Editor, Daily Nexus:

On Saturday night, April 21, at approximately 11:45 p.m., I was turning my car around on El Nido when five white college-aged males started pounding on the back of my car. Frustration, fear and anger erupted inside of me as the thugs moved with my turning car, trying to break in. My anger quickly turned to sheer rage when three of these males jumped on the front of my car and began licking my window, making obscene sexual gestures and banging their fists against my vehicle. The ringleader of the group decided to give me my own personal, but unwanted, sex show and started playing with the zipper on his pants as he pressed his exposed crotch against my window. Male number-five thought his friends’ actions were hysterical, and as he laughed and cheered on these four assholes, he humped the side of my car and continued to pry at my windows.

Glassed-over eyes peered at this incident as if it were a television show, and nobody on the semi-crowded street offered me any help as I frantically honked my horn. It was as if these poorly bred males’ actions were socially acceptable and excusable.

My feelings of embarrassment, terror and fury continue to be mocked as I am told, “Well, at least they did not do anything to you.” What people do not seem to understand is that they did do something to me; these men took away my personal freedom. Freeing women from injustices such as this was the purpose of Take Back the Night, and it is my personal prayer that we learn to do better at joining together and fighting against this type of oppression as we struggle to restore what these imbeciles have taken away.

VANESSA PATTERSON