An investigative journalist has gone undercover and pretended to be intoxicated on a night out to see how men would treat her.
Ellie Flynn, from the UK, created a documentary called Undercover: Sexual Harassment – The Truth, that premiered on Channel 4.
Flynn, supported by a team of security and a camera crew, walked around the streets of an English town and pretended to be intoxicated.
Camera grabs caught men walking up to Flynn as she pretended to stumble around and slur her words.
“I can get you a taxi,” one man offered.
Another said; “I’m a good man” as he followed her around.
But, the most shocking scene was while Flynn was sitting on a bench while texting on her phone.
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“How are you? Where are you going,” a man shouts in her face.
Flynn replies she’s looking for her friends and then man then starts asking her if she’s been to a bar.
“Come with me, we’ll go to a hotel,” he tells her.
Flynn repeatedly tells the man she’s fine, that she’s looking for her friends and doesn’t need any help.
But the man persists, following her to her hotel room and telling her that he likes her.
Eventually, he gets into her hotel room and Flynn cuts her intoxication act, and begins to interrogate the man.
“Sit,” she commands him.
“Why have you followed me here?”
He simply says that he likes her.
“I didn’t give you any indication that I wanted you to follow me here. I told you I was fine on my own,” she shoots back.
“I like you … we have sex,” he replies.
She challenges him more, before demanding he leaves.
He even asks for a kiss on the way out.
Flynn’s security, who was hiding inside the hotel room, comforts her as she is left visibly shaken by the ordeal.
She collected the footage over two nights before showing it to a group of men of various ages and ethnic backgrounds to get their opinions on the footage.
The men look physically disturbed at what they had witnessed, with one saying; “Imagine if you were actually drunk.”
One man finished his thought: “It would have ended in rape.”
“The most surprising thing – the thing I’ll take away from today is I always thought rape was a crime of opportunity.
“But to see it all planned out is very sobering.”
Another young man said he understood why women were afraid of men in general – because they never knew who had good or bad motives.
In other parts of the documentary, Flynn sets up three dating profiles using photos of herself when she was 18 and called the men who sent unsolicited photos of their genitalia.
She also visited schools to talk about what women face in the world.
Clips of the documentary are surfacing online, with hundreds praising Flynn for unveiling the stark reality women face.
“Just finished watching, what an incredible investigation highlighting an ongoing issue where men think it’s OK to hassle women to varying levels of intent,” one said.
“It happens to women daily, and too often seen as ‘normal’. Ellie, thank you for doing this. “You are extremely brave, but I hope this helps in a movement that needs to happen, right now.”
Another added: “This was one of the most harrowing but important pieces of journalism I’ve seen. “It’s striking that you had to put yourself in so much danger just to prove something that we as women have always known to be too.”
But, others turned to blame Ellie for not using the words “go away”.
In Australia, more than half of women have experienced sexual harassment – double the figure of men, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The most common sexual harassment behaviour experienced by women was inappropriate comments about body or sex life, followed by unwanted touching.
The figure has risen, with more women being harassed in 2016 compared to the last time a study was conducted in 2012.
In 2021, there was an estimated 31,118 who had been sexually abused or harassed in Australia, but that figure only includes those who have reported the harassment.