ABC
Bekah Martinez is “not okay.” The Bachelor alum shared she was sexually assaulted while out with her children on Friday.
Recounting the experience on Instagram, she wrote in the caption, “I was just out taking a walk, looking like this, pushing my sleeping baby and holding hands with my toddler, when a teenager skateboarded by and grabbed my a**.” The text accompanied a photo of Martinez donning a casual shorts-and-shirt outfit with her hair in a messy bun.
“I felt totally powerless as I screamed at him ‘THAT IS NOT OKAY. WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU?’” the Chatty Broads co-host continued. “I wanted to chase him down and pull him off his skateboard. Punch him in the back. Do something, anything to get through to him that what he did was so wrong.”
Martinez expressed her anger that this teenager felt emboldened to attack her during the day, just casually skating away, while she was left to ponder what he would be capable of at night in the future. The experience left her “mad.”
Martinez Had Another ‘Helpless’ Experience When She Was 21-Years-Old
As Martinez revealed, this anger and “helpless” feeling were not new.
“I’m mad that this isn’t the first time,” she wrote. “I remember being alone on the beach at 21 when a man walked up to me with his dick in his hand.”
She continued, “I hate this. I hate that this is the world my daughter will grow up in.”
Martinez described her 2-year-old daughter, Ruth, as shaken by the experience, repeatedly asking “‘you otay, mommy?’”
When one follower shared concern for Ruth, Martinez explained that when she was later getting her daughter ready for a nap she “looked her in the eyes and told her, ‘that was scary when that man came by on his skateboard wasn’t it? mama was mad and sad, but I’m okay and you’re safe.’”
Martinez ended her Instagram post with a call to action, calling on parents to teach their sons “to respect the people around them.” As Martinez wrote, “there are predators around every turn, every corner. And the world will always be unsafe for women.”
Martinez Issued a Reminder That Sexual Assault Is ‘Not Your Fault’
Martinez took to her Instagram Story to continue the conversation around sexual assault.
“Sexual assault is never your fault. Ever,” she wrote in all caps. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a sex worker. It doesn’t matter if your tits were out. It doesn’t matter if you’ve f***** before. It’s not your fault. No one deserves or asks to be sexually assaulted. No. One. Ever.”
She called out the exposure of violence in porn and added, “kids know they can’t just take someone else’s candy or food that looks good, right? We teach them that’s wrong. They know they can’t do that, men KNOW they aren’t entitled to touch a woman’s body because it looks good, but they do it anyway.”
Women flooded the comments section of her Instagram post to share their support, similar stories and vows to prevent their sons from assaulting.
“I’m so sorry this happened to you today, Bekah. This made my heart race and my stomach drop reading this knowing too what that helpless, angry, violating, humiliating, bewildered feeling feels like,” Bachelor in Paradise winner, Jade Roper, wrote in the comments section. Mother of sons Brooks and Reed, she promised, “I will raise my boys to be far better.”
On Saturday, Martinez wrote in her Instagram Story, “thanks for all the kind words and personal stories yesterday. I’m sorry we have to go through this s***.”
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