I was visiting Brussels yesterday, near “gallerie du roi” a group of teenagers flagged me down saying there was a girl in trouble with a man and was showing the sos hand signal (https://constructionmanagement.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Hand-SOS-final.jpg), they were asking if I was speaking French.

Initially I thought it was some kind of scam (I’m always weary of people in European large cities) and brushed it off. But I saw the girl they mentioned: petite Asian girl that kept getting followed & embraced by a man almost twice her size. She seemed scared. The group of teenagers spoke with her and pretended they were from the same school to get her to get away from the man but it didn’t really work. When I saw that I realized it wasn’t a scam.

We talked with the teenagers and managed to get the girl to come to a shop where we were. She was pretending to buy an item from the shop. The guy was waiting outside and kept checking on her. We talked with her and she was shaking like crazy saying that she didn’t know the man, that he kept following her, that he tried to get her to some parking lot and tried to touch her. She was very soft spoken and didn’t know how to escape the situation.

We talked to the small shop owner, when the guy tried to come back in (it was a very small shop) he confronted him and told him to get lost, the guy walked out the gallery. One patron of the store escorted her to the subway and situation was resolved.

Some people called the police but they never showed up. Props to the shop owner to intervene and giant prop to the German teenagers who noticed her, stayed around and flagged us down in the first place. You kids saved a girl some bad experience.

This didn’t leave a great taste of Brussels for me. And I’m a bit mad that he’s still out there. So if you’re visiting and pretty soft spoken, be careful, be smart, travel in group. Hopefully this is not too common.

TL;DR: a girl was getting harassed/touched by a man in Brussels and she didn’t know how to escape him, group of teenagers noticed it and a shop owner shooed the guy off, saving her from a bad situation.

by ZAROK

26 comments

  2. Now let’s await all the comments defending brussels and saying this is normal in such a city. This is absolutely not normal and should not be defended though.

  3. Brussels is a shithole nowadays, so this is completely expected behaviour.

    Now lets see people come in and claim it happens in any big city…(as someone who travels a lot for business: it doesn’t happen in any big city)

  4. I don’t know what’s worse in this sub, the dogwhistlers or the enablers

  5. I’ve lived single in Brussels for almost 10 years and had few of those experiences as a soft spokengirl at the beginning. Those men’s are predators who scan and search for soft spoken girls, they conscider victim material. With time, you know how to react and the places to avoid.Thanks for what you’ve done for this girl. I think Brussels is really degrading. I went to other cities like Boston, Dallas, New York, and Paris, lived in Amsterdam and Dakar (Sénégal)for a few months, Brussels is really insecure for single women! Especially if you’re not a Muslim (someone has to say it).

  6. I lived in brussels for 4y as a student and yes, you had some shit happen. But i heard similar stories about for example leuven… which is regarded as a student safe haven…
    But this story really sucks, it says more about men then about a city…

  7. This post would het deleted on r/Brussels as provocative although it’s reality

  8. Only like 30% of inhabitants of Brussels are Belgian, just saying,

  9. I am a really tall girl (1,82m), muscular, heavy. And was still harrassed in Brussels. Not a matter of being petite and soft spoken, a matter of being a woman.

  10. It’s like abusers have a radar to pick out the most vulnerable people.

    Thank goodness she knew this hand sign (I’d never heard of it!) And that these kids recognised it and asked you for help.

    Of course the police didn’t show up 🙄

  12. Don’t smile at anyone. Be prepared to tell them to fuck off and leave you alone, and don’t hesitate to do so. Yell at them or scream if they won’t go away. I’m the father of a soft-spoken girl.

  13. Brussels is probably the worst capital in western Europe. Filthy, full of car pollution and lots of unsafe places.

    Avoid it like the plague. Antwerp, Gent, Leuven on the other hand are beautiful and safe places.

  15. “If you are a woman visiting Brussels, be careful” fixed the title

  16. Democracy at work in the capital. Looking at the election results the majory of the inhabitabts are fine with the currwnt situation.

  17. Congratulations! I am surprised the cops did not come, each time I called them they showed up quickly.

  18. You can remove the “petite soft spoken” from your description.

  20. You saw a bunch of Brussels people, among which a group of “Brusselse jongeren” (reading this, b1-4?) succesfully come to the aid of someone being harrassed.

    And now you have a ‘bad taste of Brussels and want to warn people to be careful. Careful for what? Locals getting a tourist out of a pickle?

    What did you do, other than coming here and giving a city shit for their population’s willingness to help?

  22. Ahmed doing ahmed things.welcome to multiculturalism!

  23. Ah yes an other BS post about BXL, so Flemish can share there irrational hate for Brussels and be openly racist. 

    We haven’t had that in a while. 

  24. I was harrassed in Bruges more than once. No locals came to my aid. So by OP’s logic, Bruges is fine for petite soft spoken women!

  25. We need to start sending these POS to Bukele to rot. I HATE the “you know whos” with violent, burning passion.

  26. When I arrived in Brussels 21 years ago, it was a very different city. I am referring ONLY to the centre of town when I say this close to the area OP was. I spent many happy hours with my lovely late mother when she visited, looking at the sites, doing some shopping and having a late lunch, watching the world go by.

    Now there is an undertone of violence that is inescapable. It is filthy dirty. A disgrace to be honest. There is an overall air of neglect. The fact there is not one coherent police force in this city is utterly shocking. The population in comparison with other European capitals is tiny. There is literally no excuse. There are gangs of disenfranchised youths harassing tourists and locals alike. There are pickpockets everywhere. I’ve seen dead rats on the streets. I’m not dramatising, these things I have witnessed them myself. I never, ever set foot in town now unless I have a business meeting or I’m using one of the stations – which itself is a whole other shit show.

    The Gare du Midi is a whole other national disgrace. The begging, the urine in streams by the entrance, the stench, the filth. This is often the first glimpse of Belgium for International tourists. It seriously makes me want to cry. All I can say is that the ghettoisation of Brussels Centre is working very nicely.

    There is no political will for change. Those that sit in their ivory Towers squandering our excessive taxes don’t give a shit. Most of these people wouldn’t survive in private companies they’d be fired for gross incompetence.

    Without pressure from the people there is little hope of change.

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