's clearly stated that the OP couldn't breathe, therefore no other conclusion can be drawn other than that that her head was held underwater. If someone's shoulder is pushed down upon to the extent that the head is also underwater and the victim cannot breathe, the "expected outcome" is patently the same as holding someone's head under water, namely that the victim is rendered unable to breathe.

Jesus Fucking Christ what the hell am I reading?

You get assaulted….and it’s your fault?

Why? Because you didn’t do what this petty little man wanted and therefore it was completely your fault for not doing as your told.

Ridiculous. Report to the pool, the police and anyone who will listen.

I am almost completely deaf. I wear a hearing aid. In a pool, I have little to no hearing. I certainly wouldn’t be entertaining conversations with anyone let alone a random man because I can’t fucking hear them!

Is it then my fault if I get assaulted? Because I didn’t listen to the horrible man?

@Soubriquet I think they must be trolls.

I can't believe the number of people who are trying to make this your fault! As a sort of dumpy (though my DD insists I'm not) middle aged woman who swims a reasonable front crawl this type of swimming pool aggression from men, and lifeguards minimising it ("it was an accident"), is familiar to me.

He assaulted you, it's a police matter. Really sorry this happened, I hope you have somewhere else to swim.

If someone is assaulting people in the pool and holding them under then they are causing a real risk of drowning so I suggest this is something any reasonable lifeguard would be concerned about Pet.

The people on this thread challenging the OP are a disgrace. What on earth is wrong with you?

@RedEcho it’s understandable that you’re reluctant to take this further but you really should if you can bring yourself to do it. This man, who assaulted you and could have caused a very serious outcome, should feel the consequences. The lifeguard should at the very least be ‘retrained’. These things might not happen, but it’s worth a try.

A pp who said they’d experienced this last year - are you the person whose story was picked up and you were eventually on Woman’s Hour talking about it? Similar accounts flooded in from women everywhere about aggressive, entitled men who just didn’t want to see women having the freedom to swim, run or exercise, and felt entirely justified in obstructing them.

It is NOT OK.

I hope so because if they are parents it’s a sad state of affairs to their children.

“Girls, your job is to do whatever the man tells you to”

”boys, you are in charge. If a woman doesn’t listen to you, you make her listen however you can. If that means grabbing her, you do it. You’re the boss”

I still haven't reported it but am going to send an email doing so. I think thats the best/easiest way of doing it.

I should clarify that it was normal sized 25m pool, not overly wide but not particularly narrow either. It would have been impossible for me to swim in the rest of the pool because although it was empty, it was filled with those inflatable toy type things which would have got in my way. I'm not sure why the man who pushed me under didn't initially swim in the rest of the pool, he was going so slowly that it would have been easy for him to avoid the inflatables, and he must have had some awareness that the lane was for faster swimmers or at least more serious swimmers. That said, there was loads of room to pass each other in the lane, I'm very careful and experienced at passing other swimmers like this and generally never have any trouble, and I'm quite small and don't take up a lot of space. I'm a smooth, efficient front crawl swimmer, not a splashy one.

My impression was that he was barely interested in swimming at all, he was there looking for some kind of trouble/excitement. It was really, really odd.

I see no point in reporting it to the swimming pool, the other female swimmer I sometimes speak to at that pool said they did absolutely nothing when she reported an incident and another person reported being threatened with assault when he left the pool building.

I agree that the police will be struggling to do anything and would question whether they will take it that seriously by reviewing cctv when I didn't suffer injury.

Agree with other posters that this is the sort of nasty little thing that can happen to women that no-one does anything about - people don't want to intervene/get involved. I really do take exception to it being seen as "an argument between adults" - not only was there no argument but an assault without warning, I would never risk getting involved in some kind of public brawl because the consequences would endanger my job. To suggest that women typically do so is taking equality a bit too far and imagining nonsense interpretations of common assaults.

It happened in a little seaside village/resort in the east of Scotland, and it is somewhat old fashioned - there will be many dinosaurs living in that place, and many people to support them.

You must have a very unusual experience of collisions, where arms shoot out with targetted pressure prior to any physical contact in order to push the other swimmer vertically down in the water with force. Most accidental collisions involve kicks, brushes against each other, arms entangling or head on collisions, and don't enable the precise balance in the water to do what was described.

He was looking for an argument/fight/trouble for whatever reason. He didn't get quite enough out of it the first time so tried again by having another go at me when he was showering.

Yes, lets not rewrite facts. My head was held underwater. You don't have to be pushed down by the head for your head to go underwater. Its strange that you have difficulty understanding this.

Being forcibly pushed underwater by someone is horrible. I don't know how long it lasted, it felt like a few seconds to me, and it was certainly long enough to get a panicing feeling that I couldn't breathe. I had no opportunity to fill my lungs with air.

Since he pushed me down by my left shoulder, he must have used quite a lot of force and pushed me quite far for my head to go under. This makes me realise how serious this was and I must get on to reporting it by email now.

Yes, please report, @RedEcho , and ignore the trolls who are trying for some bizarre reason of their own to derail you. Sympathies on what must have been a horrible and unsettling experience.

Only skimmed this and saw you had some weird responses OP. I would encourage you to do the right thing - report to pool, report to police. Expect them to follow the correct protocol. Pull them up when they don't. Publicise it (does the pool have a FB page?) when they don't. Women keep other women safe by speaking up - it's why MN winds up the misogynists so!

A local paedo exhibited troubling behaviour at my local pool for ages before he was actually caught, by which time he'd amassed a huge library of images of women & children in changing rooms and loos. Lifeguards had presumably not felt empowered to report the warning signs they later admitted to having noticed. The pool might need to learn from this. Remember abusive men's behaviour is known to escalate. The police should know this.

This man's behaviour reminded me a bit of the behaviour I used to get from a minority of male cyclists when cycling into central London at rush hour (I was fast but law abiding). Women can just tell when their mere presence and competence has angered a certain type of male.

It looks to me like we need a campaign to acknowledge that this is yet another way some men harass women in public space.

Like manspreading which is ubiquitous but totally unacknowledged, so therefore couldn't be tackled, this use of male strength and size against women, needs a name. And a campaign to highlight that it happens because our lives are affected by it.

I've just realized that I tailor my swimming to avoid aggressive men, often go slower or faster than I want to, get into a lane I don't want to be in and get out of the pool sooner than I want, because of aggressive males.

Never because of a woman. And I shouldn't have to, I pay the same to use the pool as all the entitled men. I don't get a discount for adapting my swimming behaviour around their aggression.

This aggressive male behaviour needs to be recognized, named and acknowledged so that when it happens, women recognize it and other people around them understand what's happening too.

Men get away with this sort of behaviour because it's not acknowledged that it's a thing.

Also it's great you continued swimming after such a scary experience. Moving one's body after a potentially traumatic event is healthy and lessens the chance of it having a lasting impact.

Yes screamingbeans

And once you see it, you see it everywhere.

Like the boys who congregate at the top of the skate ramp, making the small number of female skaters feel judged if they dare use the ramp too.

I wouldn’t delay reporting I’d speak to manager now. If there is cctv in reception to show man entering pool (to identify him if he’s a pay per swim not a member) it may only be held 24 hours and you are not far off that time.
I will say again if op had had used phrase deliberately pushed my head under water with force in post one not felt pressure on my shoulder then obviously the scenario is deliberate and needs reporting asap.

I'd be reporting to both the management and the police. This man is bloody dangerous and you could've got into difficulties due to his actions and drowned. Probably not but could happen.

Lifeguards on the whole (saw one years ago watch my brother being dropped into a racing pool by his shoulders and then one time his head hit side of pool and he almost drowned) are pretty useless about these things. Makes me wonder why they're there.