You may have heard of upskirting. I’d heard of it growing up, but I didn’t grasp how awful it actually is until July 8th 2017 when I was at British Summertime Festival and a man put his hands between my legs and took pictures of my crotch in broad daylight. There’s something really unsettling about someone you don’t know having their hand between your legs and silently taking pictures. It stays with you.

After it happened to me, the guy made the stupid mistake of sending the photo to his friend around me. I saw it on one of their phones and snatched it, screaming and crying at him, before hurtling through the 60,000 strong crowd to the police, only to have them tell me there ‘wasn’t much’ they could do. Three days later they closed my case.

I was angry. I was tired. I was completely over having to deal with this shit as some sort of trade off for being a woman, so I threw myself into research and found out that upskirt photos aren’t considered a sexual offence in England and Wales. Yes, really. So, a few days later, I decided that, as I couldn’t prosecute, I’d try to change the law instead.

I launched a petition and used social media to get as many supporters as possible (there are now over 100,000 wonderful signees!). Once that was done, I packaged up that interest and sold my story to the media, challenging anyone and everyone to ask why the law doesn’t cover all instances of upskirting. During a live TV debate, I argued with a police officer who insinuated that sexual assault wasn’t important enough to worry about. I wrote about my experience countless times. I reached out to find a lawyer.

Then, and only then, did I set out a roadmap to Parliament.

‘I was upskirted. I spoke out. This is what happened’